“You need to come out here right away.”
Linda! Mechanically, I radioed back to Tom, “Copy that. We’ll be right there. Stay off the radio for now.” Our frequency could be overheard in Mc-Murdo, and we didn’t need folks in town getting spun up just yet.
“Shit! Allan, unload this dynamite.”
From the PistenBully approaching Crevasse 6 we spotted the bulldozer tipped improbably onto its right side down in the borrow pit. Kim and Tom stood upright on high ground, outside the pit.
I parked atop the fill plug and walked slowly toward them, looking back down on the bulldozer. Its right track had broken through a bridge. The dozer had skated sideways before it stopped, blocked against the opposite wall. Had it stopped sliding? The crevasse lay just outside the borrow pit. A few flags remained around the fill-gathering area.
“You guys all right?” My eyes betrayed my flat voice.
“We’re both okay,” Tom said. “I had him jump off. Didn’t want to mess around with ropes.”
With its right side sunk, the bulldozer’s left side reached for the sky. Some jump.
“I rolled a bit,” Kim volunteered.
Questions could come later. Everybody was safe for now.
Shaun was still working by Crevasse 7. I waved, holding up my radio. Over the distance separating us, he couldn’t see into the pit. Either his radio was off, or his batteries were dead. I keyed mine anyway, beckoning at the same time: “Drop what you are doing and walk over here. Now!”
Shaun arrived, taking in the scene with a pair of astonished eyes.
“We all see what has happened here,” I spoke quickly, before anyone else could. “I’ll say it for all of us: this … is … serious. First, none of us is hurt. That is good.” Improvising as fast as I could, I continued, “Now, we’re going to get that bulldozer out of that crevasse. We don’t know how we’re going to do that, yet. But we’re going to figure it out. Shaun, stay here with Tom and Allan. Find out what you can about the nature of this crevasse and the position of the bulldozer in it. Do it safely. Allan, sweep the area with one of them again. See if we can find safe access to the rear of the dozer … not just for us, but for another bulldozer. Take your time. I’ll be back in an hour or so. Kim, come with me on the snowmobile.”
We slowed down by the generator in camp. “Russ, I need you to go out to Crevasse 6 and look over a problem. No great hurry, but please do go.”
“Something broke?” he asked.
“Not exactly … “
Inside the Jamesway, Kim waited awkwardly while I raised the heavy equipment supervisor in McMurdo on the radiophone. “Gerald, we have a situation that requires the use of the other D8R you’ve got, the one with the big winch on it. Can you oblige us?’
Gerald Crist instantly decoded my message. In his always cheerful manner, he replied, “I understand perfectly. We’ll divert that dozer right away. It’s headed out to Pegasus Field now. It’ll be at your location in six to eight hours. I’ll send you an operator you know.”
That was that.
Russ roared out of camp on our other snowmobile. I turned to Kim. “You doing all right?”
“Yeah …” In measured syllables, he asked, “Am I fired?”
“Good heavens, no! I am not going to fire the man who has at this moment gained the most experience of any of us working around these crevasses!”
Kim half-stepped back.
“Look, this is not going to happen again. You’re not going to let it, right?”
“R-right.” Kim nodded slowly, waiting to hear what came next.
“We’ll go over all this tonight. For now, you need to be away from that scene.”
Kim agonized over it all, but were he out there he’d be crawling all over his dozer, trying to figure what to do next. And he’d probably hurt himself. For now, I needed Kim standing by the radio. We had another bulldozer coming. We had a well-flagged route. But the other guy had never traveled it. Kim could help a brother cat skinner. And if there were any change in plan, I needed to know.
“If anybody on that radio asks, tell them all is well. Because all is well. For now.” But if we lost one man, or dropped one piece of equipment down a crevasse, then it was all over. So far we’d done neither.
“Got it.”
“And get over what you’re feeling. Right now, you’re our most valuable player.” My adrenaline was up, but I hoped my tone was reassuring. “While you’re manning the radios, would you prepare the evening meal? We’ll need that, too, please. I’m going back out to see what the fellas have come up with.”
