Blazing Ice (14 page)

Emboldened by their findings, I sent Allan and Shaun in the PistenBully to retrace our radar survey past the second milepost, now that we knew exactly where it was. We could see the post at HFS from there. They'd have a visible target and could steer very close to where our road would actually go. Allan's next printed record showed us for the first time exactly where and how many crevasses we'd have to cross. He also showed us several new questionable areas.

So we were taking little steps, one at a time, since we started over. HFS was still a long way off. But Allan was now scheduled to redeploy. We'd miss him, but he'd be leaving us far better equipped to fend for ourselves.

On the afternoon of November 28, Allan and Shaun set off for McMurdo on a pair of snowmobiles. We who remained at the Shear Zone saluted Allan's departure with a very large blast in which we neatly dropped the bridge over Mongo.

The next morning, Mac-Weather announced a three-day storm was moving into the area. We went into McMurdo ourselves and found Allan had already caught his flight home.

As investment in our project's future, I'd planned to rotate as many mechanics, mountaineers, and equipment operators through the Shear Zone operation
as practical. Russ knew that when he sat out this time. But the enforced break did him no favors. He was not comfortable around the bustle of McMurdo.

Shaun also stayed behind. He'd fly home on family leave and be gone for two weeks.

The storm that ran us into town passed. On Tuesday, December 3, we returned to camp with mechanic Rick Pietrek. It was his turn. The tall, beefy Wisconsinite had served many years in Antarctica. He brought with him his friendly presence and enthusiasm for our project.

Morning in camp opened with bright, clear skies. I threw the whole crew, CRREL engineers included, at completing the green flag line.

Besides guiding us through the crevasse field, the green flags played a dual role as a strain grid. The moving ice shelves would carry our road northward, but we couldn't predict how fast the road might move, nor how it might warp. Back in Denver I'd planned the strain grid to monitor that movement over time. Periodic surveys at each flag station would show how the road deformed and what it might take to maintain it.

“Every three hundred feet,” I reminded them. “That's every hundred yards. Plant them at least a foot and a half deep. And plant them as ‘doubles': two green flags together, one banner just below the other. We're getting so many flags out here now, you can't tell at a distance which is which. Doubles will stand out.”

The crew split in two. Both teams carried three-hundred-foot cloth measuring tapes and bundles of green flags on eight-foot bamboo poles. Jim, Alger, and Tom took a tripod and level with a telescopic sight. They covered the span from the second mile post to HFS with the PistenBully. Rick, Brad, and I took binoculars. We used snowmobiles to cover the gap between the first mile post and the second. At day's end, a line of flags stretched in front of us to our goal … something other than illusory, white plains.

“We've done ourselves a great good,” I congratulated us at dinner. “Flags every three hundred feet to HFS. Now we know exactly where our road is going, because we can see it. Think, for a moment, of all the steps we've taken just to get—”

“Did you say three hundred feet?” Tom interrupted. “We used the meter side of the tape … ours were every hundred meters.”

The effect on the strain grid measurements would be negligible. But I realized then, profoundly, I had a whole new set of people to work with.

“Very well,” I said, calmly. “We have green flags every hundred yards from GAW to GAW+2. From GAW+2 to HFS, we have flags every hundred meters.”

Smiling, I asked Jim and Alger: “You guys ever work for JPL?”

Following their befuddled silence, Tom volunteered: “Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Lockheed-Martin gave them miles. JPL read it as kilometers. Or vice versa. They missed Mars on account of it.”

We all laughed.

By December 10, Jim Lever and Russ Alger had completed their studies. On that day we filled Crevasse 6.1, finally passing the one that sent us back to the beginning on November 19.

A quick trip to McMurdo got our two CRREL friends back to catch their plane home. Brad had another field commitment, and also left our crew. Kim, recovered now, rejoined us, packing his guitar this time. That spelled promising evenings in camp.

Another CRREL radar man, Steve Arcone, had by the sheerest chance come in from another field assignment. He could come out to the Shear Zone should we want that. With Shaun still on leave we had space and provisions enough in camp. Steve could only help us.

