Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Sound was veined with cracks, and the band of open water I had seen the previous week
was gone, submerged by a pressure ridge which meandered over the landscape like the Great Wall
of China.
Three beakers and a mechanic were in residence at Lake Hoare. Condom Cristina was living
there too but she had temporarily returned to McMurdo. Every helicopter brought condom advert-
isements for her from her colleagues at Bonney; the story had become enshrined in the legends of
the valley. Nobody had put their tents up yet - it was too cold. I slept on the floor of a small lab. It
was odd to be in a camp doing science. It seemed unnatural.
I hiked up towards Lake Chad, following the route I had taken to Bonney the previous summer
with Ed the mountaineering physicist. The ice was cracking like a whip on tin. Sometimes, out of
the corner of my eye, I caught a white bolt of lightning flashing across the chalky blue. Of course,
I knew this landscape, but I had never seen the pink glow of dawn over the Canada Glacier, or
the panoply of sunset over the Suess, or, in between, sunlight travelling from one peak to the next
and never coming down to us on the lake. We lived in a bowl of shadow during those days. One
morning the sun appeared for ten minutes in the cleft between the Canada and the mountain next
to it, and everyone stopped working to look up. The lake was carpeted with compacted snow, and
from the middle, where the Canada came tumbling down in thick folds, the Suess was cradled by
mountains like a cup of milky liquid.
On our last night, Lucia went outside after dinner to empty the dishwater into its drum. Suddenly
she appeared at the hut window, gesticulating furiously. I rushed out, thinking that perhaps the pro-
pane toilet had exploded again. But it wasn't that. She was looking up at the electric gallery of the
southern lights. The sky was streaked with faint emerald shadows, splaying out in several direc-
tions to the horizon, changing shape, spreading, and bleeding into the blackness. Iridescent cop-
pery beams roamed among the stars like searchlights, and soft ruby flames flickered gently above
the glacier, sporadically leaping forward into the middle of the dark sky. Towards the east, a rich
and luminous topaz haze rolled lazily back and forwards like a tide. At one moment the whole sky
was a rainbow, flaming with radiant mock suns.
'Heavenly music,' I murmured.
∗
The following week, John Priscu sent a message inviting me up to Lake Fryxell for a night. When
the helicopter dropped me off, the five men in John's team had just arrived from Lake Bonney,
their base further up the valley. Ed came bounding out to meet me. They had tossed their sleep kits
over the floor of the Jamesway, which was being blasted with hot air by a diesel blower, and were
preparing equipment to pull out ice cores which would be taken back to Bonney the next day. They
reminded me of a raiding party of Huns descending from the hills for a spot of marauding among
the Visigoths.
Each flight of the drill measured three feet, and after the fifth had been screwed on, they usually
hit water. Ice drilling had been going on up there at Bonney for a month in temperatures of minus
fifty.
