May 8 - 14. An update that almost never happened.
II am typing this slowly. I have a pair of Icebreaker glove liners on, which eases the pain in my fingers, sort of. I am currently cocooned in a cloud of – almost – pain relief thanks to a couple of Panadeine Forte and this is an installment that may not have been written if things had have gone just a little differently this week.
My mood is subdued and perhaps a little reflective; though it certainly isn’t a bad thing. Those of you who have known me for a long time know that I can be hard and cynical and tough. Those of you who have only known me since I began this journey probably find those words don’t fit me at all. Someone who is very dear to me, told me a few months ago that I was about as tough as a pink marshmallow and I am happy to wear that description these days. It reminds me of how much I have I changed since I embarked on this journey. I’m not terribly good with what I call “The Human Condition”. For the most part I believe you can only rely on people to A) let you down, B) hurt you or C) use you and discard you and unfortunately over the years my theory has been proved true more often than not. So I usually keep all but my closest inner circle at arms length and don’t often let anyone in. But slowly I am changing and learning to trust a little. At the end of this adventure I will return home greatly changed and hopefully a much better person for the experience. I have had people come into my life in the last 8 months who have touched my heart and touched my soul and at least one person who has done both. And I have made some friends who will remain in my life long after this adventure comes to an end. Perhaps that alone was worth coming for.
So what has lead me to be so introspective today?
The week started as it always does with nothing out of the ordinary. Andrew came back from Traverse to Cape Poinsett and I prepared to leave for Wilkins Runway for a few days to do some work. Wilkins Runway is 72km inland (4 hours in a Hagg in good conditions) from Casey Station. Wilkins is a 42million dollar AAD Project. It is a 4km Blue Ice Runway, the longest in the southern hemisphere. This was my first trip to Wilkins and I had no idea what to expect. Now, after being there I have a new appreciation for the phase “Middle of nowhere” because that is exactly where Wilkins is. You stand outside and turn 360 degrees. In any direction you look there is nothing. It is vast, it is bare, it is desolate and it is empty. No life, no colour, just nothingness. Then you turn to the horizon and the sun starts to creep above the horizon and the colours are amazing. The brilliant blue of the sky simply shines and you feel alive in this wasteland.
The runway itself is an engineering achievement of huge proportions. It has taken 3 summer seasons to construct so far and will be complete in 2 more. The construction consists of 4 km of surface graded down to Blue Ice and Razor leveled flat. It has a slight uphill incline but it dead flat. Once that was achieved layers of snow were sprayed over the surface and compacted into the Blue Ice to bond and form an Ice tarmac. It has been a massive job and has created a bit of controversy in recent times.
There are 8 vans up here that serve as living and sleeping areas and Dieso workshops. During winter we visit every 8 weeks to remove the Blizz tails from the vans, perform maintenance and ensure the gear is ready to be run up and go as soon as the new summer season begins next year.
During our stay here we were lucky enough to see another phenomenon caused by ice crystals in the air. This time it was “Sun Dogs”. This is where there are two sun shadows/reflections, one on each side of the sun and in special circumstances a third above the sun. We were lucky, we saw all 4 “Suns”. It was a beautiful site.
Then at 2am when I was still awake and everyone else slept, I went outside to find a full blood moon and the most amazing star sky I have yet to see. Around the moon was not one halo, but several, rippling out wave after wave. I think, when I leave this place, I will miss the sky the most. It really is amazing down here.
But I won’t miss the cold. It was -35 degrees at Wilkins and after only 5 minutes my eyelashes and eyebrows were caked with ice and I had to constantly blink just to stop my eyelids freezing. The cold here isn’t pleasant. But it is a part of the place and not everything in my adventure is going to be fabulous, as the trip home was to prove.