“I understand. And … thank you.”
We had a new job now.
Ralph Horak arrived at camp with the second bulldozer. Next month he’d accompany the French on their six-hundred-mile traverse to Concordia. This evening, we planned out how we’d get past our twenty-fourth mile.
I stood near one end of the long dinner table. Behind me the scene, diagrammed on a whiteboard, hung from the partition separating our bunkroom from the common room. Reconstructing the events showed us that everyone but Russ and Ralph had a hand in the close call.
Shaun, zealous to remove extraneous flags “cluttering” the fill-gathering area, ordered Tom to remove them. The sideline where the dozer had strayed out of bounds wasn’t flagged well enough in the first place. We’d laid down PistenBully tracks along that sideline, settling on those as a boundary. Tom knew the dozer was cutting the sideline close, but failed to caution Kim. I, seeing they were nearly finished, failed to halt the operation when I observed Tom removing flags. I failed at least to question him. Removing the rest of the flags left the fill-gathering area virtually unmarked, except for the PistenBully tracks.
After establishing shared culpability, I faced Kim. “You got greedy, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Yes I did.” Kim stood at the opposite end of the table. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling, replaying his memory. “I was nearly finished, and I just wanted a little bit more snow from my sidewall. I knew I reached out past those tracks.”
“Thank you.” Our eyes met, acknowledging his truth.
I brought the group back into the discussion. “We have learned quite a bit here. Surely no one wanted this to happen. This was an accident. All of us had a hand in it. Now, we’re each going to have a hand getting us out of it.”
Flags were a serious matter, particularly important when we worked in flat light or whiteout. I made a new rule.
“From now on, the removal or placement of any flag in the Shear Zone will only be done with my knowledge and at my direction.”
All nodded. We invented how to pull this job off as we went, but not all of us were equally versed in each other’s professions. Cat skinners were naturally inclined to cut boundaries close. That’s how they showed off their skill. I made another rule.
“We will no longer flag a fill-gathering area by placing a flag on top of a crevasse we happen to find. We will set the flags twenty feet in for margin.”
And generally mountaineers were minimalist, low-impact folks. A Caterpillar D8R and several tons of dynamite were anything but. I made my third rule.
“Dozer operators, do not expect a mountaineer to understand what you’re doing with an eighty-six-thousand-pound machine. Talk to them. Tell them what you’re doing. Remember, they are spotting for you to save your life. Now, let’s brainstorm how we get that Cat out of the trap tomorrow.”
Allan interrupted, “I am not exempt from responsibility in what happened today. I want to share what I have learned.”
“Go ahead.”
“I have learned the interpretation of a radar display showing sagging surface layers over a rising diffraction pattern, and showing no black void, should not be interpreted as no void. I believe I misinterpreted some imagery.”
We’d seen radar images that had the form of a crevasse, but lacked any black void in their interiors. The space where black should have been was filled with chaotic reflections. We supposed those were produced by blocks of collapsed bridge material plugging the void. Now, seeing more crevasses opened for inspection than he ever had seen, Allan said that was not necessarily so. He wasn’t involved in the support contractor’s hierarchy, but he generously bought-in with us.
That evening we worked out our rough solution for rescuing the dozer. As we shuffled to our cots, I approached Kim with an afterthought: “Be careful to walk your dozer out of that hole only under tension from the winch cable. If you slip your tracks at all, you’ll chew up the snow and grind yourself down farther than you are now.”
I was no cat skinner of Kim’s caliber, so I apologized. “I just needed to say that.”
Kim peered off into tomorrow’s future. He saw it. “Thank you for that reminder. I needed to hear it.”
Ralph backed onto a mound of snow he’d built near the rear of Kim’s dozer and stopped at the top. The extra height gave his winch mechanical advantage for lifting Kim. Allan and I had flagged a precise route to get to that point. The site for the mound lay perilously close to yet another crevasse.
