The one question that I have been asked the most is how do I stay warm in Antarctica? Yes... it is cold here and yes... I do get cold. The coldest time of the day is when I am in my sleeping bag at night and when I am doing watch duty at the tunnel. Probably the lowest temperature that I have seen here is around a -40°F (wind chill) and the highest temperature that I have seen is probably around 25°F (in the sun). It has been colder than I expected it to be, but there are several things that I have been doing to prevent myself from getting too cold.My first night here I thought that I was going to turn into a popsicle inside my sleeping bag. I wore three layers of fleece, a hat, mittens, and I had a nice fleece liner and sleeping bag. It is a long sleeping bag, so I inched all the way inside my sleeping bag and covered it all the way over my head. Even with all of that, I was still freezing. I had to make an air hole to let air into the sleeping bag so that I could breathe, but the air coming in was so cold. I survived that first night, but I awoke to ice covering my sleeping bag. Every night since then, I sleep with a water bottle full of boiling water. I hold it close to my belly and it keeps we warm all night. It is also getting warmer and warmer every night as the sun stays higher in the sky. Now instead of hiding in my sleeping bag to stay warm I am hiding inside my sleeping bag to escape the sunlight.
Every night I sleep with my water bottle full of boiling water and it keeps we warm all night.
The other time of day when I am the coldest is when we are working at the tunnel and it is my turn to stand watch. When it is your turn to be on watch, you watch the glacier from a hill across from the tunnel and look out for any dangerous ice movements. Most of the time it is incredibly windy and super cold sitting on the hill. To stay warm I wear my "big red" jacket and I load up on hand warmers.
![Bundled Up at the Tunnel Site](/files/members/lindsay-knippenberg/images/onwatch.jpg "My "big red" keeps me warm and protects me from the wind while I am on watch.")
My "big red" keeps me warm and protects me from the wind while I am on watch.
My hand warmers keep my hands warm all day as I am handling ice at the tunnel site.
The other thing that I am extremely thankful to have is my boots. They are incredible. They are steel toed Baffin Barrow boots and they keep me warm and they protect my feet when I am chain sawing. They are rated to keep your feet warm at -100°F. The entire time that I have been here I have only had cold feet twice and it was because they had gotten wet or they got left outside.
It was a huge hassle to find my boots, but I am so glad that I have them.
We also add stabilizers to our boots so that we don't slip while walking on the ice.
My boots help my feet stay warm when I am on watch at the tunnel site.