We set off for home Friday morning in -35 degrees. It was so cold that thermal glove liners and Thinsulate gloves didn’t even cut it for warmth on your hands and two pairs of sox and glacier boots didn’t stop feet from freezing. Inside the Hagg it wasn’t much better. Because it was so cold outside the motor was barely warming and there was little heat coming out of the vents. At one stage I took off my boot and sat like a contorted Buddha with my foot up against a vent to warm it up before returning it to my glacier boot. At the Arctic Circle we stopped for photos and to buggerize around while we waited for John to catch up. He was driving the D9 towing the living caravans and generator van we had used. The D9 drives at about 11km/hour compared to the 15km/hour of the Hagg. We had been outside for about 10 minutes and I could feel the cold seeping into my gloves. My hands were starting to get cold and I had to go for a wiz. But John was not too far away and would see me behind the Hagg so I had to wait for the D9 to catch up and race to the back of the caravan line. Finally, another 5 minute later he was parked up and I was busting. So I raced along out of sight. By now my hands were so cold that in gloves they refused to undo the zip of my Freezer suit, so I yanked them off. One thermal liner stayed on, the other came off with the glove to leave an exposed hand.
Things went pretty well downhill from there. I could barely work my hands and I had moved onto the side of the van where the wind was to stay out of sight. -35 degrees and wind makes a wind shill factor of about -50degrees. In less than 2 minutes I knew I was in trouble. I could barely make my arms work to shove them back in my freezer suit and had no way of doing the zip back up. I could see the Hagg, maybe 50 metres away and my only thought was to get there – QUICKLY. I past Chris, thinking if I run the blood might pump into my hands and help things. I shouted at him that I was in trouble and was going to the Hagg. Later Chris told me that I was not running at all, I was walking past him and muttering something about losing a glove. Hypothermia does very strange things to your mind. It ceases to function rationally, but the victim has no idea they are behaving strangely. Our thorough first aid training told me I was going into shock and I was Hypothermic, beyond that I had no thought. By the time I got to the Hagg my heart was racing so hard and so fast that I thought it would explode in my chest and I was beginning to panic. I fumbled with my sunglasses, dropped them and went into panic trying to grovel on the ground for them when what I should have been doing was getting in the Hagg with the heater. Again, Hypothermic and totally irrational behavior. My hands, by this stage would not work at all and the one that was totally exposed was as white as the snow, the nails blue. I hauled myself up into the Hagg and huddled over the heater vent where little heat was coming out. My breath was the shallow laboring pant of hyperventilation and I was starting to pass out. Thank God that Shane chose that moment to come and get something from the Hagg and saw me huddled over the heater vent violently shaking. He grabbed me and asked what was wrong. All I could say was that I was in shock and I was going to vomit any second. He grabbed me and lead me over to the D9, 10 metres away. By the time I got there I was pretty well fucked. Neither hands would work and the rest of me was shutting down – rapidly. I could barely move. It wasn’t until I got to the D9 that anyone noticed I still had no gloves on. Shane and John hauled me bodily into the cab on the D9, where the heater was turned to its full furnace blast temperature. The next 20 minutes were the most agonizing of my life. I stuck my frozen fingers up into the heater vents to thaw out. As sensation returned it came with wave after wave of pain so excruciating I was nearly blacking out from it. Waves of nausea rolled over the top of me and threatened to overwhelm me and as for my heart – I have no idea how it didn’t actually explode in my chest from the force and rapidity of its beating. It was 20 minutes of absolute hell that I would not wish on my worst enemy and certainly never wish to have repeated.
The next two hours it took to get home weren’t too bad. I felt sick and exhausted, but I was OK and I had no feeling in either hand so that was fine. It was actually, I was later to find out – very bad. It meant my hands were dying. Back at Casey I went and saw the Doc and discovered I had stage one frost bite to all 10 fingers from the first knuckle to the tips of my fingers. Pain had set in by then and things were not good. My finger nails felt like they had been smashed with a million hammers and I could not stand anything to touch my finger tips at all. The doc told me I could expect to wake the next morning with all fingers covered in puss filled, oozing blisters. He also said the pain and sensitivity would last several days at least and we would see then if the fingertips were lost. Even Panadeine Forte did little to ease the pain.
