Training, training, training!

Over the last few weeks I have been doing lots of training courses prior to being shipped off down south on the 11th November.

It all started with a week at Girton College in Cambridge which I was amazed at! There's no doubt I loved my time at York Uni, but the colleges are no comparison. Girton was like Hogwarts (Harry Potter reference for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about) and my room was huge (in fact it was two rooms!).

There were over a hundred people at the week long conference who are all heading south (and a few north to the Arctic). Most of the people seemed to be new to BAS but there were quite a few Antarctic veterans who gave us newbies loads of useful advice about what it's like to live down there and what you need to bring (tasty snacks mainly).

The Antarctic crew, can you spot me??

 During the first few days we had lots of talks about topics ranging from ships, clothing, and H&S to photography, food and wildlife. There were a few talks on projects that are going on this season, including the Lake Ellsworth project to drill through the ice sheet to a depth of about 3km into a sub glacial lake that has been undisturbed for hundereds of thousands of years. The aim is to take water samples and sediment samples from the bottom of the lake (which is about the size of lake Windermere). Who know's what they will find?!  The project is a culmination of 14 years work so is an exciting time to be part of BAS while these questions are being answered.

After the end of the conference we had a ceilidh night which was a lot of fun, but I always forget how hot you get doing all that dancing, should have worn less layers! It was then straight into a two and a bit day first aid course. 

The first aid course was run by the doctors who will be going to Antarctica this season, and those that have been in the past. It was like no other first aid course that I have done and we all had an excellent time. We did the usual CPR, bandaging, slings that you do normal courses, but the part where they usually say "Now phone for an ambulance" is not there....... Some of the other bases have doctors stationed but Bird Island is too small for that so it is just us...

So we all had to pay extra attention to what we were being told, which was not a problem as all the doctors were really enthusiastic and made it a lot of fun.

Besides the usual stuff we learnt how to take blood pressure manually, getting people onto crash boards and protecting the spine, injections (using oranges- everyone looked pretty worried before they revealed we weren't practicing on each other), giving painkillers (which included trying out laughing gas!), using defibrilators, dealing with hypothermia, frost bite and seal bites (that last one is very relevant to Bird Island).

On the final day we did a few hours of scenarios out in the lovely sunshine, and took turns leading the group. We came across drunks (very realistic I may add!), fitting, tents burning down, carbon monoxide poisoning, skidoo crashes, skiing accidents, hypothermic walkers. It was really good and we all came away feeling much more confident in dealing with emergency situations by the end of it.

Stretchering- not sure we are supposed to carry him vertically though

Oh and we also managed to get an afternoon off to go punting!