Each player rehearsed his or her role. I gave my last instruction: “Stay off the radios as much as possible. That’s not for McMurdo. It’s for us. Unnecessary chatter will break our concentration.”
Realizing only then I had no role for myself, I muttered, “Now what do I do?”
Kim adroitly answered, “Your job is to watch everybody.”
“Right you are.” Allan and I withdrew the PistenBully to a safe spot on the road, well out of the action.
Ralph paid out the winch cable while Russ walked it back, hooking it to Kim’s tilted machine. Kim swallowed hard, climbed back aboard, and started his engine. Tom and Shaun watched from both sides of Kim’s bulldozer for any new failure at the crevasse edge. I fidgeted with the radio mike in my hand and ran one last radio check from our overlook. Then I radioed: “Okay, Russ. It’s your show.”
With both arms outstretched, and using hand signals that mechanics and operators understood, Russ stood like Stravinsky on the snow. Both bulldozers revved, snorting black smoke. The exhaust cleared, and the first dark puffs drifted, wraith-like, across the snowscape under the overcast skies. Russ’s left hand scribed tight circles in the air. The winch cable stretched. His right hand beckoned “come to me,” his fingers pinching “little bit at a time.” At the cable’s first steady tug, Kim’s bulldozer shuddered, then sank. Russ sliced his hands across his neck. Both dozers stopped.
Shaun radioed, “A slight, not a great change in the situation. Maybe dropped three inches.”
The bulldozers revved again. Russ caught both operators’ eyes, and then gave the downbeat: “Now!”
Kim backed slowly against the taut winch cable, first clawing up, then teetering at the crevasse edge. A moment passed. Heavily, he tipped level. Ralph spooled cable until Kim footed on stable snow. Both operators stopped, then bowed to each other through their cab windows. When Ralph slacked the cable, the show was over.
Allan beamed with pleasure in the PistenBully, congratulating me.
“Congratulations, each of you!” I radioed, my heart still racing. I hadn’t let go of the mike. “Let’s get our equipment back onto the road and have some lunch.”
By 1100 hours both bulldozers idled back in camp. Any lingering responsibility Kim felt dissipated in our shared pride.
“You saved our bacon,” I told Ralph.
“Aw, hell, it’s nice working with you again, ol’ Buddy. But I’m gone. I can get back just in time for a hot meal tonight in the galley.”
Ralph tracked past our camp perimeter flags, headed back to town. The day had turned gold for us.
That same afternoon, the McMurdo surveyors showed up at the Shear Zone in a red, track-driven pickup truck. Jeff Scanniello, the chief surveyor, and I had worked with one another over several years. We held each other in high regard. He was a bearded, rugged fellow with a sharp wit and sense of humor. Jeff would’ve stopped for a trailside chat with Ralph. He stepped out of his truck in camp, asking simply: “How’s it going?”
“No … problem,” I answered. Our eyes met. He knew. But we’d get right to work.
Jeff came to plant our first milepost at GAW+1. Its location lay between Crevasses 7 and 8, in ground we’d already proven safe. When he set the post with global positioning instruments, our green flag line ran close to his mark. We’d extended that line through all our chessboards using only the red-flag back sights Jeff located for us in early October.
“Eight feet off in a mile. One and a half thousandths. Not bad for eye-balling,” I stood by my green flag, three paces away from his post.
“Hah,” Jeff shot back. “The only time you’re on line is when you cross it.”
I conceded, laughing, and we discussed plans to set the second mile post. We still couldn’t see HFS from the first one, but I thought we might from the next. It’d lie in the Miracle Mile. I wanted to use the mile posts for sights and run our green flag line right between them, all the way to the end.
“Copy that,” Jeff acknowledged. “Next week?”
I wasn’t so eager to push on to the Miracle Mile. When we found Crevasse 9, the Miracle Mile seemed within reach. We might advance from one crevasse to the next, right into it. But now I heeded Allan’s confession. We looked again at the questionable areas and black blobs we’d found weeks earlier. With the hot water drill and Allan’s radar expertise, new crevasses appeared on our roster. We had missed some.
