Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Hopefully my absence from the blogosphere has not been too keenly felt however whilst away on Ex Bugaboo Tiger I have been continuing to learn. Sadly we weren’t able to stay at the comfortable hut in the Bugaboo Provincial Park but I stopped in for the a brew on the way past and I managed to have a look around the services. We also had a broken leg on the trip which required the combined talents of a doctor and engineer to bring about a recovery.

Building services.

The Conrad Kain Memorial Hut is remote. It is an hour’s drive up an unpaved surface to a car park and then a 3 hour steep walk from there. Apologies for the lack of detail however I restrained myself in my question asking of the Guardian:

The remote Conrad Kain Hut

Water – It is just below a glacier, so water supply is not a problem. The water is filtered though being glacial the risk is low, the highest risk is from things like Weil’s disease as there is plenty of rodent life in the park.

Waste – The rules of the park are, if you ‘pack it in, pack it out’. This is well advertised and people we met were generally responsible.

Human Waste – Fortunately one didn’t have to pack out your human waste from the hut, or even our higher campsite. Pit toilets dropping into plastic barrels (similar to those used for industrial chemicals or Himalayan expeditions) were positioned outside. The Guardian’s least appealing responsibility was to change and seal each of these barrels as they filled. In order to maintain the delicate glacial environment visitors are encouraged to use wag bags if they are caught short away from the hut/campsite, they can then put their bag into the pit toilets. All of these are stored up over the summer and transported down at the end of the season by helicopter.

Cooking – Gas in large portable cylinders is used for most of the cooking; these are resupplied by the helicopter also. There is also an electric 4 hob cooker.

Electricity – Electricity is used for the radiant heaters, lighting (using energy efficient lamps) and all small power requirements: including the guardian’s fridge. The electricity is supplied by a small hydro station maintained by the guardian. It provides up to 10kW of power when the water is flowing well, as you can see from the picture below sometimes it runs too well!

The pool feeding the micro hydro station. The dam obviously requiring some maintenance due to the weather.

I forgot to ask whether there was any electrical storage but it didn’t appear there was, that said the two hot water tanks act as a residual energy source for the heating at least.

Controls and Waterheaters. Nearly as interesting as pictures of concrete…

Food – Like waste out visitors ‘pack in’ their food. The poocopter brings dried food up for the guardians on the uplift at the season change, which they compliment with fresh on their weekly commute.

So what:

To me the set up was interesting for its own sake but it also has some parallels with operational infrastructure. The human waste system seemed particularly effective as it had both a low logistical burden but also preserved the local environment. As we moved to exclusively using wag bags in some of the FOBs in AFG this barrel system would have been cheaper, logistically simpler and actually more comfortable.

Bio-engineering.

On the descent from our last route in the Park my climbing partner broke his leg, which presented a bit of an inconvenience. Fortunately with the help of a doctor and some zinc oxide tape we managed to affect a solution that was good enough for him to walk back to camp. Fortunately, for this circumstance, WO2 Whale’s right leg is prosthetic. The issue was that the grub screws holding the foot to the titanium leg had worked loose. This was despite them being glued into place. Making a stirrup of zinc oxide under the foot we then secured it in place by wrapping around the leg. More used to tubi-grips Doctor, Maj Martin-Bates made a good job of the taping.

Repairing a prosthetic leg in the field

As WO2 Whale has never had this happen before I assume the cause of the loosening of the joint was us wading through waist deep snow the day before. Usually your leg is in compression but pulling it out of a snowy hole causes some tension thus aggravating the joint and the grub screws more. The long term solution was a 4mm allen key in his tent, which perhaps should have been in is pack instead!

Finally to prove I wasn’t ‘having fun’ here is a picture of us setting up camp.

Not entirely what I had signed up for…