Training for the Ice under blue skies

Press, 15 August 1984, Page 12

Training for the Ice under blue skies

It Is hard to think about snow travel and crevasse rescue when the sun is shining brightly and the skies are blue over South Canterbury. But that is just what 200 people have spent the last few days doing at the Army camp at Tekapo. They are the members of the 1984-85 New Zealand Antarctic Research Programme (N.Z.A.R.P.) and are spending a week at the camp training to prepare them for their journeys south. The first to go will be an Army construction team which will work at Scott Base and a team of drillers which will start work on one of the scientific projects. They will go south next week on the opening

flights of the season. The next flights will not be until October when the remaining members of the programme start to make their way to Antarctica. The week-long training programme has given the participants an opportunity to learn more about the environment they will be working and living in, and also to get to know the people they will be sharing it with. The course also covers the basics of firefighting, first aid, use of radio equipment and motor toboggans, snow and glacier travel and crevasse rescue, sledge loading and lashing, and tent pitching. The N.Z.A.R.P. members will then put their new skills to the test in field

exercises above the Tekapo ski-field. They will spend a day and a night in the snow, camping out in polar tents. This year the geographical officer and the information officer of the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (A.N.A.R.E.) are attending the Tekapo training, which is organised by their New Zealand counterpart, the. Antarctic Division of the The Australians run a similar programme and were here to pick up any tips that could be used in their training. Their attendance was part of a regular exchange of officers between the two organisations. The Tekapo training will end tomorrow.