At last we were truly entering the white, eon-dead world of the ultimate south. Even as we realized it, we saw the peak of Mt. Nansen in the eastern distance, towering up to its height of almost fifteen thousand feet.
—H.P. Lovecraft
The highest peaks to the south of us, such as Mt. Kirkpatrick near the Beardmore Glacier, do indeed rise to over 4000 meters, as Lovecraft has written. We shifted camp the next day from the Darwin Glacier to the base of a large mountain range that ran for nearly 30 kilometers, and was crowned by the towering peaks of Mt. Longhurst (2846 meters) and Mt. Hughes (2250 meters). One of the unnamed peaks closest to us was nicknamed “Gorgon's Head” by Margaret's field party in 1989 because it had black tendrils of doleritic volcanic rock twisted through the top of its lighter buff-colored sandstones and greenish-grey shale. It looked like the head of the mythical gorgon Medusa, and had about as much charm on a blustery day. The site produced some fragmentary fish fossils, so we had planned to make it our first destination.
I wrote down in my field diary that evening that this had been “the worst day of my life.” I have since had others that would rate as far worse than this, but that will become evident later in the story!
It was a chilly 1°F when we woke up. We finished packing up the camp by 10:30 A.M. and were ready to roll. It was our first attempt in the field at lashing down the sledges tightly and preparing the skidoos for a full day's sledging. We were to head across the Darwin Glacier to the Cook Mountains, which lay to the north of our camp. Yet this was
not a simple case of heading in a straight line for the peaks where we wanted to go. Large crevasse fields in the middle of the Darwin Glacier forced us to follow a less direct route, parallel with the glacier, and then we had to cut across diagonally towards Gorgon 's Head.
Despite its off-putting name, Gorgon's Head is actually a treasure trove of fossils irresistible to the likes of us paleontologists. The first record of fossil fishes coming from rocks suspected of being southern equivalents to the Aztec Siltstone further north was discovered here a few years before by a young PhD student named Ken Woolfe, now a lecturer at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland. The fish fossils were only scraps of scales, teeth, and bones, but enough of a faunal assemblage was collected to prompt us into writing a small scientific paper outlining the importance of the fauna and recording the presence of Aztec Siltstone in the area.
The sun was shining and the winds were gusting at around 30 knots when we set off sledging across the blue ice that day. Patches of freshly fallen snow were pleasantly smooth to sledge over, but each time we hit the jagged surface of the solid blue ice of the glacier the sledges would lose control as the winds made them drift and sway behind the skidoos.
Stronger winds developed as the day wore on, causing the sledges to blow around even more on the ice, making them difficult to control. Powerful freak gusts would randomly jerk the skidoos and push the sledges close to toppling over. After a few hours of this we stopped to put the metal guide pins down through the sledge runners a notch or two deeper, so as to give more effective grip on the ice surface. It was hard work for the two people on back of the second sledges to steer them over the blue ice during these gusts. Our immediate fear was that the sledges would eventually overturn and crash around on the ice, causing damage to our gear or breakage to the sledge itself, so great care had to be exercised while crossing these wide fields of roughly hewn ice.
As the weather grew fouler I could feel my fingers and toes getting decidedly colder. It was only our first full day in the field, and so I didn't want to seem like a “wuss” and complain, so I said nothing. I was being dragged along behind the sledge in the strong winds and couldn't
stop to adjust my clothing, so I had to just keep holding on tightly and working the sledge to try and keep warm. I looked over occasionally to see how Fraka was getting on. She looked rather cold and miserable. At the next stop we rummaged through our packs and donned more layers of clothing. I put on my bear paws. These are thick leather mittens with a fur patch on the back of the hands for wiping the streaming snot from your nose, a common condition that always develops when one is sledging head-on into strong cold winds.
At about 5:00 P.M. that day Fraka was looking seriously cold and couldn't seem to keep warm enough, so Brian and Margaret wrapped her up in her one-piece bunny suit over her already heavily packed layers of clothing. By this stage we had covered a fair distance from the base camp, about 20 kilometers across the glacier, and could see the mountains looming just up ahead. It was imperative to get into the sheltered bays near to the mountains as soon as possible where we might find some respite from the impending storm, so we pressed on relentlessly for another hour or so.
