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We went to bed all packed for school. Gh. mentioned she hoped we could do a snow hut for 3 rather than work & sleep w. strangers.

[Sat. Dec. 5] Up at 6:00. breakfast at 6:30 & up to Berg Ctr. at 7:45. We are entering the middle of a class -- doing the 2nd day 1st, & will have Sunday to ourselves. We had sent our Bunny Boots up the day before to be fitted for crampons. There they were in the morning.

Packed everything into a truck & rode in back w gear to Scott Base - where we all transferred to a tractor van for long ride to Survival Chalet. Before we got there we stopped at the icefall for rapelling, ladder climbing, & [[??]]. Tied ourselves into Mt. Harven (for 1st time in my life) & started through the maneuvers Rapelling down a concave ice slope  was fun. Climbing up a ladder was not. It looked easy when others did it. But I leaned feet forward -back out every time & had to try again & again while others gave up watching -- it was too painful. I finally did it with terrible style. Don't understand the knack of it. I also [[??]] up slope w. aid of one instructor who came down & got me started, then went up to fold rope. Others went off to hook up a pulley for dragging an inert person out of a crevasse.

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Then it was time for lunch in the A-frame. We got out of crampons and harness and rode over to it. 3 yrs ago the A-frame was ^[[in a pit]] about 7 feet deep, of its own making in the ice shelf. That season they pulled it out & set it up on the surface again. They also have a tent out back w a horrible chemical toilet.

After our sandwiches and apples, coffee & cookies we walked out to the igloo area to dig our ice sheeter for the night. There were 11 of us: some Kiwis, some naval people, and 3 of us. Bob thought he needed another man to help him dig. He was right. I asked him to choose any at all except a free-lance photographer, Russ -, with a week's growth of gray stubble and a running series of ethnic and sexist jokes. He was in a contest w. an irrepressible N.Z. woman, Donna, who runs the mail service at Scott Base. But, Russ it had to be; he was the only unattached male. 

We considered design for some time. Igloo? No, too much work and too hard to design. Trench? Yes, but with 4 longitudinal beds or perpendicular cover? After a tour of the palaces already on the site, we decided on a cave for 3 in one wall and a slot for one in the other. We started at ~ 2:15 and took ~ 5 hours. It was a frightful job - sheer shovel work.