'The ultimate camping trip'

While the camp outhouse does provide some shelter from the elements, it is by no means a place to linger

Surviving in the frigid, barren and unforgiving Arctic

By Douglas S. Wood
CNN.com Writer/Editor

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- It's 20 degrees below zero and you have to go the bathroom. You crawl out of your sleeping bag and get out of your bunk bed. Your feet hit the floor, which is a foot or two above a bed of Arctic ice, and the sheer coldness of the floor jolts you out of sleep. After putting on the bare minimum of clothing needed to remain warm, you venture outside into the frigid Arctic air for the 100-foot walk (30 meters) to an unheated outhouse, keeping an eye out the entire time for polar bears. Then you sit down on the freezing cold toilet. Yikes.

"There would be absolutely no desire to linger," said Capt. Jeff Fischbeck, laughing as he described using the bathroom while camped out on the frozen waters of the Arctic Ocean.

An unheated outhouse was just one of the harsh conditions faced by the men and women who were at Ice Camp Lyon in spring 1999. Ice Camp Lyon was part of the final Science Ice Expedition (SCICEX), a joint civilian-military exercise in which research scientists used the nuclear submarine USS Hawkbill as they attempted to map the Arctic Ocean floor and collect data on its water, including temperature, ice thickness and ocean currents. The camp was a collection of eight insulated plywood or tent huts out on the barren ice about 165 miles (264 kilometers) north of Barrow, Alaska, which is the northernmost U.S. city, 330 miles (528 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle and roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) below the North Pole.

Submarines are generally regarded as the luxurious way to navigate the Arctic Basin. Fischbeck, a former submarine commander, said he prefers to "have a nuclear submarine around me" when traveling in the Arctic. On the surface of the ice cap, wind chills can drop the temperature to 70 degrees Fahrenheit below zero (minus 57 Celsius), compared to the constant 72 F (22 C) aboard the Hawkbill.

Some of the scientists performed their ocean research aboard the Hawkbill during its voyage under the Arctic basin. But due to limited space and the length of the Hawkbill's journey from its home port in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, some of the researchers and guests had to meet the submarine at the ice camp. Their stay at the ice camp gave the sailors and scientists a taste of the harsh working conditions they avoided by hitching a ride on the Hawkbill.

The brutal Arctic conditions made for some interesting living conditions. Besides the unheated outhouse and the frigid temperatures, which averaged 10 F below zero (minus 24 C) or worse, there were no showers, the ever-present danger of falling through the ice and the threat of resident polar bears, which made carrying a rifle a necessity for scientists walking to nearby research sites. The polar bears can smell a human 20 miles (32 kilometers) away and can run up to 45 mph (72 km/h).

"It really was the ultimate camping trip in many respects," said Fischbeck, who was the tactical officer in charge of the camp.

Surviving in the inhospitable Arctic

Fischbeck's characterization of the trip is hard to argue with as the Arctic is one of the world's most unlivable places. The CIA World Factbook says the climate is "characterized by persistent cold and relatively narrow annual temperature ranges; winters characterized by continuous darkness, cold and stable weather conditions, and clear skies; summers characterized by continuous daylight, damp and foggy weather, and weak cyclones with rain or snow."

In physical terms, the Arctic is the area of the Earth north of the imaginary Arctic Circle at 66 degrees 30 minutes north latitude. It is inhabited mostly by the Arctic's indigenous peoples, including the circumpolar cultures of the Inuit, or Eskimo, and Aleut in North America; Saami, or Lapp, in northern Scandinavia; and, west to east, Uralic, Paleosiberian, Middle Asian and Arctic peoples in northern Russia. The region's population is estimated to be more than 400,000, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Arctic Circle also marks the northernmost point at which the sun can be seen at the winter solstice (December 22 or thereabouts) and the southernmost point of the northern polar regions at which the midnight sun is visible.

The Arctic's surfaces are mostly covered by a perennially drifting polar icepack that averages about 10 feet (3 meters) in thickness. In the summer, open seas surround the icepack but the icepack more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling landmasses. Ice Camp Lyon was situated in an area of "old ice," meaning it had gone through at least one summer melt season.

Traditional transportation networks don't really exist in the Arctic and communicating is not done simply by picking up the telephone. Countries with Arctic borders include the United States via Alaska, Canada, Greenland/Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Canada, Russia and the United States each have one harbor that serves the Arctic Ocean.