By 6:00 P.M. the storm was gusting fiercely, pushing our sledges around like toys on the glassy ice, even when we were not traveling. We reached the mountains but couldn't see any suitable campsite that could protect us from the roaring winds. Fraka, Margaret, and I huddled up behind the back of one sledge, trying to get a solid barrier between the biting wind and us.
Brian then heroically unhitched his Skidoo and went off alone towards the mountains, his vehicle being instantly silenced by the deafening roar of the blizzard. We crouched at the back of the sledges and waited for what seemed like an interminably long time, but in retrospect was probably more like ten or fifteen minutes, wondering whether Brian really knew what he was doing. The thought of whether or not we'd ever see him again did cross my mind.
Suddenly, much to our great relief, Brian appeared out of the white blowing snow in front of us. He flashed us a wicked toothy grin saying, in a deadpan voice, a line I will never forget: “If you want to live, come with me.” Later I was to discover that this was almost the same line spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Terminator 2, when he grabs the heroine and drags her off to safety.
We hitched up the sledges and followed Brian into the storm, but about five minutes later we rounded a sharp rocky bluff and found ourselves in a wind shadow. It was still gusting, but nowhere near as fierce as out on the glacier from where we had just come. Out there we could see huge billows of white powdery snow streaming upwards in geyser-like clouds, changing directions frantically with each erratic windblast. People would not survive very long out in those conditions, I thought to myself.
The tents were hastily pitched one at a time with each of us holding down a corner. As soon as they were up we shoveled snow over the flaps, placed rocks on top, and then one person crawled inside to get the cooking gear set up. The others passed in the yellow kitchen box, the green radio box, the blue primus box and lastly the red food box was placed on the front tent flap close by the entrance. Both tents were soon set up in exactly the same arrangement. We covered up the skidoos with their nylon covers and secured them by anchoring them with tent pegs and guy ropes. Finally the last job to be done was to secure the twenty-meter-long radio aerial out on bamboo poles in a line perpendicular to Scott Base, with the two thin end wires pushed in through the ventilator pipes at the top of our tent to connect with the radio inside. All of us then quickly disappeared into the shelter of the tents to get warm.
The comforting roar of the primus stoves quickly heated up the pyramidal interior space of the tents. The first thing one did after getting inside the tent was to melt snow on the stove so that we could each have a hot drink. We found ourselves ravenously hungry after the day's hard traveling and setting up camp in the strong winds. It had been quite an ordeal for our first full day in the field. Could it get worse than this, I thought to myself, or was this considered to be just an average day in the deep field?
It was my turn to cook that night, following on from the order of cooking begun during our field training days. The pattern of our entire expedition was that each member of the party would take their turn to cook the meal and the others would come into their tent, when summoned, to eat together. That first night in the Cook Mountains started typically with some powdered soup and bread. The others chat-
ted and watched as I then wearily prepared a packaged roast lamb for the main course. My notebook says that I boiled it in the plastic, only later discovering that one generally removes the outer plastic covering before cooking such roasts. Nonetheless, once the heat had thawed the thing we demolished it with gusto, along with some rice I had boiled and smothered in the morning's leftover bacon fat (still frozen to the fry pan), and some assorted frozen vegetables. To finish off the day we each had two small nips of Drambuie. I cleaned up our dishes with paper toweling, and we all turned in for the night to our respective tents. Outside it was hazily white and snowy, with gusting fierce winds up to 70 knots. Not nice at all.
Storms in Antarctica seemed to coincide with slightly warmer temperatures because stagnant cold air sitting on the ice is pushed aside by the rapidly descending katabatic winds. These are winds that have picked up speed by gravitational force from sliding down from the elevated polar plateau. The local topography of each region can greatly influence the nature of these winds as they flow down from the polar plateau. Mawson's base on Cape Denison was a particularly windy location that registered a mean wind speed of 46 knots (24.9 meters per second) for the entire month of July 1913. Mawson starts his chapter entitled “The Blizzard” with this observation: “The climate proved to be little more than one continuous blizzard the year round; a hurricane of wind roaring for weeks together, pausing for breath only at odd hours.”
