For Scott Carpenter Middle School: What it's like to live here!

We had a middle school reading class write to us recently that has been reading about the early explorers in Antarctica. They had a lot of questions for us, so we have divided them up into sets and will attempt to answer them here. Here is the first set of questions and answers:

1) Do you ever use an igloo as a house?

All people live in dorms here. However, they do train you how to build quinzie huts made out of snow that you could live in to survive the cold if you were ever trapped outside and didn't have a tent. Quinzie huts look a little like igloos, but you don't cut snow blocks out to make them. You pack snow down on top of cargo, then you make a hole in the side of the snow and pull out the cargo. This leaves you a hollow cavity that you can dig out further and smooth down. The walls are usually 18-20 inches thick. If you want to see my feet sticking out of a quinzie, I put a picture of that on a posting in November called "Andrea goes to snow school". Here are two more pictures of quinzie huts made in our "Happy Camper snow school".


Quinzie huts, outside and inside.



2) How do you keep a fire going and keep warm?

Everything here is run on diesel fuel, including our heat. We have a power plant that supplies generators with electricity. There are also back-up generators in case there is a power outage. There is a massive tanker ship that comes to port once a year that carries all of our fuel here.

3) How do you do your laundry?

There are free washers and dryers in every dorm. The company supplies free bleach and detergent for us.

4) How do you brush your teeth? How do you take a bath?

The facilities here are pretty nice so bathing is just like it is at home. They only ask us to conserve water because they make our water through a desalination process by taking water out of our bay. However, at the South Pole station it is very difficult to get water (all the water needs to be melted from snow). As a result, people are limited to 2, two minute showers a week.

5) Do people snowboard there?



YES! You can also sled and cross country ski here in a few places. It can be dangerous if your sled or snowboard goes off into the wrong area because there are hidden crevasses here. You are only allowed to walk on areas that have been flagged with green or red flags. If there are no flags, then you cannot go that direction because that area has not been surveyed. The pictures below are of our friends, Elvis and Damon, and their snowboarding adventure on the trail to Castle Rock.