Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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The Sky Hi nunataks were 220 miles from the Bluff, north east of the Merrick Mountains on the
West Antarctic ice sheet. They were too far south to be described as on the peninsula at all - so I
was back in what I had come to think of as the proper Antarctica. These rocky extrusions, ablated
of snow, disappeared as soon as low cloud descended over the ice sheet. They were first surveyed
by Americans in the early sixties and named after a camp which later changed its name to Eights
Station. Now a small team of BAS scientists and technicians were studying that portion of ice sheet
with aerial radar equipment and, as a result, a rudimentary camp had been established not far from
the nunataks. It consisted of no more than a couple of fuel lines, half a dozen pyramid tents and a
weatherhaven.
When we landed, a furious wind was whipping over the ice sheet and it was very cold. The
tops of the tents were snowy, like mountain peaks. Vasco was there. He was a small, striking field
assistant with flaming eyes and a big heart. The nickname - after Vasco da Gama - had been be-
stowed upon him when he sailed south, as he had spent the entire voyage from Grimsby on the
bridge with the first officer, learning to use a sextant.
'Welcome to hell on earth,' he said. Neil, the rangy Liverpudlian geography teacher, was there
too, and he took me to the weather-haven and made me a cup of tea. It was an arched tent, twelve
feet long and six feet wide, with board flooring and a permanently lit tilley lamp hanging from the
ceiling. An array of dripping gloves and hats also dangled from an overhead network of string.
'It gets a bit crowded in here,' Neil said. 'You'll have to fight for a space in the evenings.'
'How many people are here?' I asked, warming my hands over one of the two primuses.
'Ten, with you,' he replied, totting them up on his fingers. 'Two scientists who've just arrived
from a more remote camp and are waiting to go back to Rothera, the five guys on the radar survey
team, and Vasco and I. We aren't really sure what we're doing here.'
'I think we're supposed to be packing up the camp,' said Vasco, who had followed us in. He
was shovelling snow into the small pond in the middle of the floor. When the snow had absorbed
all the water, he shovelled it out again.
The radio was on a jerry can and one end of the weatherhaven was entirely occupied by half-
empty tins and jars, their contents granite-hard, dribbling packets of soup, plastic mugs and a red
plastic sack in which everyone took it in turns to collect ice.
'Don't you ever turn these primuses off?' I asked, as there was no saucepan sitting on them.
'We leave them on to heat the air,' said Neil. 'It's seventeen or eighteen below most days -
sometimes much colder. You'll notice the difference between this and the Bluff. You're further
south, and the ice sheet is far more exposed than the peninsula.'
I was sharing the furthest pyramid tent with Keith, an electronics engineer on the radar project.
Although an American Scott tent and a British pyramid tent are, to all intents and purposes, the
same, the entrance to a pyramid is two feet off the ground, making entry and exit harder and re-
flecting the higher levels of snow accumulation in the 'British sector' on the peninsula. When I
looked at my photographs later I realised that the Scott tents used by the Americans are less steeply
angled, for the same reason. Most amazing of all, I had begun to find these details interesting.
