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blue heart of the glacier. Usually you can avoid this hazard, since snow bridges often reveal them-
selves as tell-tale dips in an otherwise smooth surface. Usually, but not always.
Around a week into the expedition, Brian's party was travelling down Harkerbreen Glacier to in-
vestigate the rock cliffs on either side of the ice when the good weather abruptly deserted them. Thick
clouds descended all around, until they could scarcely see the way ahead. They sledged gamely on,
but the weather hampered all their efforts to investigate rocks, and Brian began to feel nervous. With
only two days' rations in hand, he decided to try a new route back. If they could reach the wide sweep
of Vetaranen Glacier, to the east, the way would be easy even in cloud.
To be safe, Brian decided to scout out the route ahead. With him he took one of the students, Chris
Brasher. Chris was just twenty years old, but he was a fit and accomplished mountaineer. (He was also
a most talented athlete. Five years later he would be one of the two pacemakers who propelled Ro-
ger Bannister to the first sub-four-minute mile. Two years after that he would win his own glory with
Olympic gold in the 3,000-metre steeplechase.) Leaving the other three behind, Brian and Chris found
a tributary glacier that snaked upwards and eastwards toward Vetaranen. They climbed doggedly up
the steep ice slope, always checking for the dips in the snow that marked the presence of a crevasse.
But the surface seemed innocent.
Back with the rest of the team, Brian directed operations. The way ahead was worryingly steep,
but once over the slope everything should be easier. They would take a sledge at a time, starting with
the heavier of the two, the Nansen. Nansen sledges are wonderful inventions, still used by polar ex-
plorers today. Their wooden parts are lashed together with hide, making them lithe and flexible enough
to snake over bumps in the ice. At twelve feet long, they're also a good protection against crevasses.
Even if you break through a snow bridge, the sledge will usually span the gap and act as a safety an-
chor, allowing you to climb back out again.
The five geologists attached their harnesses to the heavily loaded Nansen and began to plod their
way up the glacier. Step, heave. Step, heave. They had almost reached the top of the slope.
Then the ground vanished from under them.
The sledge and the nearest two people plummeted immediately into a vast cavern of ice. One, two,
three, the others followed, whipped backwards on their harnesses through a huge hole in the snow.
The foremost man came last, his ski catching on the surface and tearing away from his foot as he fell.
Seconds later, all five found themselves miraculously alive, sprawled forty feet below the surface.
Through bad fortune, they had broken through a wide, thick snow bridge, wide enough that the sled
was no protection, and thick enough that it was invisible at the surface. But through good fortune, the
bridge fell with them, so that all five had come to rest on a soft cushion of snow. And another piece
of good luck: though the chasm continued down for hundreds of feet, the entire team and their sled
had landed on a wide ledge of ice. There was only one casualty. Brian felt a pain in his right ankle and
discovered that he couldn't stand on it. (He didn't want to claim any great injury. He later wrote that it
seemed to be “slightly broken”. 4 )
Inside a crevasse, the temperature is many degrees colder than at the surface. Quickly your nose
hairs and eyelashes are coated with a fine hoarfrost. Your face becomes numb, and begins to show
white patches of incipient frostbite. The only light comes in feebly from the snow hole far above you,
or as a blue gleam from the cavern's walls. For the next eight hours, Brian was forced to stay put in this
ghostly glow while the four uninjured students began the rescue operation. First they crawled along
the ledge until they found a place where it sloped up to the surface and a natural hole allowed them
to climb back out. Back down the slope then, to where the second sledge held spares of everything,
including ropes, a testament to Brian's meticulous contingency planning. Piece by piece, the students
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