I went to bed, tripping on pain killers which did little to actually ease any pain with my hands in my thermal glove liners. I awoke at 2am in agony, which only worsened as I struggled to pop more Panadeine out of its foil and plastic enclosed wrapping. Not easy when you cant use any fingers!
The next day I removed the gloves expecting the worst and was very very relived to see that all I had was lots of swelling and lots and lots of pain.
Now, two days after the event, I am still in pain but it is easing, slowly.
Hopefully I will regain full use of all my fingers but they will remain extra sensitive to the cold for at least 12 months.
I am bloody lucky. The doc reckons another 10 minutes of exposure for my hands and I would almost certainly have lost all 10 fingers to the first knuckle and 20 minutes more would have meant irreversible Hypothermia, which usually leads to death.
The scariest thing though was the speed with which it all happened. It was less than 20 minutes between us pulling up at the Arctic Circle and me being thrown bodily into the cab of the D9 fully hypothermic and in deep trouble. And I wasn’t even doing anything stupid or irresponsible. In fact I did nothing at all wrong.
If Shane hadn’t decided to chose that moment to grab something from the Hagg I doubt I would be sitting here writing this episode in my Antarctic adventure at all. That was the thing, no one knew I was in trouble and I was obviously too hypothermic to convey the fact to anyone. It was all very quick and very bloody scary.
So there you have it. Another chapter in Trace’s Antarctic Adventures. Like I said, they aren’t all going to be GOOD experiences. But they are just a part of the whole experience. And bit by bit they are changing me into someone who hopefully, emerges from this a better person. One thing that has come out of this is that I have had to ask for help a few times in the last few days. This is something I have never done before. I am fiercely independent and to ask for help has been a humbling experience. Only once before have I done this, not long ago in fact, but that request I was met with silence. You live – you learn.
Hopefully next week I will have something really boring to tell you all. ;o]
Toodles Doodles!
Trace x
My mood is subdued and perhaps a little reflective; though it certainly isn’t a bad thing. Those of you who have known me for a long time know that I can be hard and cynical and tough. Those of you who have only known me since I began this journey probably find those words don’t fit me at all. Someone who is very dear to me, told me a few months ago that I was about as tough as a pink marshmallow and I am happy to wear that description these days. It reminds me of how much I have I changed since I embarked on this journey. I’m not terribly good with what I call “The Human Condition”. For the most part I believe you can only rely on people to A) let you down, B) hurt you or C) use you and discard you and unfortunately over the years my theory has been proved true more often than not. So I usually keep all but my closest inner circle at arms length and don’t often let anyone in. But slowly I am changing and learning to trust a little. At the end of this adventure I will return home greatly changed and hopefully a much better person for the experience. I have had people come into my life in the last 8 months who have touched my heart and touched my soul and at least one person who has done both. And I have made some friends who will remain in my life long after this adventure comes to an end. Perhaps that alone was worth coming for.
So what has lead me to be so introspective today?
The week started as it always does with nothing out of the ordinary. Andrew came back from Traverse to Cape Poinsett and I prepared to leave for Wilkins Runway for a few days to do some work. Wilkins Runway is 72km inland (4 hours in a Hagg in good conditions) from Casey Station. Wilkins is a 42million dollar AAD Project. It is a 4km Blue Ice Runway, the longest in the southern hemisphere. This was my first trip to Wilkins and I had no idea what to expect. Now, after being there I have a new appreciation for the phase “Middle of nowhere” because that is exactly where Wilkins is. You stand outside and turn 360 degrees. In any direction you look there is nothing. It is vast, it is bare, it is desolate and it is empty. No life, no colour, just nothingness. Then you turn to the horizon and the sun starts to creep above the horizon and the colours are amazing. The brilliant blue of the sky simply shines and you feel alive in this wasteland.
