Amber on Ice

16 October -- Two weeks ago I attended Snow School, known locally as Happy Camper, which is a required overnight survival training for any new employee who may have to leave town for work and/or fly on an an aircraft. About 20+ of us new employees were in the group. They bus us over to the McMurdo Ice Shelf, out towards Willie Field, where we were divided up into two groups (Yes, like Survivor, we even broke into two camps -- they even had different colored flags; I opted for the red flag of course). We had to set up a Scott Tent which is what we used cooking; it's the "typical" pyramid looking tent. Then, we set up a bunch of mountain tents and built a snow wall around them. We cut blocks of snow from the Ice Shelf and stacked them to make a wall, just like if using cinder blocks. I must say, this was sincerely laborious work. The sawing of the snow was not easy, then we loaded the blocks on sleds and dragged them to the wall, then we had to lift and level the blocks so that they wouldn't fall or get blown over. Most of the tents went up pretty easy. They taught us how to make T-Anchors in the snow to help further brace the tents. About the time we started putting our camps together, the weather turned poorly into Condition 2 -- higher winds and lower visibility.