Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
219
DouBLE PLuNGE
In the 1970s and early 1980s having a family member accompany a member of
a research party to antarctica was a fairly common practice. If the question of
nepotism ever arose, NSF would counter that the lengthy time commitments to
work on the Ice had led to many “antarctic divorces.” Giving a family member
an opportunity to be a part of the program could thus be a preventive measure.
Policies have changed, and now a family member who joins an expedition must
have specific qualifications that justify the inclusion. In 1982-1983 I had the good
fortune of being able to take my wife, harriet, along as a field assistant, the
best field assistant I've ever had. Before we left, harriet's mother had made me
promise that I would take good care of her daughter and bring her back safe and
sound.
With a mission of surveying the basement rocks of the Dry Valleys, harriet
and I used helicopter close-support and small camps to visit and sample most
of the region. one of our helicopter stops was on Mackay Glacier next to Queer
Mountain. Rather than the typical ablation-pitted ice or sastrugi-adorned snow
of a glacier, this area was smooth, hard ice of the kind found on a meltwater
pond or lake that has frozen. The helicopter had set down about a quarter-mile
from the rock, on a patch of rougher ice. Given that there were several inches of
water at the edge of the rock, harriet asked whether the ice was safe. I scoffed,
“Sure, I've been on these things a hundred times before, and they are always
frozen solid.”
after we had collected samples and taken some pictures (Fig. S.17), we
started walking back to the helicopter, single file, harriet about twenty feet
behind me. about one hundred yards out from shore, I heard a muffled swoosh,
and a soft, but urgent, “Ed.” When I looked around, there was harriet, up to her
armpits in water, leaning out of a large hole in the ice. at first glance it appeared
that she was standing on the bottom, but in fact she was kicking frantically to
stay afloat, with the bottom nowhere in sight. I lay down prone and reached out
to her with my ice axe. She grabbed it and was able carefully to put one leg and
then the other out onto solid ice. From there we slowly shuffled back to the heli-
copter side by side. harriet was wet to the skin from her waist down, so the
helicopter made a quick run directly back to McMurdo.
In the rush of the moment, this rescue was calm and successful. There was no
doubt that we would get harriet out of the drink and that everything would be
okay. But in the relaxed security of the warm and pulsing helicopter, my adrena-
line flooded in as I thought about what might have happened had the ice been
thinner, had we both gone through, had the helicopter not been at hand and had
we been some miles from camp. only then did I get the shakes. “harriet, what
would I have told your mother?”