But a lot of folks wanted to scope out our first steps on the “Road to the Pole.” While in McMurdo a few weeks earlier, Dave Bresnahan brought up the subject. He was then running things from NSF's “big chair.” He decreed who would go out and who would not.

“That's a dangerous place, and we still haven't got a handle on it,” I explained. “If you want artists and writers to come out, just say so. But know that when we are working everybody's got a job, and nobody's got time to guide strangers. If strangers come out, I will shut down everything and walk them around.”

“John, I want
you
to understand that NSF would like to get some pictures. It would be more than a courtesy of you to have some photographers visit.” Dave remained firm.

“Right now they'd see a bunch of us wondering what in the hell is going on. I don't think the foundation wants pictures of
that
.”

“How about a daytrip out there? Can you be ready?”

“How about a couple of weeks from now?”

“That'll be fine. I can tell them to expect something. And that you're on board with it.”

That day was coming. But on December 11, only five of us returned to camp in the PistenBully.

Back in the saddle, Kim filled a new crevasse we named Strange Brew. Its radar image had showed a screen-full of chaotic arcs and parabolas, the likes of which we'd not yet seen. Tom made sense of it when he rappelled into it. Crevasse 6.1 had split. The piece we called Strange Brew ran underneath our road for a hundred feet before it turned again and crossed it. For that hundred feet, our road itself was the bridge.

After Strange Brew, Kim jumped over to Crevasse 7 and filled that one the same day. In crossing it, he brought the bulldozer to the post where it touched our first mile.

“Somewhere out there,” I tilted my head toward HFS, “not far, is the Miracle Mile. Inside that Miracle Mile is our second milepost, our next stop. There's one more thing to do here, before we call it quits for the day.”

We took the picture.

In the morning, the PistenBully and hot-water drill came to a new crevasse just past the milepost. We'd recorded only a black blob here, but now it was Crevasse 7.8.

Tom cautiously entered the void after we shot our access hole. Fifty feet down, he hollered back to his rope tenders, “Haul me out.”

Clambering over the lip of the crater, he explained loud enough for everyone to hear: “There's not enough light down there. And it's still pretty gassy.”

“Very good. We'll open a bigger hole. Maybe we'll shoot the slot and have done with it,” I said.

Tom approached me quietly then, his eyes big as saucers. “This is a really big crevasse. It's bigger than Mongo. This one is really, really big!”

I smiled. “Yes. But we know where it is. We have found it. Next, we are going to fill it with snow.”

Tom felt he hadn't got his message across.

“ … And then we're going to drive over it, and go on to the next crevasse, which is Crevasse 8. We know where that one is, too. Then we're going on to Crevasse 9 and slam it shut. All
bigness
means is it'll take us longer to fill. We're OK, Tom.”

We shot the slot that afternoon, and found huge blocks of broken ice walls had plugged off the south half of the big crevasse. The void aired out immediately. There was plenty of light in there now.

Tom rappelled into it again, descending near the blocks. He explored delicately around them. “I think these blocks came off an intersecting crevasse,” he radioed.

“Okay. Come on out now. We'll shove some snow into it tomorrow, and you can walk down the snow pile,” I radioed back.

Kim, who'd been tending the ropes, observed dryly: “It looks like I'll only have to fill half a crevasse here.”

Kim was exactly right. The fallen blocks held back all the snow he pushed into the slot. He only had to fill the north half. From the time he walked the bulldozer out from camp, Kim took three and a half hours to fill and cross 7.8. Add an hour to that for the time Tom explored down the spill slope, and the whole job was done by noon.

Kim went on to Crevasse 8 after lunch. He filled that in another two hours.

We advanced to Crevasse 9, the narrow crevasse Allan Delaney found. Here we drilled a series of blast holes along both sides of the crevasse. Loading them all with dynamite, the shot slammed the walls into the void. Kim smoothed out our work.

“Three crevasses bagged in one day,” I grinned. “You are a mighty crevasse-hunter, Bwana Kim.”

The really, really big crevasse earned a nickname that day, too: Personal Space. An attractive female research assistant, bearing a striking resemblance to actress Sandra Bullock, may have inspired it. Apparently one of our crew had attempted to get close to her. She warned him against invading her “personal space.”

