GSAR (Glacier Search and Rescue)

[Written by Elizabeth Leonardis for our old blog, So Civilized]

Alex & I had the opportunity to join Palmer’s GSAR team for their monthly training excerise in glacier travel and crevase rescue. Being as we are rather isolated and not easily accesible for easy assistance from the outside, we are responsible for our own safety. An example being, if there were a fire on station, some of the staff have gone to fire school, we are responsible for extinguishing the fire ourselves. Therefore, we have OSAR (Ocean Search and Rescue), GSAR, Fire, and Trauma teams made up of staff members on station. Grantees (the nickname down here for those of us on grant money) aren’t typically on these teams, as our priority is our science. However, as many of you know Alex & I are very interesting in all things outdoors, so we’ve asked to participate in GSAR activites when it doesn’t interfere with our science. In addition, I am on the trauma team. You can always use a nurse on the trauma team.

So our day starting out by practicing ascending ropes that were hung from the balcony outside our bar. If one was to fall into a crevase, this is an easy way to get yourself out under your own power if you aren’t injured.

Elizabeth ascending a rope

After a little practice, we threw on our packs and headed up the glacier. I may have mentioned before that we have black flags along the glacier and at the top limiting you from hiking too far into known crevase territority. However, on this day we all roped up into 3 groups of 3 people each and headed outside the flag line.

Glacier travel

The glacier was very solid and safe on the other side and we eventually made our way down to a place called Point 8. We were able to go off rope and explore the area for a short bit. Point 8 is a great spot for wildlife with piles of Elephant seals, a small colony of Gentoo penguins, and a few straggler Chinstrap penguins.

Elephant seals sleeping

Alex with a Gentoo penguin colony

Chinstrap penguins

We roped back up and did a little more exploring of safe trails across the glacier. Then we started heading back up and over the glacier, towards home. Around this time, the winds spiked to 30 knots and visibility deteriorated as a small snowstorm blew through. It was a pretty great hike home. I’ll just add to that, we were very safe and were in radio contact with the people back on station the entire time we were out on the glacier.