To my wife, Samantha, and my friend Ann Hawthorne, I give my deepest thanks for suffering through early manuscript drafts of Blazing Ice, and for their encouragement throughout to bring our worthy story to book.
Author William Fox’s (Terra Antarctica) meditations on rendering geography into landscape through human imprints made him a soul-brother for our undertaking. Tom Sawyer (technology editor, Engineering News-Record) recognized both the technical component of our achievement and the dramatic story underlying it. I thank both these writers for their enthusiastic counsel.
Chris Landry, snow scientist, and learned man David Emory, both of Silverton, Colorado, graciously provided critical reads of the manuscript in its middling and later versions. Mountaineer Tom Lyman, intimately familiar with the story by virtue of having lived two years of it, kindly offered his read and comments. And special thanks to Andy Hanahan III for hints on Chicago style.
As pupil, I bow to master Bruce McAllister (mcallistercoaching.com) who helped me wrench Blazing Ice out of the technical operations reports it inhabited into the narrative in which the story truly lives. I thank Bruce for ongoing guidance through the forests of modern publishing.
I am profoundly grateful to Anne Devlin of Max Gartenberg Literary Agency for bringing Blazing Ice to Potomac Books and arranging this perfect publishing marriage.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge with deepest appreciation Roald Amundsen, Fridtjof Nansen, Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, Vivian Fuchs, Edmund Hillary, Albert Crary, and John Evans for the legacy documents they left behind. These added immeasurably to our effective route planning, and to ensuring our mission safety and success in the twenty-first century.