Aaron's winter trip

Aaron's take on his recent trip to Bridgeport for winter training. It sounds like he had a great time, experienced a lot, and came away with the right attitude overall:
So I got back from Bridgeport MCMWTC (Marines Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center) today after 2 1/2 weeks up there...I dropped off my disposable camera at the country store on base earlier to get it developed into a picture CD, so I should have some cool pictures from the training on my Flickr page tomorrow.
I went into the training thinking it would be horribly shitty, but it actually wasn't all that bad. Aside from freezing my ass off pretty much every morning, it was manageable.
When we first arrived, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, but the snow was starting to melt due to the rising temperatures associated with the beginning of Spring. After several days of acclimating to the higher altitude, we participated in a hike to a higher elevation base camp that was about 3000 feet higher up in the mountains than the actual Bridgeport base itself. There was about six feet of snow up there, and we had to dig snow caves and pitch arctic tents inside them. Make no mistake--that shit was not fun. We were digging for nearly five hours into snow that was so tightly packed it was like digging into ice. It SUCKED, but every tough experience makes life more interesting, I suppose.
Of course, the next morning was much less fun. We awoke at 5:30AM to temperatures of about 15 degrees, and it's not like being at home--you can't feel the cold, then run back inside. When you're out in the field, you feel the cold, and you're stuck in it. I have determined that the worst feeling in the world is when your fingertips are almost numb and you're toes are almost numb. When those two things act in combination, it can almost paralyze the rest of your body because you're so cold that you just want to keep your hands in your pockets and not move. No such luck with us...instead of sitting around, we had to boil snow to make drinking water, heat our MREs for food, and do other cold weather activities that might be seen in a mountain warfare environment. The best feeling was when the sun was at its brightest around 2PM or so, and your fingertips and toes stopped being numb. Bliss, I tell you. Bliss.
After three days of that freezing hell of an experience up in the mountains (consider Marines in the Korean War who spent months in the same conditions without any relief!), we finally hiked back down the mountain to the Bridgeport base camp. From there, we spent the next week doing mule packing--basically, learning how to use mules to load up gear and use the mules to transport the gear over long distances.
After spending five days learning how to properly interact with the mules and how to tie the correct knots to keep gear from falling off of the mules, we hiked three miles to a bivouac site with our gear loaded on the mules, the idea being that if we didn't want to hump our own gear, we would correctly pack the gear so as to prevent the gear from falling off the mules en route.
Naturally, the latter occurred. About halfway into the hike, several loads started coming loose off of the mules, so we had to completely remove the loads and the saddles and redo it all, which was time consuming and annoying, but what can you do...
We spent the night in an impromptu bivouac site, not even using tents. We used our issued tarps to set up individual shelters to cover ourselves for the night. Since snow was in the forecast according to the instructors, I made sure my shelter didn't suck. I basically tied from 550 cord between the base of one tree and the middle of another tree and threw the tarp over the line, make something like a half-teepee. It worked pretty well because I was nice and warm throughout the night, and it ended up not snowing, so I was fine.
The next morning, when we had to hike back and return the mules to the stables, started out rather interesting. One of the lead horses got spooked while the instructors were saddling him, and he broked loose from the rope tying him down and ran off. Whenever a horse runs off, the mules start getting antsy because it is natural for mules to follow horses. Unfortunately, as soon as we started to leave with the mules, they decided to get stupid and act rowdy. In fact, my mule and PFC Garner's mule decided to start RUNNING while we were descending a downhill slope, and they both ended up breaking free from our grips on the rope. All they did was run ahead to the larger group of mules, then they stopped, but trust me--the feeling of being dragged through sage brush and loose rocks on a hill is not a great feeling. Much blood and cuts. Ouch.
We finally wrangled up all the damned horses and mules and got the back to the stable...good riddance. All I can hope is that we never have to the deal with damned mules when we're in Afghanistan next year. SHEESH!!
The best part of the whole ordeal in Bridgeport is that I FINALLY got promoted to Lance Corporal.
I've gone through some hell and some long waiting to get this promotion, so I'm damned proud of it. Moving from E-2 to E-3 isn't really all that big of a deal--you make a little more money and your rank title changes, but you're still not an NCO (E-4/E-5) or a SNCO (E-6 - E-9), so you don't really have any authority...but you are one step closer to the next rank, which is Corporal.
Well, I guess that's enough rambling for now. I'll let you know when I get those disposable camera pictures uploaded tomorrow.
I'm just happy to be back at the barracks with my computer and the Internet. Plus, our CO approved a 96-hour break from work this weekend, starting tomorrow and running through Monday. Much drinking (currently occurring) and hashing will occur :D