Mike,

This is the first I’ve read of actual lung damage and threat to private parts for members of the 300-deg club.

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You can’t feel the difference between -25F and -44F. I learned this on my last trip, but this trip I’ve internalized the lesson that cold is cold. You can’t tell the difference between 600F and 800F, either. Hot is hot. The human receptors operate in a specific range. Exceed that range and you only perceive the extreme. You can only get so hot or cold.
The difference between the -25F I experienced when I arrived at pole last week, and the -44F I experienced when I was outside nearly all day today is this: -44F seeps into your clothing faster than -25. The more intense cold effectively finds the gap between your gloves and your coat sleeve. It burns your cheeks beneath the goggles.

In the dead of winter they play a game called the 300 club. When the temps go down to -100F outside, they strip naked and stand in the sauna at 200F for as long as they can stand it. Then, wearing only their extreme-cold-weather boots, they bolt down the stairs in the “beer can”, up the birm and over to the pole to have their picture taken, thus subjecting their bodies to a 300 degree swing in temperature while naked.

The reason they wear boots is their feet would stick to the metal staircases otherwise.

I understand from veterans that the most important thing for a male to do when running the 300 club gauntlet is to protect the obvious exposed features with the hands. Otherwise severe frostbite results.

After running the 300 club, members cough and hack for a week or so while the lungs repair the frost damage done to them. Also, all fine body hair falls out, as the follicles are killed by the cold.

I am told the sensation of running the 300 club is of panic and dying. The feeling that life is running out of your body is palpable. The last hundred yards or so you are literally running for your life.

I bring this up because today and every day at pole I walk the 300 club pathway. I do it wearing a full compliment of ECW gear. I do it at this unescapable altitude. The coldest it has been when I have walked that path is -60F. Today it was -44F. Each time I do it I imagine running out stark naked. Down all those stairs, up the birm, to the pole, and back.

The interesting thing about life is that when you do something that seems impossible your entire perspective on life changes. Right now, running the 300 club seems entirely impossible to me. Even in ECW gear, with a 25kt wind, the atmosphere burns the skin quickly and we’re 56 degrees warmer.

Yet people do it, year after year. I don’t think we’re on the same planet anymore.

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Ed/rakkity