So what does it take for human beings to survive in the Arctic? Good planning to start with, as Fred Karig can attest. A 20-year veteran of Arctic trips, Karig is the principal mechanical engineer at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory and is in charge of logistics for the lab's ice stations, which go by the acronym APLIS.

Ice Camp Lyon was an APLIS camp and Karig had to determine everything the camp would need to ensure survival, as he drily noted that "the infrastructure there is zero." In the case of the 1999 SCICEX mission, the planning took about six months. Many details must be worked out before an APLIS camp can be set up. Karig had to find a site, arrange transportation, find a place to warehouse materials, set up communications and find and purchase all the supplies needed. For example, the camp's buildings were custom-built -- "to our evolving specifications" -- out of insulated plywood by a Seattle cargo container company. "Planning is a continuous process. You start as early as possible," he said.

About three months before every project, Karig said he deals with what he calls "the panics," which are changes made due to situations out of his control, like a contract failing or a pilot breaking his leg, both of which have happened on previous projects. "You never know what it's going to be but it's something," he said.

Once a site is found and the equipment has arrived at the support/staging area -- in this case, the city of Barrow -- roughly four days is needed to haul materials to the site and set up the ice camp. Karig said three or four airplane trips a day was the norm for Ice Camp Lyon. After two days, enough of the site is set up so people could live there and complete the set-up without returning to Barrow. The set-up crew includes some scientists and some APL people, who, according to Karig, are all people who can perform multiple tasks. "We don't tend to bring up one-task-only people," he said.

The scientists for whom the Arctic is their laboratory also plan long and hard for these trips. The researchers "do a hell of a lot of thinking about what we're going to take up," said Peter Mikhalevsky, chief scientist for the experiments performed at Ice Camp Lyon.

"You can't run down to the hardware store or the electronics shop, it's all got to be right there," he said.

'Colder than snot'

The constant cold was the harshest element the camp had to deal with, even inside the camp buildings, called "hooches." Indoor temperatures varied from floor to ceiling as the warm and cold air would stratify quickly with the hot air rising. Heat was provided by a 50,000 BTU oil-fired heater in most tents and fans were used in an attempt to mix the air -- but that didn't always work. Bunks were used as sleeping quarters and Fischbeck said the person on the upper bunk could be hot while the lower bunk would be freezing. If a person's boots got wet, they would have to ensure that they dried out by placing them up high in the hooch. Otherwise, they could freeze if left on the floor overnight, the temperature of which Karig estimated was about 40 to 50 degrees F (4 to 10 C). "You don't walk around barefoot very much," Karig said.

Outside, the average temperature ranged from minus 10 to minus 20 F (minus 23 to minus 29 C). But if the wind picked up -- even slightly -- the cold would feel much worse due to the wind chill. Wind chill worsens the cold because it increases the rate of heat loss on the human body. As the wind speed increases, it carries heat away from the body at a faster rate, driving down both the skin temperature and eventually the internal body temperature. The wind also can be man-made, like when the campers rode aboard a snowmobile. The camp used snowmobiles to travel across the ice, including to the site where the Hawkbill broke through the ice, which was about a mile away.

"A steady wind is the worst thing in this (Arctic) world," Karig said. "You get colder than snot."

Mikhalevsky said that with proper clothing, the Arctic isn't all that bad. "You actually do get used to it," he said. But while one can get used to the Arctic's cold, visitors can never become complacent as the Arctic is unforgiving to mistakes or inattention. "We've had a few dicey times up there on the ice," he said.

One "dicey" incident occurred during a previous Arctic trip when Mikhalevsky and two soldiers arrived in the eastern Arctic to set up a camp. They barely got their tents set up when a storm blew in and its strong winds set their ice floe drifting. When the storm ended two days later, they ended up roughly 60 miles (96 kilometers) from their original spot. All they had to eat were military-issue Meals Ready to Eat, known as MREs, and a small heater to keep them warm. "We were just about to exhaust our four or five days of food" when a search party found them. Mikhalevsky called the experience a "little bit spooky."

"When I was sitting there, I thought, 'What the hell am I doing sitting here? I should be back at home with my family,'" he said. But that experience wasn't enough to deter him from returning.

'At 20 below, it's too warm'

The combination of the bitter cold and slashing wind also requires special clothing to cover the skin, which can become frostbitten quickly in the frigid air, depending on the wind and temperature. Clothing must be water-resistant because, Fischbeck said, the "worst thing you can do in the Arctic is get wet." The combination of wet clothing and frigid temperatures can lead to a lethal combination of frostbite and hypothermia.

