Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In the end, the igloo defeated me. As I walked back to it the next night I eyed the drums nestling
in cradles outside the Jamesways, pumping diesel into the Preways. Sneaking guiltily into one of
the two berthing Jamesways, I lay on the floor behind a curtain. It was so easy.
∗
Ice streams A, B, C, D and E were located on the West Antarctic ice sheet. There was also a little
F, but no one ever talked about that. Hermann, the moon-faced
Road to Oxiana
scientist, was in-
vestigating Ice Stream B. He wanted me to go out there with him and his team - they were staying
for a week - but I knew I wouldn't be able to get back easily, and I couldn't risk being stranded
anywhere at that point in the season. I was sad.
'Just come for the put-in,' he said. I looked at him. It was an extraordinarily kind gesture: the
put-in involved two Otter flights, and taking me along would seriously complicate logistics. 'You
must see it,' he said. '
I must support you as a writer
.'
Hermann was buzzing around his pallets like a wasp as the Otter arrived. When we took off,
I sat in the back of the hold with him. The Whitmore Mountains appeared in the distance. Her-
mann's eyes lit up.
'Look!' he said, pointing to a hollow above a deeply crevassed area. 'The beginning of Ice
Stream B!' The ice there looked like a holey old sheet. Hermann pressed a hand-held Global Pos-
itioning System unit against the pebble window and said solemnly, 'We are entering the chro-
mosome zone.' It sounded like the opening sequence of a science-fiction movie. 'The crevasses
change direction as the glacier moves,' he said, 'and they turn into thousands of Y chromosomes.'
After that we entered the transition zone between the moving ice and the stable ice. It was called
the Dragon, a highly deformed, heavily crevassed area streaked with slots. Hermann tapped his
propelling pencil against the thick glass of the porthole and held forth. 'The ice streams are not
well understood. The boreholes we have drilled to the bottom of this stream reveal that the base of
the stream is at melting point. So they move' - tap, tap, tap - 'these motions provide a process for
rapid dispersal and disintegration of this vast quantity of ice. I mean that most of the drainage of
this unstable western ice sheet occurs through the ice streams. The mechanics' - tapping - 'of ice
streaming play a role in the response of the ice sheet to climactic change. In other words the ice
streams are telling us about the interactive role of the ice sheet in global change.'
So it seemed that if the ice melted, resulting in the fabled Great Flood of the popular press, water
would pour out of the continent, via the ice streams, on to the Siple Coast, virtually the only part
of Antarctica not bounded by mountains.
Hermann settled back in his seat. 'The aim of investigating ice-stream dynamics', he concluded,
'is to establish whether the ice sheet is stable.'
'Geology', Lars had told me, 'is an art as well as a science.'
Hermann stowed the pencil in his top pocket, my ears popped and we landed at a few dozen
ragged flags on a relatively stable island in the middle of Ice Stream B. This island, shaped like a
teardrop, was called the Unicorn, and Hermann's eye glittered like the mariner's at three or four
flags flapping on bamboo poles in the distance. 'The flags mark our boreholes,' he said, 'and we
have left equipment down in these holes, gathering data. Those two boreholes' - he pointed to a
