Snow, Swimming and Crevasses

Looking out of the window this morning the weather seemed quite rough. It was snowing hard and it seemed to quite windy. Everybody was dressing up for a blizzard. But when we got out we recognised: Yes it was snowing and yes the wind was blowing but it was warmer than the last days. Therefore I needed to stop several times on my way to UNIS to open zippers to let some cold air in between my layers.
The weather didn't change during the day. So the exercises of the safety course finally didn't feel as much like training anymore.

Snowmobiling is the most common mean of transportation around here in wintertime. If the conditions allow it the sea ice in the fjords offers great shortcuts. To travel as safely as possible we learned about the way sea ice builds but also about the things you have to consider when driving on it. But we also had to learn what to do when the worst comes to the worst and we break through the ice.

Being an university that favours practical experiences our instructors put us in a so called Bandvagn (basically a civil tank) and transported us to a hole in some frozen lake outside the city. First we had to perform a rescue of a victim that fell through the ice. Afterwards our instructors made each of us jump into the hole and get ourselves out (with the help of spikes in our hands). Wearing a full snowmobile suit that is not to easy. I was lucky to be the first one because the edge of the ice wasn't as slippery yet. With our wet snowmobile suits we got into the Bandvagn and returned to the warmth of UNIS.

One of the best experiences so far and a great team building exercise as well.

A lot of fun was also the training to rescue someone who fell into a crevasse. We went out and practiced the procedure several times in groups of four with a couple of victims that somehow ended up in between some shipping containers.
(Of course we had learned about the glacier 101 before.)

This was a great day, even if I sometimes felt insanely tired. And I'm looking forward to the navigation and shooting practice tomorrow.