The runway itself is an engineering achievement of huge proportions. It has taken 3 summer seasons to construct so far and will be complete in 2 more. The construction consists of 4 km of surface graded down to Blue Ice and Razor leveled flat. It has a slight uphill incline but it dead flat. Once that was achieved layers of snow were sprayed over the surface and compacted into the Blue Ice to bond and form an Ice tarmac. It has been a massive job and has created a bit of controversy in recent times.
There are 8 vans up here that serve as living and sleeping areas and Dieso workshops. During winter we visit every 8 weeks to remove the Blizz tails from the vans, perform maintenance and ensure the gear is ready to be run up and go as soon as the new summer season begins next year.
During our stay here we were lucky enough to see another phenomenon caused by ice crystals in the air. This time it was “Sun Dogs”. This is where there are two sun shadows/reflections, one on each side of the sun and in special circumstances a third above the sun. We were lucky, we saw all 4 “Suns”. It was a beautiful site.
Then at 2am when I was still awake and everyone else slept, I went outside to find a full blood moon and the most amazing star sky I have yet to see. Around the moon was not one halo, but several, rippling out wave after wave. I think, when I leave this place, I will miss the sky the most. It really is amazing down here.
But I won’t miss the cold. It was -35 degrees at Wilkins and after only 5 minutes my eyelashes and eyebrows were caked with ice and I had to constantly blink just to stop my eyelids freezing. The cold here isn’t pleasant. But it is a part of the place and not everything in my adventure is going to be fabulous, as the trip home was to prove.
We set off for home Friday morning in -35 degrees. It was so cold that thermal glove liners and Thinsulate gloves didn’t even cut it for warmth on your hands and two pairs of sox and glacier boots didn’t stop feet from freezing. Inside the Hagg it wasn’t much better. Because it was so cold outside the motor was barely warming and there was little heat coming out of the vents. At one stage I took off my boot and sat like a contorted Buddha with my foot up against a vent to warm it up before returning it to my glacier boot. At the Arctic Circle we stopped for photos and to buggerize around while we waited for John to catch up. He was driving the D9 towing the living caravans and generator van we had used. The D9 drives at about 11km/hour compared to the 15km/hour of the Hagg. We had been outside for about 10 minutes and I could feel the cold seeping into my gloves. My hands were starting to get cold and I had to go for a wiz. But John was not too far away and would see me behind the Hagg so I had to wait for the D9 to catch up and race to the back of the caravan line. Finally, another 5 minute later he was parked up and I was busting. So I raced along out of sight. By now my hands were so cold that in gloves they refused to undo the zip of my Freezer suit, so I yanked them off. One thermal liner stayed on, the other came off with the glove to leave an exposed hand.