Mawson later gives a powerfully descriptive summary of what it is like to actually go outside in a blizzard in Adelie Land, when man is exposed to the peak of Antarctic weather at its furious worst, in the midst of a cold dark winter:
Shroud the infuriated elements in the darkness of a polar night, and the blizzard is presented in a severer aspect. A plunge into the writhing storm swirl stamps upon the senses an indelible and awful impression seldom equaled in the whole gamut of natural experience. The world is a void, grisly fierce and appalling. We stumble and struggle through the Stygian gloom; the merciless blast—an incubus of vengeance—stabs, buffets and freezes; the stinging drift blinds and chokes.
I stayed outside only a minute or so to brush my teeth that night before quickly clambering back in through the small round portal of
the tent and throwing off my various outer layers of clothing. In only my long johns, I burrowed down inside the four layers that made up my sleeping bag: an inner cotton liner, a thick down inner sleeping bag, a thick outer down bag, and a heavy canvas sleeping bag cover. As I lay there all I could hear was the deafening roar of the tent sides flapping violently in the wind. I hoped that it wouldn't rip and expose us to the forces of nature outside. If it did we would all have to bundle into Margaret and Fraka's tent or put up our emergency small tent, although this wouldn't really be an option in such strong winds.
There's not much to say about the next day. Holed up in our tents waiting for the weather to clear, we couldn't do very much, although after the strain of the previous day we were all very glad to rest. We passed the time reading, making cups of tea, and occasionally taking short naps. Eventually as the boredom got to us we ventured out for short walks to the desolate rocky outcrops near the tents. These rocks, I soon discovered, were the basal non-fossiliferous layers of the Beacon Supergroup named the Junction Spur Sandstone. However, each time I braved the weather and went for a stroll to the rocks it soon became too windy, as my face and fingers got very cold from the high wind-chill factor.
None of us stayed out for more than about 20 minutes at any one time that day. In the afternoon we poured over our geological maps, read scientific papers on the geology of the Transantarctic Mountains and prepared ourselves for the first bout of fieldwork that we would tackle as soon as the bad weather cleared.
The assault on Gorgon's Head was the first aim of our expedition, but at that time we could only snatch glimpses of it through the snowy gusts. It was a distinct, pyramid-shaped mountain that towered skyward for some 1960 meters. The walk would be about seven kilometers as the skua flies from our base camp to the top of Gorgon's Head. It was one of several high peaks in the shadow of Mt. Longhurst, the highest point in the Cook Mountains at 2846 meters. It was not such a long walk, but because the weather could unexpectedly turn nasty on us we would have to take lots of extra provisions: climbing gear, crampons, ropes, a small portable tent, extra food, a primus stove, some fuel, and so on; in fact, everything required just in case we were holed
up in another storm on top of the mountain and had to wait several days before we could return to the base camp. I could sense already in the planning stages that we would be quite loaded up even before setting out, but as our lives were dependent upon the degree of careful preparation, we agreed unanimously that all of these precautions were absolutely necessary.
After dinner that evening we all thought that the weather was about as bad as it could get. That evening the radio schedule from Scott Base indicated that the storm was still peaking and that more foul weather was due the next day. Later that night I read for a while but couldn't get to sleep very easily, mainly because we hadn't been active much that day. I snuggled down into my sleeping bags and pulled my balaclava down over my eyes to keep out the light, and eventually drifted off into a shallow slumber. I recall waking several times that night, and not being particularly sleepy, lay there in my bag, warm and cozy, thinking of my wife and kids back home and listening to the howling gales outside. The thought of being so isolated was starting to sink in; tiny bites of homesickness already gnawed at me, and I'd only been away from home for about three weeks.