So we started back at Baby. We ran radar lines across it with the PistenBully at every imaginable angle. We ran parallel to it, our tracks straddling the crack. Only when the antenna passed directly over it, from any direction, did we see a clear crevasse image on our screen. Our New Hampshire training had taught us that a side-scanning cone of influence radiated down from the antenna, and contributed to the radar imagery. But that wasn’t true here.
Russ cautioned us, “It’s the ones that sneak up on you from behind that will get you. Your radar’s way out in front. Before it sees a crevasse your tracks are already over it!”
We started filling in the gaps between our numbered crevasses. First, we discovered Crevasse 3.1 crossing part of our road. It pinched to a close just short of the green flag line. Radar run directly along the flag line failed to detect it, yet five feet south the radar showed it plain as day. We opened an access hole in it and sent Tom down to see what was really there. From inside the crevasse, he reported yet a deeper, intersecting crevasse below it.
“It is extensive,” Tom said. “Perhaps twenty feet wide, and I can see light in the distance.” Again I feared monsters hiding below us.
When we shot the slot, intending to fill it no matter what, Russ called our attention to something behind us: “That one just sneezed!” Powder smoke wafted up from another access hole in another crevasse not far away. They were interconnected.
Hunting crevasses became less like stalking big game and more like hunting unseen devils. The more we looked down through the snow, the more complicated the Shear Zone got. Allan’s helicopter flights had found us in the worst of it. I felt the project slipping away, wondering whether we could really understand the place.
“It’s a son of a bitch,” I declared. “But even if we don’t get to HFS this season, we’re going to bomb-proof everything in our way as far as we do get. We’re not going to leave bad work behind us.”
Weather didn’t help. Frequently our light flattened so that we couldn’t see our own shadows against the snowy surface. Moving anywhere in the Shear Zone was like drifting in a cloud. Vertigo played its tricks. Crevasse edges disappeared. We didn’t dare run the bulldozer at those times.
When the weather was poor, we advanced the cause some other way. Sometimes we followed flags into the Zone and drilled and blasted. Sometimes we sent a mountaineer down an access hole. Often we stayed in camp waiting for better weather. Shoveling drift snow claimed a lot of our time.
By Friday, November 22, we worked back to the black flag that marked where I’d watched Stretch and the D8R enter the Shear Zone. Now Allan’s radar showed us a distinct crevasse-form there: an hourglass shape. The surface layers of the compressed image sagged into the neck. Below that, the whole image flared into a wide bell. The bell was filled with chaotic reflections that we no longer trusted. This was Crevasse 3.4.
The hot-water drill found a small void below this questionable area. At twenty feet down, the bit dropped two feet through air, and then found solid snow again. We continued drilling solid to forty feet before we pulled out of the hole, puzzled.
“What do you want to do about it?” Russ and Kim asked, manning the drill.
“Shoot it,” I snarled. We drilled and shot the five-spot pattern.
When the smoke cleared, we looked down through an irregular chimney, just big enough for a man enter. At its bottom was a tiny black hole. Shaun roped up and lowered himself down the chimney. Crouched at the tiny hole, he looked into the blackness, then he turned to our expectant faces waiting above: “There is an immense cavern here.”
“Now what do you want to do?” Russ and Kim asked again.
“More holes. More powder!” I bellowed, finally glimpsing the monster.
When the air cleared from the second blast, we cautiously looked over the crater’s rim into the biggest, blackest hole we’d ever seen. Powder smoke curled around in its darkness. To a man, we gaped in disbelief. “Jeezus it’s big.”
“We’ll let that one air out,” I told the mountaineers, business-like. “That’ll do for today.” How could I have sent Stretch over that?
The next morning, when he returned to surface from the immense cavern, Shaun reported the enlarged access hole lay against the side of a huge room that spanned twenty-five feet. The underside of the bridge sagged deeply into the void, adding another ten feet to the thickness we had drilled. The void ran as far as Shaun could see into the gloom, with no end in sight on both sides. We measured its depth at 110 feet. Crevasse 3.4 deserved a special name, like Baby had a name.