Mike Worley, a realty specialist with the Bureau of Land Management in Fairbanks, Alaska, has to travel into the heart of Alaska during the winter as a part of his job. He wears an oversize hooded parka made of canvas and down lining, gloves that extend from the fingertips to the elbow, three-inch-thick bib overalls known as "fat boy pants" and white boots, called "bunny boots," which were originally designed for the military. The parka and overalls are custom-made and cost about $800 for the set. Worley said the parka is only good for really cold temperatures because "at 20 below (minus 29 C), it's too warm.

"You look a bit like an astronaut with all the clothing," he said.

The Arctic mind-set, Worley said, "is just a completely different way of looking at things. You don't just stand around and gaze at things up here."

Karig emphasized that gloves are never lost in the Arctic. "You don't lose your gloves," he said. "It's like the American Express commercial, don't leave without your gloves. Mother Nature reminds you really quick that you forgot your gloves."

Clothing is important not only to remain warm but also to protect against frostbite, which can occur quickly, depending on the temperature and the wind chill. The most important thing with frostbite is to get out of the cold immediately and warm the skin, Karig said.

Frostbite occurs when the skin and the underlying tissue actually freeze due to prolonged exposure to moderate cold or brief exposure to extreme cold. When skin is exposed to the cold, blood vessels in the skin constrict. As a result of decreased blood flow to the skin, the fluid in and around skin cells develops ice crystals, which causes frostbite. Areas of the body most prone to frostbite are the extremities, including fingers, toes, hands, feet, nose, ears and cheeks.

Karig said the parts that usually get frostbitten on people who are clothed are the edge of the eyes, mouth, cheeks and nose. The accompanying pain is intense. "It's like someone grabbing your nose with a pair of pliers and pinching them," he said.

Eat and eat and eat

Hearty meals are necessary when maintaining body weight can require up to 6,000 calories a day

Wearing all that clothing has another side effect. "Everything you do requires exertion because of all the extra clothes you are wearing," Fischbeck said.

So the crew ate upwards of 6,000 calories a day to maintain the energy level needed to negotiate the camp in their Arctic gear, depending on the person. The body will let a person know how much he needs to eat, Karig said.

Diane Seltzer was the cook at the ice camp. When not in the Arctic, she is the secretary at the ASL but agreed to go along on the trip because it was the "chance of a lifetime." Her love of cooking and experience in the kitchen came in handy as she prepared meals for upwards of 30 people at a time plus snacks for scientists who may have been up at all hours of the night working on experiments.

She had no experience cooking for large numbers of people but used her own cooking smarts and a computer program to help create a menu, scale up the recipes and estimate the supplies that would be needed. Her husband also lent a hand in the planning stage.

"My husband cooked in the Navy and he helped me put together a menu," she said.

Seltzer's menus included lasagna, roast beef, pork, steak, hamburgers, meatloaf, soup and sandwiches. Her day began at 5 a.m. and ended at 9 p.m., with a break in the afternoon. She said cooking for so many people simply requires organization. "Your organizational skills have to be there if you're the only cook," she said.

She mainly cooked for the camp what she cooks for herself and her husband at home but she did try baking her own bread and was pleasantly surprised at the results. "It was the softest bread. I didn't know if was the pure water ... but it was so soft."

Storing frozen food is no problem in the Arctic, which is a natural refrigerator. Foods that need to be chilled, like milk and produce, present some difficulty. Karig said cooks usually place a thermometer on various shelves in the mess hall to determine how cold the lower levels are. Seltzer said her refrigerator was the floor, which was about 32 F (zero C), and a shelf above the floor, which varied between 40 and 60 F (5 and 16 C). To defrost meat, she placed it on a shelf near the ceiling, which was about 70 F (21 C). Being in the kitchen also helped her avoid the cold. "I was not outside in the wind or any of that. I was in relative comfort," she said.

Seltzer's food also an impression on an important visitor.

"In fact the admiral in Hawaii we work for, Rear Admiral Al Konetzni [the commander of the Navy's Pacific fleet of submarines], remembers her efforts with quite a bit of appreciation, and will always kiddingly ask Diane for 'two over easy, with some bacon on the side' whenever he visits ASL back here in San Diego," Fischbeck said.

Karig said he always brings more than enough food on trip to the Arctic to ensure that a camp has plenty to eat and the cooks will use up that food. "They'll always overcook, just like the host who doesn't want to run out of food for the guests," he said.

