WITNESS: Back in time in Antarctica

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

REPTILE RIDGE, Antarctica (Reuters) - Away from the high-tech British Antarctic base, we stepped back in time to use tents, oil lamps and wooden sledges little changed in more than a century of exploration of the icy continent.

British experts still rely on low-tech paraffin stoves, wooden boxes and sheepskin mattresses similar to those used in the days when Norwegian Roald Amundsen beat Briton Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole in 1911.

"Scott would probably feel at home if he came into this tent -- until he saw me in the corner listening to my iPod," said Michael Chester, 28, a British field assistant to scientists at the British Rothera Base on the Antarctic Peninsula.

On Reptile Ridge, where jagged rocks look like the back of a lizard, we visitors spent a night camping out with scientists to learn how to survive in one of the most hostile places on earth.

The wind howled through the night in what sounded like a storm outside our two-man tent, though more experienced hands said it was just a breeze magnified by the sound of snowflakes drumming on the fabric outer wall of the tent.

Temperatures were just below freezing on the ridge, with a view over a bay studded with icebergs.

Skills include putting up the orange tent and then teasing a paraffin primus stove alight, making a meal inside the tent and learning how to send a "Mayday" radio message back to base.

The primus is little changed since it was invented in 1890.

I almost set the tent alight.

Wooden Nansen sledges, based on a Norwegian model borrowed from Inuit designs, are stacked around Rothera. They are favored by British experts over plastic or metal sledges.

SNOWMOBILES, DOGS

The sledges are now towed by snowmobiles rather than dogs, which were banned from Antarctica in 1994 as part of a treaty to curb environmental damage. Most gear is stored in wooden boxes.

"It works. This has been tried and tested over donkey's years. Why change something that works?" John Withers, commander at the Rothera base, said of the contrast between the base and the older implements on Reptile Ridge a few km (miles) away.

The two-person rooms on the Rothera base have showers, chefs provide lavish meals three times a day. Staff can play pool, use the Internet or a digital library on the computer network. And they can relax drinking a maximum of two beers a night.

New arrivals like us have to go through several days of training in everything from crossing the runway -- "look left, look right, look up in the sky" -- to emergency first aid such as how to use a scalpel, inject a painkiller or sew up a wound.