This one we named Mongo.
We had a day or so to think about Mongo. That afternoon we decamped for McMurdo. Two new CRREL people had arrived. I wasn’t sure what for, but Mongo would have to wait until we brought them back.
Monday our numbers briefly swelled by four. The CRREL investigators joined Allan. Jeff Scanniello and his helper came out for the day to locate the next milepost.
Kim, however, took seriously ill once he got to camp. I raised Jeff, who had already planted the new post and was on his way back to McMurdo, on the VHF radio. “Survey 1, we have an important package that needs to get back to town right away. Can you meet us, and take it in with you?”
I rushed Kim, and extra fuel for Jeff, across the McMurdo Ice Shelf in the PistenBully. Shaun followed in a snowmobile. Somewhere in the middle, Kim transferred to Jeff’s speedier truck, and Shaun returned to camp. I followed Jeff into town at my own pace and stayed there for the night. On arrival, I dropped by McMurdo General.
“They’re not going to send me off to Christchurch,” Kim spoke hoarsely, rolling his head sideways on the gurney. “But I’m going to be here for a few days.” He sounded rough and looked worse.
“I’m glad you are going to stay put.”
“But I want to go back camping with you all.”
“I want that, too,” I assured him. “But I’m going to take another operator out tomorrow. Give yourself a couple of weeks. If the doc says okay, I’ll bring you back. You can believe it.”
Brad Johnson, Kim’s replacement, was an amateur mountaineer, expert blaster, and a fine dozer operator. The handsome young man could help out in nearly every aspect of our work. Meanwhile, the arrival of the new CRREL investigators in camp had come as a surprise. I asked them bluntly that evening, “What are you doing here?”
They’d assumed I knew. With the bearing of an affronted Spaniard, dark-eyed Jim Lever explained, “We’ve been engaged to come to the Shear Zone to determine crevasse bridge strengths … to gauge safety issues for heavy vehicle crossings.”
“Aw, Christ! So that’s it,” I laughed. “George Blaisdell said I’d have answers to my questions on that subject by Thanksgiving, but I thought he’d be sending research from the CRREL library. I didn’t realize he was sending out two bodies.” Did we have enough food for them?
We got over the awkward moment with straight talk. Jim and his partner, Russ Alger, a husky, jovial fellow from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, discussed their needs for field support. I considered how to accommodate them. For my part, I described our progress across the Shear Zone.
“I’ve no intention of crossing a bridge based on anyone’s stamp,” I responded to their caution. “I intend to find every crevasse that stands in our way, drop its bridge, and fill it. What you can tell me is how deep to drill.”
Apparently I made no sense. It was a dense point. We’d seen questionable images, but they hadn’t. Nor had they seen our drill.
“Suppose you tell us something about bridge strength that relates its thickness to its span. We can determine both those dimensions by drilling. Now we come to a questionable area under our road. We drill it to a certain depth, and we drill a line of holes across it. Say we don’t find a void. Your calculations could allow us to walk over that questionable area without actually knowing what it was because its thickness and widths met your strength criteria.”
They got it conceptually, but they’d have to see it. It was then Jim’s turn to ask the challenging question. “You stated that you crossed Mongo at least one dozen times with a D8, both coming and going. And you stated that a D8 is most likely the heaviest point-load that will ever cross the Shear Zone. That is valuable information. How would you like us to deal with that?”
I hadn’t considered the politics of embarrassment before. “You tell the truth.”
We got along fine from then on. Tom worked full time with Jim and Alger, looking out for their safety, and assisting in their technical investigations. They’d work in designated areas well clear of other activity.
While we filled crevasses and prospected out to 12, Tom and the CRREL engineers exposed a bit of the bridge at Crevasse 6. Using that, they derived thickness-span ratios that could support our ten-thousand-pound PistenBully.
