As it turns out, you can’t just get down to McMurdo and immediately head out into the field to sample. Each science team has to pack and prep their own camps and go through several days of training in order to be cleared to go out into the field. Training includes: Field Safety (e.g. hypothermia prevention and risk management), Environmental Preparation (aka don’t contaminate Antarctica), and Fire Safety (aka don’t burn down your tent).
Here we are learning how not to burn down a tent with a camp stove:
After all that training, we finally got to start packing….weighing and tagging everything that needs to be packed into helicopters to go out into the field:
GIGL in the field 