The next morning annoying winds gusted between 30 and 40 knots, although it was a mild 5°F. The barometric pressure was still dropping—not a good sign at all. The storm seemed to have settled in for a while. Our morning radio schedule at 8:00 A.M. was marred by static as the sticky weather hindered clear communications. Somehow, though, we managed to send a garbled “We're OK” message back to Scott Base to allay their fears. I ate a light breakfast and nodded off to asleep again, sleepy from the previous night's restlessness. Apart from having to go outside twice to urinate, I otherwise spent the whole afternoon inside the tent, snuggled deep inside my sleeping bags, reading my novel, Eric Van Lustbader's Shan.
I went for another short walk over to the rocks that afternoon and gazed with hungry eyes at Gorgon's Head. I could almost feel my hands chipping away at the shale up there, imagining myself finding all sorts of amazing fossils, probably skulls of new fish species which were waiting to be collected from every rocky ledge! If only this damned weather would clear up, I kept thinking. It was still gusting very strong winds,
blasting my face with large ice particles that melted on contact. I wandered back to the tent sullenly to find a cheerful Brian busily preparing dinner.
In my diary that day I recorded a short note about my clothing. Outside I was wearing long johns (thermalites) with polar fleece salopettes, a thick woolen shirt, woolen jumper, yellow one-piece bunny suit, wrist warmers, and my black leather sledging hat, with mukluks and thick woolen socks on my feet. This attire worked quite well for short forays from camp. I also noted how far we had gone on the skidoos: we actually covered 27 kilometers from our first campsite. I must have been bored out of my brain that day because I kept recording barometric pressures to pass the time, hoping the storm would change its course. The barometric pressure was 858 millibars at 5:07 P.M. and 855 millibars at 7:40 P.M., still dropping. Still not a good sign.
Brian prepared a somewhat unusual culinary feast that evening comprising a stew made up of macaroni, bacon, cheese, peas, and onions, all thrown in together in the camp oven. On the subject of food I am often asked did we eat well, and did we get bored with the prepackaged food boxes. The answer is yes, we ate very well, and no, we never got bored with the meals because we had experienced deep fielders like Margaret and Brian on our team. They brought an additional box of spices, herbs, and cooking items to enhance our regular supplies with a never-ending variety of spice or curry combinations. One can eat well using the dehydrated packets of lamb roast and turkey tettrazine, but by adding some rehydrated onions and a few dashes of curry powder, and making up a jazzy sauce using some of the spare packet soup mixes, or lemon-flavored drink crystals, one can quickly whip up a meal fit for a king or queen (of some obscure third world country). Whatever, we always ate well, and not once did any of us complain about any of the others' cooking. Our cooking skills certainly “evolved” as we got deeper into the journey. I have even included a couple of our more unusual recipes in an appendix at the back of this book.
Food plays a vital role in keeping up the spirits and morale of anyone working in the harsh Antarctic conditions. The standard NZARP food boxes that we used contained enough food for 20 man days (that is, five days for the four of us): three feeds of frozen meat, fish, or
poultry (which were so large that each meal for two men was enough for the four of us to eat well); two 500 g blocks of cheese, two salamis, ten large (250 g) blocks of Cadbury's chocolate, two packets of dehydrated stew (to feed four people), several packets of dried soup mix, bacon, dehydrated vegetables like potato, peas, and onions, packets of frozen vegetables, boxes of oats or cereal, a slab of butter or tub of margarine, packets of sultanas, dried apples or apricots, a small tin of instant coffee, a packet of tea bags, a small container of honey, some salt, and sugar. In addition, one can add “extras” like some fresh bread, dried egg powder, flour, and spices, if you ask the Scott Base field store man nicely and beg the chef on bended knee.
Some of the earliest Antarctic expeditions showed that people could survive on the Antarctic islands with what little food is available through the abundant seals and penguins. On the Swedish Antarctic expedition of 1903, under the leadership of Dr. Otto Nordenskjöld, their ship the Antarctic was crushed in the sea ice and the men survived an epic winter of harsh endurance on Paulet Island. In Nordenskjöld's book the expedition's botanist, C.J. Skottsberg, is quoted:
Still our dinners are not always plain ones. Saturday is the best day in the week, for the man who does not eat his fill then has only himself to blame. Dinner that day consists of an endless number of seal steaks, and a plate of what is alleged to be fruit-syrup soup. I shudder when I think of the portions we received: seven or eight enormous black steaks, swimming in fried train oil, and garnished with bits of blubber.