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.”
“Some of them wanted to stay with you for a week.” Dave upped the ante, jolting me.
“I don’t know …”
“In that case, the answer is no,” I was quite firm. “We just came back in to drop off Arcone and get a shower. We’re heading back out tomorrow … early.”
“What would you say to a helicopter bringing some out for a day?” Dave could order a helicopter.
“We can handle that. You should come, too.”
“We’ll see. I’ll let you know through Mac-Ops.”
I found Russ Magsig in the galley for dinner. He looked haggard from his prolonged stint in town and pleaded for escape. I wanted Russ for the three-year show and couldn’t afford to break his spirit. Tomorrow we’d go out for a short stretch, but we’d be back. “When we go out again after Christmas, Russ, you’ll go with us.”
Having my promise, Russ visibly relaxed. Only then did he ask, “How’s it going?”
“We just stuffed 12.”
Russ brightened. “Stuffed 12? It really is going good then?”
To whet his appetite, I threw back my head in imitation of the great Civil Rights leader, half-singing, half-chanting: “I can seeeee … the Miracle Mile… . It’s a Laaaand of Milk and Honey!” Then I lowered my gaze. “I appreciate your patience, giving the others their turn. But I want you with me when we go into the Miracle Mile.”
We sealed our compact with a nod.
Four of us returned to the Shear Zone Wednesday morning, same crew but missing Steve Arcone. We went right to work drilling and blasting access holes in Crevasses 13, 14, and 15. The next day brought high winds and blowing snow. Same the day after. We did what we could during the sucker holes. Otherwise we mucked storm drift out of camp. The storms that kept us mucking also kept the helicopters away. Visitors never showed up.
The weather broke by noon on Saturday. Bwana bagged Crevasses 13 and 14. Shaun, back on the Ice from family leave, hijacked a snowmobile from town and rejoined us in the afternoon. When he’d left us for home, we were dealing with Crevasses 3, 3.1, and Mongo. Now we were fast approaching the Miracle Mile. Shaun’s return added that much more mass to our momentum.
Sunday we bagged 15 and drilled access holes in 16, 17, 18, and 19. The Miracle Mile started just past 19, but we wouldn’t cross into it that day.
Monday we returned to McMurdo. Tuesday and Wednesday were Christmas holidays in town—two days off and a feast.
Gerald Crist in McMurdo asked if I were ready to rotate dozer operators. But I thought we were going to win this one now. I’d not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with an unknown.
“Mind if I keep Kim?”
“Not at all.” Gerald understood perfectly.
Bwana Kim came back out. So did Russ. Shaun, too, with another mountaineer from the McMurdo stable. This one was new to the Shear Zone. Allen O’Bannon was a tall, fit fellow with the look of John Lennon sporting a stubble of whiskers.
Straight away we ran out to the crevasses and blasted the next four access holes. Through two days of high winds and blowing snow, we got our mountaineers into all four. We blasted the slots at two of them, and we would fill those when the dozer could come out.
Sunday, the weather broke, and we pounced. Kim bagged all four crevasses, crossed 19, and rolled into the Miracle Mile.
The D8R stopped long enough for the picture at the second milepost, then rolled all the way up to Crevasse 20 at the far side of the Mile. Between us and the post at HFS, six more crevasses blocked our way.
We returned to McMurdo for the New Year holiday. When we when came back, we’d finish the job.
Russ and I sat down in a quiet corner of the galley.
“There’s one more mechanic at the Heavy Shop that signed up for duty. The first-year guy. Brandon.”
“Yeah …” Russ saw what was coming. “He’s a good kid.”
“We’re going out there to stay until we finish the job. I’m going to take the kid. You’re going to stay in town.”
Russ sighed with resignation. He didn’t see what was coming next.
“While you’re in town I want you to scout the old navy sleds parked at Willy. See what we can put together for a road trip. We’re going to finish this job, and if we don’t screw up, we’ll finish early. Early enough to get out on the Ross Ice Shelf and grab a few more miles before McMurdo closes for the winter.”
