Life at WAIS

I think it was said best that our monotony is someone else's adventure. Each day was filled with shoveling snow, putting up rac tents, eating, and playing cards. To us, this was just a typical day, but to everyone back home this was an adventure (you seem to lose that every now and then).

Evening entertainment typically involved playing cards after eating a huge meal. I learned how to play Cribbage, Pitch, and Rummy. I have to say, Pitch was the hardest to learn, but I had the most fun with.

One day we decided that we were going to have a day off and that it would be nice to give the cooks a day of rest. Tirzah and I (the two GAs) volunteered to play cooks for the day. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to feed 21 people three meals. The highlights of the day included making "Magic" bars and a sheet cake that was the map of the camp. People really appreciated it, but working 12 hrs on your day off can take its toll on you.

On thing that was fun to do was to have races when you couldn't see the horizon. You didn't race to any point in particular, but with no reference point, and and not seeing contour with the flat light, you would run until there was only one person standing. This picture shows how white things can be. One night I tried talking Tirzah into a race which she declined, moments later I stepped off the 2 foot snow drift next to the outhouse and landed flat on my face. She reported, "I win."

One of my favorite parts of camp life was the outhouse. Under each little shack was a 5-7 foot hole dug into the snow and ice. After someone used the outhouse, their droppings would freeze. At some point in the future someone else would use it and their droppings would land on top of the first and freeze. After this is repeated for a week or two, you have a 5 foot poopsicle (edited for younger viewers) coming up from the floor (I wanted to take a picture, but never did). After these stalagmites get too tall, they take the poopstick (also edited for younger viewers) and knock it over. The other fun part of the outhouses was the poems and fun puns. Some of my favorite puns were "WAIS'ed away again in Margaritaville", "We have a WAIS to go", "These are the WAIS of our lives"...

Each morning after donning our ECW to leave our tent, I would dump my pee bottle at the yellow flag and then return to my tent and dig it out before heading to breakfast. Some mornings, my tent was really buried from the drifting snow.

One interesting part of camp life was the freezer cave. This is were all the frozen food is kept. The cave was fully stocked from last year and was full of wonderful food including ribs, stake, seafood... I had to dig open the door a couple times to help pull food for the galley. By the time I left, the Carps (Carpenters) were building an extension to the door to help prevent it from being buried by drifting snow.

Life at WAIS was full of hard work, that was instantly rewarded by a spectacular view and great company (picture below of Andy and Andy our Fulies). I don't have pictures, but we were even visited by three birds while I was there. I guess this is normal, but remember that available food is 200 miles away.

I'll add more on this wonderful topic of WAIS when I get a chance. I let you know about the science that will happen there and about how to build a rac tent.