Mawson's men survived on the following sledging rations: 230 g pemmican (beef and fat mixture), 340 g plasmon biscuits, 28 g cocoa, 113 g sugar, 142 g dried milk, 57 g butter, and 7 g of tea. This 917 g of food was reconstituted with hot water to double in weight. Scott admitted in 1902 that on his first expedition he didn't provide enough food for the sledging parties, so he increased the amount for his second expedition to about 30 ounces of food per man per day. This was still to prove an inadequate diet both nutritionally and for the required calories needed to keep warm. At extreme temperatures like −40°F one can use half of the food eaten each day just to keep core body temperature up to normal and avoid hypothermia.
However, despite the monotony of this diet, they always referred to the enjoyment of a good hoosh—a mixture of pemmican, boiling water, and varying amounts of biscuit or other ingredients. On Scott's last dash to the pole the return journey was fraught with disaster. Food depots were sometimes hard to relocate, and days on end of cut rations made the men's thoughts always drift back to food. Scott writes in his diary on 28 January 1912, on their return journey from the pole:
We are getting hungrier. The lunch meal is beginning to seem inadequate. We are pretty thin, especially Evans, but none of us are feeling worked out. I doubt if we could drag heavy loads, but we can keep going well with our light ones. We talk of food a good deal more, and shall be glad to open out on it.
Yet the food situation can be very serious when things go horribly wrong, such as on Mawson's Far Eastern Party's expedition. On 13 December Lt. Ninnis disappeared down a deep crevasse with the sledge that contained most of the party's food supply. The two remaining expeditioners, Douglas Mawson and Xavier Mertz, had about ten days of food for themselves and nothing for the six dogs that were pulling their sledge. They were about 506 kilometers from the hut and in unpredictably bad weather conditions. Eventually, as they ate the last of the food, they were forced into a regular pattern of killing the weakest dog to feed the other dogs and to provide meat for themselves, doing this at ten-day intervals. Mawson describes how on 28 December they shared a meal of the last sledging dog, Ginger:
As we worked on a system which aimed at using up the bony parts of the carcass first, it happened that Ginger's skull figured as the dish for the next meal. As there was no instrument capable of dividing it, the skull was boiled whole and a line drawn round it marking it into right and left halves. These were drawn for in the old and well established sledging practice of “shuteye,” after which, passing the skull from one to the other, we took turns about in eating our respective shares. The brain was certainly the most appreciated and nutritious section, Mertz, I remember well, remarking specially upon it.
This last comment is particularly disturbing in view of what was to come. Mertz died on 8 January 1913 from eating too much dog meat (specifically the liver), a condition known as hypervitaminosis (or, more specifically, vitamin A poisoning). Later as Mawson struggled
on against impossible odds, alone, with little food, he writes about his last remaining food rations on 17 January 1913: “The day's march was an extremely heavy five miles; so before turning in I treated myself to an extra supper of jelly soup made from dog sinews. I thought at the time that the acute enjoyment of eating compensated in some measure for the sufferings of starvation.”
Finally, after surviving a crevasse fall that drew on his last reserves of strength to haul himself out, he found a food bag left at a cairn on 28 January 1913. The effect the food had on his body and spirit is apparent from his words: “Hauling down the bag of food I tore it open in the lee of the cairn and in my greed scattered the contents about on the ground. Having partaken heartily of frozen pemmican, I stuffed my pocket, bundled the rest into a bag on the sledge, and started off in high glee, stimulated in body and mind.”
I felt fortunate that we modern expeditioners were supplied with good quality food for the whole of our fieldwork. We never had to think about food much, just reach into a red food box and grab something to eat or cook. It's only when you run low on supplies that you start to miss luxury items, like coffee or chocolate. We got by comfortably with our supplies and didn't have to resort to eating our means of transport as Mawson and Mertz were forced to do.
Somehow, I don't think stewed Skidoo would be as nice as dog soup anyhow.