Toothpaste Freezes
There are so many little things I didn't think of before the first time I went to Antarctica that make a difference. I like having clean teeth, so brushing twice a day is very important to me, even in the field. I can handle dirty hair, but not dirty teeth.
It's hard to brush your teeth when your toothpaste is frozen into its tube. That small hole at the top requires the toothpaste to deform to get out. And that part gets cold the fastest, often getting clogged with a plug of toothpaste ice.
This isn't so much a problem in December in the Dry Valleys, nor was it a problem at Lake Untersee, because although the temperatures are often below freezing, sunlight heated my tent sufficiently during the day that the temperatures inside could be up to 20°C (70°F!). However, in October at Lake Joyce, I couldn't get any toothpaste out of a big tube without warming the top of the tube against my stomach.
There is a little secret, though: small tubes warm up faster. Within a minute or two of putting them under my sweater, the toothpaste comes out. Also, tubes shaped like the Aquafresh one in the photo don't require much deformation of the toothpaste to get it out. Thus, you can squeeze toothpaste out of that tube even when it's partially frozen without risking breaking the tube. So I now bring small Aquafresh toothpaste tubes in the field with me. I'm not particularly fond of Aquafresh; Tom's mint toothpastes are more to my liking. Thus, I often refill the Aquafresh tubes with Tom's toothpaste, which gives a bizarre mix of colors, but works for me better than plain Aquafresh. (To refill a tube, open both the small and large ones, line up the holes, hold them tightly, and squeeze the large one. It works amazingly well for the plastic tubes.)
There is another little issue that one doesn't think about until your mouth is full of foamy toothpaste for the first time: where do you spit? You can't spit on the ground because there are chemicals in toothpaste that would affect the fairly pristine environment of the Dry Valleys (see my post on another nutrient source). We have a waste bucket in the kitchen tent where some people spit. That water gets dumped into a 55 gallon "grey water" drum that gets sent back to a main station for disposal. (I keep wanting to say McMurdo Station, but I'm going as a Kiwi this time, so it's New Zealand's Scott Base that will be my Antarctic home and will have responsibility for treating my wastes!) You can spit directly into the grey water drum if you want to stand outside - which is sometimes nice. Alternatively, you can spit in your pee bottle; that you can do within your own tent. My dad, who's a mountaineer, swallows his toothpaste when on expeditions and a storm is raging outside - or maybe always. That's not too bad, but somehow, I don't feel like doing it every day for weeks. Thus, I tend to do a mix of these (except spit on the ground), depending on my mood, the weather, and how tired I am.
One of those little things about living in an exceptional place like a remote Antarctic field camp for weeks is that brushing your teeth becomes a small adventure. Staying in Antarctica now is nothing like it was in the early 1900's when the first explorers were trying to reach the South Pole. Nor is it as exceptional as staying on the Space Station (spitting takes on a whole new dimension without gravity!), but it does help put our modern life into wonderful perspective.
It's hard to brush your teeth when your toothpaste is frozen into its tube. That small hole at the top requires the toothpaste to deform to get out. And that part gets cold the fastest, often getting clogged with a plug of toothpaste ice.
This isn't so much a problem in December in the Dry Valleys, nor was it a problem at Lake Untersee, because although the temperatures are often below freezing, sunlight heated my tent sufficiently during the day that the temperatures inside could be up to 20°C (70°F!). However, in October at Lake Joyce, I couldn't get any toothpaste out of a big tube without warming the top of the tube against my stomach.
There is a little secret, though: small tubes warm up faster. Within a minute or two of putting them under my sweater, the toothpaste comes out. Also, tubes shaped like the Aquafresh one in the photo don't require much deformation of the toothpaste to get it out. Thus, you can squeeze toothpaste out of that tube even when it's partially frozen without risking breaking the tube. So I now bring small Aquafresh toothpaste tubes in the field with me. I'm not particularly fond of Aquafresh; Tom's mint toothpastes are more to my liking. Thus, I often refill the Aquafresh tubes with Tom's toothpaste, which gives a bizarre mix of colors, but works for me better than plain Aquafresh. (To refill a tube, open both the small and large ones, line up the holes, hold them tightly, and squeeze the large one. It works amazingly well for the plastic tubes.)
There is another little issue that one doesn't think about until your mouth is full of foamy toothpaste for the first time: where do you spit? You can't spit on the ground because there are chemicals in toothpaste that would affect the fairly pristine environment of the Dry Valleys (see my post on another nutrient source). We have a waste bucket in the kitchen tent where some people spit. That water gets dumped into a 55 gallon "grey water" drum that gets sent back to a main station for disposal. (I keep wanting to say McMurdo Station, but I'm going as a Kiwi this time, so it's New Zealand's Scott Base that will be my Antarctic home and will have responsibility for treating my wastes!) You can spit directly into the grey water drum if you want to stand outside - which is sometimes nice. Alternatively, you can spit in your pee bottle; that you can do within your own tent. My dad, who's a mountaineer, swallows his toothpaste when on expeditions and a storm is raging outside - or maybe always. That's not too bad, but somehow, I don't feel like doing it every day for weeks. Thus, I tend to do a mix of these (except spit on the ground), depending on my mood, the weather, and how tired I am.
One of those little things about living in an exceptional place like a remote Antarctic field camp for weeks is that brushing your teeth becomes a small adventure. Staying in Antarctica now is nothing like it was in the early 1900's when the first explorers were trying to reach the South Pole. Nor is it as exceptional as staying on the Space Station (spitting takes on a whole new dimension without gravity!), but it does help put our modern life into wonderful perspective.
