SAR Tryouts, Climbing, and Mail

6 days into the month and already November's starting to turn out pretty well. Yesterday, we had our Search & Rescue team tryouts. Tryouts consisted of knot and ropecraft, movement in snow and on glacier's, self-rescue, anchor systems, haul systems, and moving in roped teams. Unfornutately, our time outside got cut short because of a storm that dropped in on us all of a sudden. The cool thing was that the storm made the weather so bad that the base considered Condition 1 weather (3 being normal, 1 being the worse where no one's allowed to leave whatever building they're in) which not even most of the people who were there before us during winfly got to experience. As we were leaving, I noticed that I had lost feeling in my nose which was a bad thing but it slowly started coming back as we warmed up. We traveled several miles away from base to do our training. It was nice to truly see the continent on the ground for once without having any major buildings around. We had a jamesway which was nothing more than a canvas covered structure that was for the most part portable. Other than that, our classroom was in the snowfield and on the glacier ice. We came back to the Science Support Center where most of the SAR operations take place and we practiced what we would have been doing outside...inside. They have one more set of tryouts on Thursday. All in all, we heard that they're only selecting 4 main-body (which is me) persons for the secondary team since the secondary team is in fact, the primary winter team. I'm praying I get on the team. The good thing however is that for those of us main-body folks that are trying for those 4 spots, technical experise is actually compared so thankfully I have the upper hand over some of the other folks in our group.

My mother is sending down my climbing gear down and it should be in Christchurch sometime this week. I'm really looking forward to climbing somewhere on New Zealand when I get off the ice considering that I had to cancel my Morocco trip. I remember that the biggest nightmare I was having about coming down here was how was I going to get the gear I needed for Morocco in Christchurch when I got off the ice. Well, I didn't find out until after I got down here that I can have things delivered to Christchurch that can be held for me until I get off the ice. Now I know this for next year. For now, I'll have to have both my climbing gear and backpacking gear sent to me on the ice so I can go through it and see what I need or don't need for afterwards.

We're still waiting for our packaged mail. The total amount of weight of packaged mail waiting to come down has now topped 20,000 lbs and it's still no where in sight. So far, I have 3 or 4 boxes of stuff I sent from Christchurch so that I'd make the weight restrictions, 2 or 3 boxes of stuff I've bought from different online stores, and now 3 boxes of stuff that my mother has sent me. Not to mention my guitar I sent to myself from Great Falls in early September. All that I can hope for is that when it comes time to send this stuff either back to the states or back to Christchurch, I can score enough boxes to get it done.