Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
microcentrifuge tubes, another made with two tiny vials of glacier water, several pairs of glittering
plastic zigzags used as fishbait, and so it went on.
I woke up in my room at five in the morning to see my roommate standing by the window, fully
clothed. Our paths rarely crossed, as we both spent more time in the field than on station and led
generally erratic lives.
'Are you off?' I asked.
'No,' she replied. 'I've just come in.'
∗
The vertical borders of the maps I was using were not parallel. They were heading inexorably for
90 degrees south, and I was becoming increasingly preoccupied with following them down and
reaching the Pole, where they all converged. I decided to concentrate solely on getting there rather
than dashing off anywhere else, and I got myself on a Fridge-to-Freezer fuel flight later in the
week.
To fill in time, I practised my cross-country skiing. I wasn't very good at it, but I got to know
the south of Ross Island pretty well. Fortunately, I had found a very good skiing teacher. He was a
veteran Antarctic support worker called Felix, and for years he had been circumventing the strict
McMurdo regulations about what constituted 'safe travel'. One day, we went out to the skiway.
This is a landing strip consisting of compressed snow over glacial ice. The 'ice runway', another
facility at McMurdo, is sea ice stripped of its snow. As I puffed along behind him Felix told stories
of his illegal escapades on the ice. He called his exploits 'missions'.
'I always launch on a Saturday night,' he said, 'when no one suspects anything. Usually I stow
my skis under a rock somewhere near McMurdo the day before, so I don't arouse suspicion.' Like
all serious outlaws, he brought his own sleeping bag and bivvy sack south, plus a pair of mini-bin-
oculars to scan the horizon for people who, if encountered, might rat on him.
'What happens if you do see people?' I asked.
'I lie low behind a snowhill till they've gone.'
Once, Felix had climbed Erebus alone.
'I took a snowmobile at midnight, and it stopped going up at three in the morning at what I
later reckoned was 8,000 feet. [At about this elevation snowmobile carburettors must be rejetted
for altitude.] I climbed for nine hours. On the summit, I was hallucinating. I walked halfway round
the crater, and the terrain got rough; I was frightened then. I knew that if I so much as sprained an
ankle I'd be dead - but it was the best thing I've ever done.'
Felix went back to McMurdo early, and I stayed out on the ice alone. It was almost midnight
when I skied back, and the temperature was hovering around zero degrees Celsius. The sky was
burnished blue, streaked with a twisted ribbon of alto-cumulus, and dazzling honeyed sunlight
flashed off the faces of the Transantarctics. As I stopped to lift my goggles, I glimpsed something
out of the corner of my eye . . .
∗
