Out of whose womb came the ice?

And the hoary frost of Heaven, who hath gendered it?

The waters are hid as with a stone,

And the face of the deep is frozen.

—The Book of Job, 38:29

After his ship, Endurance, was crushed in the pack ice in Antarctica in 1915, Ernest Shackleton tore this page out of his bible and kept it. Perhaps he felt the biblical reference to the ice was something worth remembering, something to keep him going through the long, arduous struggle for survival upon which he and his men were about to embark. It worked. They lived. The last line, though, is a paradox that reflects the opposite condition to Antarctic seas, in which the surface is often frozen but the deep is liquid. The “face of the deep” mentioned here actually brought to my mind the image of the Mulock Glacier, whose great depths, maybe a kilometer or more to bedrock, would indeed be frozen and solidly compacted.

Two Hueys, a bright orange one from the US VXE-6 Squadron and a dark camouflage green one from the Royal New Zealand Air Force, suddenly arrived on Saturday, 7 December at 10:30 A.M., blasting snow and noise all around our dismantled camp. The tedious work of the previous day preparing the sledges, skidoos, and samples for return to Scott Base was now behind us. It only took two trips using both helos to move all our gear and us over the glacier.

The Mulock Glacier is about 50 kilometers wide at this point. It has the most enormous crevasses I'd ever seen in its center, formed as the wide, flowing river of ice bends around the Warren Range to the north and the Finger Ranges to the south, and then expands outwards as it

nears the sea. This expansion of the compressed river of ice causes crevasse fields to develop. From the air the crevasses appear to be between five and ten meters wide in regularly ordered sets, oriented perpendicular to the flow direction of the glacier. It would be absolutely impossible to try and cross it on the ground without imminent disaster.

After the helicopters had dropped our gear on the other side and departed, we had to first reassemble all the equipment and then repack the sledges. As the site where we were dropped was in the middle of the Deception Glacier, on hard blue ice with no shelter from the winds, we decided that we should immediately move on towards the first of our new destinations, Mt. Ritchie, about ten kilometers southwards down the glacier. The plan was to come back this way after we finished working at Mt. Ritchie, so we could leave excess equipment and supplies behind here and travel light, taking only some food, fuel, and tents loaded onto one sledge each. I enjoyed traveling this way as it was far easier to handle one sledge rather than two, which were sometimes quite difficult to maneuver when using the very long ropes between each sledge required for traveling in crevassed areas.

Although it was only a short distance to Mt. Ritchie, it soon became a rather gnarly journey. At one stage our sledges went over a small crevasse, the runners gliding silently over a snow-covered gap that opened up underneath it. Brian then stopped to fetch the two-meter long crevasse probe. He walked slowly ahead, feeling his way through the small crevasse field, eventually leading us onto safe ground again.

Later that evening Brian and I, who were then leading the way, found ourselves going down a very steep ice slope. Brian was driving the Skidoo, while I was on the back of the sledge. I became aware that we were steadily moving along faster and faster as the slope increased, making it difficult to steer and brake the sledge. I suddenly realized with a sinking heart that the sledge was actually headed down a steep ice slope and the brake wasn't having any effect on slowing it down. My sledge was suddenly racing out of control down towards piles of jagged rocks at the bottom of the slope. Brian saw this and immediately powered up the Skidoo to go faster, keeping pace as I accelerated, not able to slow it down nor turn it away as we were on dangerous ground—solid ice. I kept smashing down hard on the ice brake but at

that speed the metal teeth of the wooden brake only bounced off the jagged blue ice and jarred my foot. It seemed hopeless. If the rope suddenly tightened the sledge would have flipped over and hit the blue ice with its protruding stones at a very high speed, probably smashing it to pieces. Brian skillfully kept pace next to me all the way; the minutes seemed like forever as we raced at deadly speed towards the rocks ahead. Finally, the slope eased off and I was able to steer the sledge sideways, away from the rocks in front until it came to a grinding halt at the base of some rocky scree at the foot of the mountain.

