Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wooville II: Cape Evans
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile, all else deep snow and ice.
John Milton, from
Paradise Lost
A HAGGLUNDS
tracked vehicle containing six winterers pulled up at Wooville. They were out
checking the ice to the north. That morning, a rainbow had arched over hundreds of miles of
the Transantarctics.
'Jump in!' said the driver.
The unheated back half of the Hägglunds was coupled to the front like a railway carriage, and I
lay in it on top of a mound of survival gear and a bundle of flags. It was thirty-five degrees below,
and ice clung to the nuts, the pipes and the leaking jerry cans of fuel. As the small windows were
frosted up I snuggled underneath a sleeping bag, swaddled like a mummy. When we lurched to a
stop, the radio by which I communicated with the cab, and which was stowed down my shirt to keep
the batteries alive, jabbed its antenna up my nose.
The back door swung open to reveal a Beard. He began rummaging around in the debris among
which I was entombed.
'We've come to a crack,' he said. 'We have to drill the ice inside it, to see how far down it goes.'
With that, he drew out a drill.
I wriggled out from underneath the sleeping bag and slid down from the back of the vehicle. The
snow squeaked like styrofoam.
The Beard and another man were hunched over the drill. Neither of them was standing on the
tread of a vehicle, as we did when we drilled. The crack was about four inches wide, and the men
got the drill three feet down into the ice inside it in about two minutes. Lucia and I exchanged guilty
glances.
Having established that the crack was safe, the men extracted the drill and strode over to another
crack they had spotted, whereupon they both began sliding the pick of their axes over the top to
locate the safe edges. Lucia and I had forgotten that we were supposed to do this.
'Yikes!' she mouthed at me.
A third Beard appeared from the front of the Hägglunds, clutching a clipboard.
'Are you mapping?' I asked.
