Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
THREE
IN THE
BEGINNING
“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been
expedition. It wasn't just the cold, or even the danger, that made early polar travel miserable, but the
sheer physical effort of trudging over the snow for day after day, dragging
everything
on a sledge behind
you. Henry “Birdie” Bowers, one of Scott's strongest and toughest men, called this the most backbreak-
ing work he had ever come up against. “I have never,” he said, “pulled so hard, or so nearly crushed my
inside into my backbone by the everlasting jerking with all my might on the canvas band around my
unfortunate tummy.”
2
These painful endeavours weren't confined to adventurers. If you were a geologist in the 1940s with
a penchant for studying rocks in icy places, man-hauling was essential. There were no helicopters, or
snowmobiles. To reach remote, unstudied outcrops in the centre of any white wasteland, you had to load
up all your equipment—tents, food, cooking gear, fuel—harness yourself to the sledge, and
heave
.
For Brian Harland, a geology professor from Cambridge University, the effort was worth it. Brian is
famous for his precise probing into the Earth's past. He put together the definitive “Harland timescale”,
a chart of neatly coloured rectangles that divides geological time into its separate periods, each with its
own ascribed date and span, and which graces the walls of geology departments around the world.
But he is also renowned for his Arctic geology. From the beginning of his career, he was drawn
to the rocks of the remote Arctic, sure that he would find extraordinary geological secrets half-buried
beneath the ice. He was right. By scouring the scarce rocks of the far North, Brian discovered the first
traces of a global glaciation. He was the grandfather of the Snowball.
Brian's fieldwork, though, was never easy. In August 1949 he was leading an expedition over the
ice fields of Svalbard, a frozen archipelago several hundred miles north of Norway and east of Green-
land. He and his four companions had been away from base for days, dragging all their supplies with
them. Now their route back led up a dauntingly steep slope of ice. If hauling on the flat is bad enough,
uphill it can seem nearly impossible. Still, Brian had decreed that at the brow of the hill they could stop
and camp; there would be food, warm drinks and rest. The five geologists duly buckled up and began
the long, hard pull. Their heads were down, their attention fully focused on gaining the top of the slope.
They had no idea of the disaster that was about to strike.
* * *