Russ saw his future, then, and liked it. “Let the kid be with you at the finish. He deserves it.”
Back at the Shear Zone, marginal weather devolved to crappy weather, which then improved to poor. That day we filled and crossed Crevasse 20. which we named Snap. Crackle soon followed.
“More powder!” I called into McMurdo on our radiophone. We were running short of dynamite again. Brad came out with a load of explosives. On January 8, Pop went down. Then we buried Crevasse 23, not stopping to name it.
Shaun and Allen prospected thirteen miles southward past HFS. They found not one crevasse.
January 10, Bwana filled Crevasse 24 in two and a half hours. He bagged 25 in another three. Then he mowed down 26. Seconds later, he brought the D8R to the post at HFS.
We climbed atop the bulldozer and raised our American flag.
From camp that evening, I transmitted a digital image of the scene to our project counterparts at NSF, and to my bosses at McMurdo. The straightforward message that accompanied it read: “January 10, 2003, at 5:30 p.m.: The D8R arrived at HFS, and traveled a half mile beyond it. You may say we have crossed the Shear Zone.”
The Ross Ice Shelf was open for business.
Winning those three miles from GAW to HFS took from October 31 until January 10. One thousand miles of unexplored terrain lay between us and Pole, and our mission called for a round-trip in one season.
Yet we crossed the Shear Zone earlier than expected. With a light traverse train, we headed out onto the Ross Ice Shelf and flagged another one hundred miles of trail. Russ went with us. We turned around at a place we named SOUTH.
Another pair of CRREL investigators showed up. Tom accommodated them with study time in the Shear Zone before we broke camp all together.
Sometime in February at Pegasus Field near McMurdo, I shuffled along with other day-dreamers waiting to board a jet airplane home, staring blankly at the snow.
Dave Bresnahan strode across the runway toward the plane. He placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, turned me around and looked me right in the eyes. “Outstanding! I congratulate you on a stunning season. Well done!”
To the moment of stepping onto the airplane, I’d not heard anything like that from anyone. I thanked Dave for his courtesy. We shook hands.
Onboard the plane, I strapped into my jump seat, and began shutting out the ice world. My wife was pregnant with our second child when I’d left for the Ice. She was due in April, and I’d told no one here. I couldn’t risk losing focus on the safety of my crew. I found peace now dreaming of homecoming, of the love of my wife and son, and wondering what new life grew in her swollen belly.
My eyelids drooped. A young man with a Marine-like bearing approached. He gave his name, stating forthrightly, “I am interested in your project. What can I do to get involved?”
His appeal sounded different from the eager, gung-ho requests I’d become used to hearing. Many wanted kicks blowing things up and jumping down crevasses. Some wanted their names associated with the grand project.
“Here’re two paths to get you into the traverse business. You get a job next season with the equipment operations group, or you get a job with the heavy shop. I plan on hiring out of those two departments. Do you have a resume?”
He had one. I glanced through it and saw something about command of an amphibious assault vehicle company. “I will support you,” he told me.
We learned a lot about Shear Zone dynamics over the years. This first year we looked down a straight road. It didn’t stay that way. It got crooked.
Strain grid measurements said GAW moved north at 2.3 feet a day. That’s 840 feet a year. HFS moved slightly east of north at 3.75 feet a day, or 1,370 feet a year.
Spreading between GAW and HFS accelerated. Our last measurements showed the distance growing 160 feet a year. Most spreading manifested in plastic deformation, stretching the ice like taffy. But annual radar surveys detected new cracks appearing. We observed growing separation between some crevasse walls and their fill plugs. Perhaps 20 percent of the spreading manifested in new crevasses and the dilation of old ones.
Safe crossings demand vigilance and maintenance. That includes keeping up the flags and monuments. We measured annual snow accumulation in the Shear Zone: 1.6 feet. Our flags would be buried in a few short years. Anyone who heads out there and finds no flags, no markers, will have to start all over again.