Things went pretty well downhill from there. I could barely work my hands and I had moved onto the side of the van where the wind was to stay out of sight. -35 degrees and wind makes a wind shill factor of about -50degrees. In less than 2 minutes I knew I was in trouble. I could barely make my arms work to shove them back in my freezer suit and had no way of doing the zip back up. I could see the Hagg, maybe 50 metres away and my only thought was to get there – QUICKLY. I past Chris, thinking if I run the blood might pump into my hands and help things. I shouted at him that I was in trouble and was going to the Hagg. Later Chris told me that I was not running at all, I was walking past him and muttering something about losing a glove. Hypothermia does very strange things to your mind. It ceases to function rationally, but the victim has no idea they are behaving strangely. Our thorough first aid training told me I was going into shock and I was Hypothermic, beyond that I had no thought. By the time I got to the Hagg my heart was racing so hard and so fast that I thought it would explode in my chest and I was beginning to panic. I fumbled with my sunglasses, dropped them and went into panic trying to grovel on the ground for them when what I should have been doing was getting in the Hagg with the heater. Again, Hypothermic and totally irrational behavior. My hands, by this stage would not work at all and the one that was totally exposed was as white as the snow, the nails blue. I hauled myself up into the Hagg and huddled over the heater vent where little heat was coming out. My breath was the shallow laboring pant of hyperventilation and I was starting to pass out. Thank God that Shane chose that moment to come and get something from the Hagg and saw me huddled over the heater vent violently shaking. He grabbed me and asked what was wrong. All I could say was that I was in shock and I was going to vomit any second. He grabbed me and lead me over to the D9, 10 metres away. By the time I got there I was pretty well fucked. Neither hands would work and the rest of me was shutting down – rapidly. I could barely move. It wasn’t until I got to the D9 that anyone noticed I still had no gloves on. Shane and John hauled me bodily into the cab on the D9, where the heater was turned to its full furnace blast temperature. The next 20 minutes were the most agonizing of my life. I stuck my frozen fingers up into the heater vents to thaw out. As sensation returned it came with wave after wave of pain so excruciating I was nearly blacking out from it. Waves of nausea rolled over the top of me and threatened to overwhelm me and as for my heart – I have no idea how it didn’t actually explode in my chest from the force and rapidity of its beating. It was 20 minutes of absolute hell that I would not wish on my worst enemy and certainly never wish to have repeated.
The next two hours it took to get home weren’t too bad. I felt sick and exhausted, but I was OK and I had no feeling in either hand so that was fine. It was actually, I was later to find out – very bad. It meant my hands were dying. Back at Casey I went and saw the Doc and discovered I had stage one frost bite to all 10 fingers from the first knuckle to the tips of my fingers. Pain had set in by then and things were not good. My finger nails felt like they had been smashed with a million hammers and I could not stand anything to touch my finger tips at all. The doc told me I could expect to wake the next morning with all fingers covered in puss filled, oozing blisters. He also said the pain and sensitivity would last several days at least and we would see then if the fingertips were lost. Even Panadeine Forte did little to ease the pain.
I went to bed, tripping on pain killers which did little to actually ease any pain with my hands in my thermal glove liners. I awoke at 2am in agony, which only worsened as I struggled to pop more Panadeine out of its foil and plastic enclosed wrapping. Not easy when you cant use any fingers!
The next day I removed the gloves expecting the worst and was very very relived to see that all I had was lots of swelling and lots and lots of pain.
Now, two days after the event, I am still in pain but it is easing, slowly.
Hopefully I will regain full use of all my fingers but they will remain extra sensitive to the cold for at least 12 months.
I am bloody lucky. The doc reckons another 10 minutes of exposure for my hands and I would almost certainly have lost all 10 fingers to the first knuckle and 20 minutes more would have meant irreversible Hypothermia, which usually leads to death.
The scariest thing though was the speed with which it all happened. It was less than 20 minutes between us pulling up at the Arctic Circle and me being thrown bodily into the cab of the D9 fully hypothermic and in deep trouble. And I wasn’t even doing anything stupid or irresponsible. In fact I did nothing at all wrong.
If Shane hadn’t decided to chose that moment to grab something from the Hagg I doubt I would be sitting here writing this episode in my Antarctic adventure at all. That was the thing, no one knew I was in trouble and I was obviously too hypothermic to convey the fact to anyone. It was all very quick and very bloody scary.
So there you have it. Another chapter in Trace’s Antarctic Adventures. Like I said, they aren’t all going to be GOOD experiences. But they are just a part of the whole experience. And bit by bit they are changing me into someone who hopefully, emerges from this a better person. One thing that has come out of this is that I have had to ask for help a few times in the last few days. This is something I have never done before. I am fiercely independent and to ask for help has been a humbling experience. Only once before have I done this, not long ago in fact, but that request I was met with silence. You live – you learn.
Hopefully next week I will have something really boring to tell you all. ;o]
Toodles Doodles!
Trace x
posted by Tracey in Casey - Antarctica at 11:18 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home