It was about 8:00 P.M. and I was quite shaken up by the incident, mainly because for the first time on the sledging journey I had no power to control the sledge. Furthermore, we couldn't see how steep the slope ahead was gradually becoming. For all we knew it could well have carried on getting steeper, ending at an icefall or in a crevasse field. Luckily for us this incident had caused no harm or any damage to the equipment.

We were all exhausted by this time, and I recall there was some minor squabbling, mainly due to our tiredness, over where we should pitch our camp. It was the first time so far on the trip that we argued amongst ourselves, mainly because some of us were so tired that we just wanted to pitch camp anywhere, but another member of the group insisted that we take the time to find a good camp site. Eventually we all agreed on a spot and quickly put up the tents in a strengthening cold breeze. Margaret was soon busy making a meal for us. Not long after enjoying our food we were all ready to sleep. However, one thing that happened that day kept us in good spirits and made us laugh heartily over dinner whenever we thought of it.

For the last few weeks I had been getting up out of my sleeping bag every morning in the freezing cold, putting on a few layers of clothing and boots, then rushing outside for my morning leak. I eventually noticed that my tent mate, Brian, never did this. Instead he always slept in and had a knowing, sly grin on his face over breakfast each morning. Finally I questioned him one day as to what his secret was.

“Do you have an iron bladder or something?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied calmly, taking the stumpy screw-top plastic bottle out and handing it to me.

“What is it?” I asked naively.

“It's a piss bottle,” he replied with a grin, his Kiwi accent emphasizing the adjective.

“What do you do with it?” I asked even more stupidly, already suspecting the obvious answer.

“You piss into it, screw on the lid, then tip it out into the snow between the flaps of the tent. Saves you having to get up every morning for a piss.”

“Should have told me about it before!” I replied.

He grinned from ear to ear. I could see now that it was his little joke, and he seemed to enjoy watching me scramble out into the cold every morning. Maybe, I thought to myself, it was a secret jealously guarded by the hardened, long-experienced deep fielders, one they only reluctantly passed on to new boys like myself.

Brian said that we could ask for one on the radio schedule next morning. As we were going to get new supplies from Scott Base on the day we crossed the Mulock Glacier, this would be the time I would finally get my piss bottle. I couldn't wait!

Next morning we were going to request the bottle. I grabbed the radio mike and heard a woman operating the radio from Scott Base. I felt a little embarrassed about asking for a “piss bottle,” so wasn't sure how to proceed. I was giggling over it for some time, thinking of what to say, when Brian grabbed the mike and calmly asked the female operator on the other end if, on the forthcoming re-supply, we could add one more item to our list of essential new equipment?

“John needs a drinking bottle,” he said smiling at me. “It must be a wide-mouthed one with a screw top lid, so we can pack it full of snow.”

I was rolling about the tent laughing at this, but Brian just smirked wisely, clearly pleased with his disguised way of ordering the item.

We made a regular joke about this during the several days leading up to the re-supply, making a special point to highlight “John's wide-mouthed drinking bottle” on each checklist.

Finally the big day came. We learned that Dave Geddes, then head of the New Zealand Antarctic Program, was coming out in the helicopter to visit us. It was a great honor and we were looking forward to

seeing him and passing on the good news about how well the work was going.

I'll never forget that glorious moment. We hadn't seen another soul for over a month, and as soon as the chopper came in and landed near us, Dave Geddes leaped out like a crack SAS commander, head tucked low under the whirling rotor blades, as he sprinted over to us, smiling from ear to ear.

“Here, John,” he said, enthusiastically shaking my hand while thrusting the plastic bottle into my other hand, “here's your water bottle.”

We all fell about the place laughing hysterically. He had no idea why we all cracked up. He must have thought we were all going a bit snow-crazy.

The bottle had a little plastic drinking straw coming out the top.