Well, here we are again. Every time the phone rings, it seems to be Mr Noel Tennant, offering me another position down south. And every time, I fall for it. Blah blah, mountains, penguins, frozen lakes, auroras, seals and orcas.
He never mentions the sleeping out in a bright yellow trashbag. Or the fingers that feel like someone slammed them in a car door. Hard. He never lets on that I’m pretty much going to have to eat my own mediocre cooking for a whole year, or that a lot of my time will have to be used for sorting photos of the above mentioned incredible scenery.
But I digress. Last week was survival training time for group 3, the sorriest bunch of halfwits ever to strap on an ice-axe and venture forth into the wilds with a vague hope of living through it.
Allan “Frostbite” Waldeck (Comms), Dave “Custard” Bone, (F.T.O.) and Greg “Positive Chakras” Crawford accompanied myself out to Fang Peak in the David Range, and Rumdoodle Hut in the Masson Range. Here, I was expected to dig my own hole and lie down in it all night, and somehow wake up in a good mood. Bon chance with that, mate.
To top it off, there was a dehydrated meal of raccoon gruel or something equally appetising, just because.
Next day, we set off for some map-reading and GPS training so we wouldn’t get lost if Dave cast us off and went skiing to the South Pole like he threatened more than once. Although at times I think he was trying to find a crevasse, just to put us out of our misery. Greg managed to drive the Hägglunds with something approaching competency across 15 km of white, white ice.
The second night was spent in Rumdoodle Hut, eating some of the finest beef/vegetable/vegetable/beef??? lasagnes ever foisted on a human in Antarctica. I might have had a 10 minute nap, but the day seemed to fly by. I then had another, longer, (9 hour?) nap, just to be safe.
Next morning, somehow, Allan managed by sheer dumb luck to get us back to station, where I was treated to another meal of leftovers I’d prepared the day before we left.
Come to Antarctica, it truly is awesome. The whales, seals and the mountains. The orcas, people and the food. We love it.
Cheers, Nick Baker, Station Chef.
(Disclaimer: No chefs, communication technicians, or plant operators were at risk or hurt in the making of this survival training. They may however have been mildly annoyed at the cold leftover food. A ton.)