Mikhalevsky emphasized the importance of not only having enough food but good food. "If you don't have a cook cooking good food, that can drive the morale down very quickly. You do eat an awful lot," he said.

For Seltzer, the fact that her audience came back for more was compliment enough. "You know I'm doing a good job when they come back for seconds," she said.

'Instantaneously uncomfortable'

Those unheated bathroom accommodations were fairly primitive. Men urinated in a box outside while the outhouse was used by both men and women. Karig said the 4x4 plywood structure is very tightly built to prevent the wind from entering and is easily moved so the wind will hit the back of the building. The outhouse has a skylight to let in plenty of sunlight. The building is uninsulated and the door is left open when not in use because the waste needs to be frozen to reduce the odor, Karig said. But that vinyl-insulated toilet seat stays a bit chilly.

"Instantaneously uncomfortable when you sit down but your fanny warms it up when you sit on it," Karig said about the seat.

There are no showers in the Arctic. For bathing, each building had a plastic-lined box used to store water that has been melted and is used for warm water. Campers used that water to bathe. The camp acquired freshwater by harvesting ice that had been frozen one or more melting seasons. The freezing and melting process is a natural desalinization process, expelling enough salt to allow it to be drinkable. Found in patches of ice called "hummocks," Karig said they harvested enough ice for the camp's water supply, known as the "ice mine."

Besides the elements, the other worry presented by the Arctic is the native polar bears. If a person leaves camp, he is accompanied by one other person who carries a loaded rifle or 12-gauge shotgun in case they meet polar bears. Karig said if the gun is needed, it is used first to scare the bears away, noting that he has never killed one. "They're just real curious. This is their backyard," he said.

The bears can cover ground very quickly. Karig cited another Arctic trip in which a helicopter was used to drive a bear about 20 miles away from camp. The bear was back the next day.

The camp dump was located 1/2 mile (.8 kilometer) away, downwind, to keep the foraging bears and other animals -- like ice foxes -- away from camp. The foxes will chew up cables and often are a harbinger of bears. Ice Camp Lyon had a visit from a fox but no bears during its short existence.

The other concerns are fire and falling into the ice. Karig said the only response to a fire in a building is to "get the hell out" if the fire is too big for a fire extinguisher. Falling into the ice also has a simple remedy: Get out and get to a warm place to dry off. Two people fell through the ice during the SCICEX when the snowmobile they were on went over thin ice and broke through. Neither was injured.

In the Arctic, music and reading are entertaining hobbies, but photography is the most popular way to pass the time, Karig said. "It's really very pretty up here. It's very beautiful."

The communications center

The ice camp did have communication links to the rest of the world. The camp used the now-defunct Iridium satellite phone system to communicate with the outside world.

Mikhalevsky is headed back to the eastern Arctic this fall to check on a research site in the Lincoln Sea area which has been compiling data using sound waves to measure the ocean's temperature. That is, if, "God willing, it's still intact."

Mikhalevsky credits technology for making the Arctic a safer place. The development of satellite phone technology has greatly improved communications and the advent of small Global Positioning Systems allows researchers know exactly where they are at all times. In the early 1980s, he remembers using amateur ham radio operators to patch phone calls back to their support group. "Now you can send an e-mail from an ice camp," he said.

The improved communications has taken away from the peacefulness of the Arctic, he said. But he added that it's always interesting to go to a place that is "on the edge of life's support systems."

Despite the improvements in communication, one specific kind of visitor to the Arctic still finds the scarcity of outside links appealing. For high-level Navy admirals, Karig said, it appears that the Arctic region is nirvana. He's dealt with several admirals who have visited previous ice camps and said they just wanted to be left alone and undisturbed to decompress. "It is a very peaceful area."

It also made a peaceful resting place for a pioneering Naval scientist. Ice Camp Lyon was named after the late Dr. Waldo Lyon, who helped pioneer the Navy's submarine exploration of the Arctic and was the founder and chief research scientist of the Arctic Submarine Laboratory. Lyon died on May 5, 1998, at the age of 84 and on May 3, 1999, the Hawkbill briefly surfaced at the North Pole to scatter Lyon's ashes.

Lyon was on the Hawkbill during the first Sturgeon-class submarine submerged winter-transit of the Bering Strait in 1973. And the SCICEX '99 mission was not only the final SCICEX exercise, it also was the Hawkbill's final run before the boat was decommissioned. "I suppose it was fitting that he was on board for the last," said the Hawkbill's commander, Cmdr. Robert Perry.