We were into naming things, and a jolly mood prevailed that evening in camp. Right before dinner, Steve Arcone walked around the front of the Jamesway
where the short, curly-headed easterner surprised me in the act of coiling the day's climbing ropes.

“Who the fuck are you—Gene Autry?” he cracked.

Steve's abrasive New York humor was foreign to most of our company, certainly foreign to the Shear Zone. I “got it” moments later and started laughing. “Go on,” I growled, keeping my eyes to the ground. “Get inside.”

The mood carried through dinner. Three crevasses in one day. “You find them, you fill them.
It's a simple concept
,” Rick Pietrek summarized for us.

Kim got out his guitar after dinner and hit a lick. He played all over—Beatles, John Perrine, Chicago Blues. One at a time, he roped each of us into song.

The wisecracking New Yorker revealed an unexpectedly melodious voice. Steve had just accompanied Kim through a round of “Alice's Restaurant” when he started in on “Love is Blue.” Here, though, his vocal chords stumbled.

“Blue … no, too low … blue, no, higher … blue, no, too high … blue … blue … blue, blue.”

“Who the fuck are you—Bing Crosby?” I nailed him.

“More powder. More detonating cord. And we need to groom our road. Can you help us out?” I radioed to Gerald Crist. On this fine day, I hated to break our momentum to go into town for supplies.

“We can do that,” Gerald answered cheerfully. “We have a fellow here this morning just waiting for something like this to come up. I'll send him out with a tractor and a trail drag.”

By morning, we'd flagged the snow farms for 10, 11, and 12. At lunch we set up the hot-water drill for their access holes. By afternoon, my old partner Marty Reed showed up with a tractor from McMurdo.

Marty was now the McMurdo blaster. Looking like an Okie turning off Route 66, he had boxes of dynamite lashed all over the outside of his tractor. He brought John Penney with him to rotate for Rick. John showed up his first year at Pole with a face full of hair and a shaggy topknot. The burly mechanic came back to Pole, after an R&R excursion to McMurdo, sporting a mohawk. Now he showed up at the Shear Zone shaved completely bald. John brought boxes of fresh vegetables and eggs.

Rick and John turned over special knowledge of the mechanical items in camp while Marty and I stowed the explosives on the old navy sled. Late afternoon, Rick climbed aboard the tractor returning to McMurdo with Marty.

Just before he shut the cab door, Rick turned to me and hollered: “It's a simple concept!”

Sunday brought sleep-in, eggs for breakfast, and a gray overcast. We'd not take out the bulldozer, but the boys wanted to blow something up. The holes were already drilled … and it was Sunday. We made an expedition of it.

The five of us blew access holes in Crevasses 10, 11, and 12, and we explored inside Crevasse 6, easily walking down the fill plug's slope to the bottom. A paper-thin gap between the plug snow and the icy crevasse wall prompted debate: Was the crevasse dilating, or was the snow plug shrinking as it set up? In the cavernous blue-whiteness, Steve studied minute details of the crevasse walls. He pointed out contorted folding in its icy layers, epiphanies before his eyes he had only imagined from the radar. When we came out, the wind came up, so we left our field of play for camp and an evening feast.

Monday's overcast again wouldn't allow us to take out the bulldozer. But we could see the flags well enough to send Tom into the access holes, and to drill for slot blasting. When the afternoon weather cleared, Kim walked the bulldozer out and filled Crevasse 10. Tuesday he filled 11 and 12, and then we decamped at noon.

Bordering on frenzy, we were seizing crevasses one at a time, right down the green flag line, closing on the Miracle Mile. But Steve had to go home now too. That meant another trip to McMurdo, and
progress interruptus
. Steve had kept us in stitches. He certified our radar practice. He explained the puzzling black imagery. We educated him about the side-scanning cone of influence. We'd lose this guy who had helped us, and we'd probably come back with tourists.

“We can take visitors,” I confided to Dave back in town. “We have bridges already drilled out, ready to shoot. When we shoot, they can get some nice pictures of smoke and fly-ice. They can take pictures of the bulldozer pushing snow into a crevasse. If you like, we can set aside a day to walk them through all the operation.”