Field Training and The Framnes mountains - Part 2 (part 3 of 4)
Tuesday 7th December 1999

... continued

By the time that we arrived at Fang Hut, it was late in the afternoon, so as the sun set, Roger and I walked up to the saddle below Fang peak to admire the view across to the Northern Massons Range, and Mt Parsons out to the coast.

A view from below Fang Peak across the Plateau to the Northern Massons Range. Rumdoodle, and Fearn Hill are near the centre of the range.

The evening was absolutely fantastic. There was almost no wind, plenty of sunlight and no cloud cover. The weather could not have been better!. I began to think back to my visit to Auster. Had nature topped that day ? Possibly - but in a very much different way. At Auster I had been captivated by seeing the world close up, however here, I was humbled by seeing the world on the large scale. I could have stayed there for hours - in fact I nearly did. I promised that I must return and climb MT Parsons, from the other side where it is a scree slope scramble to the top. There are a lot of peaks behind Mawson that are just as spectacular, and most of them are quite easy to get to since the snow slopes often go close to the summit.

Just below Fang Peak is Fang Hut, nestled in a valley half way up Fang Peak. For field training, normally one night is spent in a hut, one in a tent, and another in a bivy bag outside. There were five people in our party, but only four beds in the hut so I drew the short straw and elected to bivy out. Besides, I was the only "winterer" so I had to get used to the cold ! I was quite looking forward to the experience as I had bivied out before in places like the Gammon Ranges in South Australia, and had really enjoyed the experience. However, the challenge here was just that bit more greater with the temperatures about -2 deg C in the sun and -8 deg C in the shade and a solid surface of ice below me.

There are many different techniques for making shelters out of snow and ice - especially useful when you don't have a tent or access to a hut. The most important aspect is to get out of the wind and quickly. One of the quickest techniques is to dig a trench that is wide enough and deep enough to sleep in. Snow shelters are fairly easy to build when there is plenty of loose snow around, but when you get stuck on ice, you need to have some sort of wind break. Quads make good wind breaks, and there are special "Quad Bivies" which are like little tents which you tie between two Quads. In high winds when you are putting up any tent, bivy or just un-rolling your sleeping bag, you need to hang on tight to it otherwise it will inflate and get snapped out of your hands - never to be seen again. This has happened to quite a number of expeditioners - when they least expected it, and least needed it!

That night there was not very much wind, and more importantly, not much loose snow deep enough to build a trench, so I set myself up on a flat surface of
compacted snow out the back of the Fang Hut. Another thing I have learned - just from sleeping in a tent on snow, is that an enormous amount of heat can be lost downwards into the snow, so adequate insulation between the ground and your sleeping bag is vital. Most people use lilo's (or inflatable mattresses) for comfort on hard ground, but in Antarctica, they are more useful for insulation, and even though they are reasonable insulators, the air inside them still goes below 0 degC, so you have to put another foam mat on top of them. You can survive without a lilo - something I will try sometime - but at the time, I wanted a decent nights sleep.

In the morning (a relative term really, since the lights didn't go out all night, and I had to wear my balaclava back-to-front to shield my eyes), the inside of my bivy bag was covered in ice crystals that had formed from the moisture in my breath. There are a few other subtle tricks that I have picked up during training. One is to take your boot liners out of your boots, and put them into your sleeping bag with you at night. This is because the sweat from your feet during the day makes them moist, and if they are left outside at night, they will freeze solid. Putting your foot into frozen boots is definitely not a nice feeling in the morning !

Email continues in part 4