Jon and Emily and a couple of other people finished up the quinzhee. It had been somewhat abandoned, but some of us wanted to see it completed. We had been digging out the inside and Jon was making an opening. We kept trying to meet up in the middle and stuck the pickaxe through from the outside, but could not see it from the inside for a long time. When we finally stuck through, we decided to make dinner. The group before us had made a kitchen out of their quarry, so we took it over and set up the stoves in there. Our dinner was Alpineaire brand "just add water" meals. They are actually pretty tasty. Jon went right back to digging the quinzhee after dinner. In fact, he closed off the hole we made to get the sleep kits out while he was inside the quinzhee (so he had no way out!) Emily saw him do this and was frantically trying to clear out the other opening to make sure Jon had a way out. This went on for a long time, but Jon did a great job on the inside and, together, we all made an excellent entryway.


Later on that evening, Emily and Jon made a beautiful archway over the entry. My camera was frozen the next day when I tried to take a photo, so I do not have one (yet). Other people became quite creative after dinner. One fellow made several letters out of snow blocks, all about 2 feet high. He spelled various words and took pictures of himself with them and with Castle Rock in the background. Dan (from ITASE) made a symbol used in quantum mechanics (in the photo). Another group of people made a zen garden - a spiral of snow blocks that I was unable to get a photo of due to the frozen camera.

I slept in a quinzhee built two classes before ours. The entry was very difficult to use and reminded me of sliding through narrow openings in the caves in Santa Cruz. Though, instead of mud going up your shirt or jacket, it is cold cold snow. I would probably choose to sleep in the Scott tent or a mountan tent next time, but I thought since the weather was so nice, and I didn't know when I would get this chance again, so why not? It was not as nice as the one Jon cleaned out. If I had known no one was going to sleep in it, I certainly would have. However, Emily and Jon were still working on the arch when I decided to go to sleep. Before that, I took a brief walk that led me close to an icefall. The lighting was incredible. It always is here because of the low angle of the sun at all times of the day.



It took me a long time to get into my sleeping bag. The ceiling of the quinzhee was so low, I kept hitting it with my head. There is not a lot of room to move around in and the sleeping bag was enormous. I was so glad to finally fall asleep. I woke up several times, but slept quite a bit and stayed warm. We had to break down camp in the morning and put everything away before the instructors showed up at 9 AM. We all worked together and just barely made it. The instructors picked up our sleep kits and bags and we walked back to the fish hut. We had more instruction there from Matt and Susan. We learned how to use the VHF and HF radios and then went out and practiced setting up the HF and calling South Pole to ask how the weather is. It worked really well!

I will have to amend this post later, so check it again next time. I'll probably edit it next time I have access. The second day of Snowcraft school was overcast and provided a very interesting picture of Mount Erebus in the clouds.