It is easy to get frostbite in your fingers zipping up the sleeping bag at night, especially when you are tired after a long day. It can also be very frustrating to try to do up fiddly zips with gloves on. This exercise teaches young people how to develop mental resilience. All you need to do this activity is three sleeping bags and some big mitts.

Activity steps - Preparation

1. Select the area for the activity, making sure there are no obstacles in between the sleeping bag zone and the area where the team are waiting.
2. Lay out the three sleeping bags, unzipped, per team. This is their sleeping area.

Activity steps - Briefing

1. Each member of the team will need to get into and out of the three sleeping bags (one inside the other) wearing mitts or gloves. If they take the gloves off at any point, they could get frostbite and the team will be disqualified.
2. If participants break or damage a sleeping bag on a real Arctic expedition, this could affect their safety. A slow and steady approach works best, especially at minus 40^oC.
3. Only one person can touch the sleeping bags at any one time.
4. Each team member must get into all the sleeping bags, zip each one up, one inside the other.
5. Once they are in the three sleeping bags, they will need to unzip them fully, ready for the next person.

Activity steps - The relay

1. Each member of the team will need to get in and out of the sleeping bags to complete the relay.
2. Teams will have three minutes to decide how they are going to do this, i.e. what is the easiest way to get into and out of the sleeping bags wearing thick gloves.
3. The winner is the team who can complete this in the shortest time.

Activity materials (per team)

• Sleeping bags (three ideally, but can be done with one)
• Pair of thick gloves or mitts

How to use sleeping bags in the Arctic

The sleeping bag relay emphasizes not only mental resilience but also the importance of good rest and insulation. The explorers and scientists needed special sleeping bag systems because of the extremely low temperatures. Metal materials such as zips, conduct the cold temperatures more effectively and can cause cold injuries such as frostbite.

Getting frostbite or being a bit chilly were not the only problems the team faced in the Arctic. Frank Pope, the Oceans Correspondent for The Times, was one of the visitors to the Ice Base. This picture of him shows how most of the team woke up in the morning. During the night, your breath freezes on the inside of the tent and around the hood of your sleeping bag. If you move at all in the morning, you knock all the ice on your face.

There were some strange tricks the team learnt as well. Every morning the team would put their sleeping bags on the washing line. This was to get rid of the ice that may have built up overnight. Instead of melting into water, the ice sublimes straight to water vapour, leaving the sleeping bags ice-free for the next night's sleep!