Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
brought in were labelled Do Not Freeze. Ninety-five below, you're searching in the dark and they
expect the fucking gear to stay unfrozen.'
One day, another WOO appeared. She was an artist; a water-colourist, mainly. Her name was
Lucia deLeiris, and she came from Rhode Island. She was very beautiful, with shoulder-length ma-
hogany hair, fine bones and a diffident manner. She had been south before, nine years previously,
to paint wildlife on the peninsula. A plan had been conceived to despatch us both out on to the sea
ice in our own hut (it would be towed to a site of our choosing) where we could build up a head of
creative steam away from the confines of Mactown. We both thought this was a splendid idea.
As we were going to camp on the sea ice, we were given our own tracked vehicle, a Spryte, and
inducted into the mysteries of driving it by Marvellous Marvin from the Mechanical Equipment
Center. Our tomato-red Spryte, with which we immediately bonded, was numbered 666 and bore
the logo A NTISPRYTE . Lucia and I thought this was a hoot. Later, we were not so amused.
We took a day-long sea ice course taught by a lively character called Buck with a handlebar
moustache who, when things got pretty seedy and very cold, had the habit of assuming the voice
of an ancient redneck and proclaiming with brio, 'Yep. Just doesn't get any better than this.' He
taught us how to distinguish a spreading crack from a straight-edged crack, and introduced us to
an ice drill, with which we were to become very familiar.
A day was spent scouting for a position for our huts (we were to be given two, in case one burnt
down) in a temperature of minus forty Celsius. At the fuel pits the Antispryte froze in running
mode, so we couldn't turn it off. It was so cold that fata morgana 1 shimmered around the distant
sea ice. These mirages created a landscape of their own - a berg floated along in the sky, a row of
peaks perched on top of another like skittles and a dark mushroom cloud rose gracefully from the
horizon.
Having trundled around the frozen Sound for several hours, testing the thickness of the ice with
our new drill and sliding down snowhills on our bottoms, we fixed on a spot in the lee of the Ere-
bus Glacier Tongue. It faced the four Dellbridge Islands that mark the rim of an inundated crater
which once stood among the volcanic foothills - Big and Little Razorback, Inaccessible Island and
Tent Island. The site was about twelve miles from McMurdo. The ice there was six feet thick, and
its surface was uniform, as if it had been hoed with one of the long-handled, small-bladed imple-
ments used by Italian hill farmers.
Further instruction followed at McMurdo on the status of the airwaves (some of the repeaters
were not yet up), maintenance of the drip-oil Preway heaters with which both huts were equipped,
and procedures for refuelling them by towing the diesel fuel sledge out to our camp. We dropped
isopropyl alcohol into jerry cans to keep our vehicle fuel from freezing, visited Food (this was
like going round a supermarket where you didn't have to pay - The Price is Right, they called it),
and spent hours at the Berg Field Center, checking out a vast array of gear ranging from crescent
wrenches to tin-openers.
The Antispryte conveyed us safely to the fuel pits before quietly breaking down. As the first
field party out since the previous summer, we were fortunate to have taken Buck with us for a
one-night shakedown to see that everything worked. As it turned out, nothing did. When we got it
going again, the Antispryte moved very slowly, with the result that it took two hours to cover the
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