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hauled every item of equipment up through the snow hole to the surface. They did their best to haul
Brian out, too, but it proved impossible. Because the cavern's walls curved away from the dangling
rope, Brian couldn't reach them to steady himself, and he swung and spun uncontrollably. Eventually
he was lowered back down. He strapped on skis and shuffled slowly and painfully along the ledge to
climb out the way the others had.
Outside, the cloud was still thick and low, heavy with the threat of snow. Brian and the team
camped, on half rations, and considered their options. They were at least two days from their nearest
food depot, and four or five days from base. The route they knew involved a steep downward slope
and another long, heavy pull upwards again. But at least this way was definitely safe, and they re-
solved to take it. Broken ankle notwithstanding, Brian had no intention of being pulled along on the
sledge. Each morning he would strap on his skis and begin a long, lonely shuffle over the snow. His
right ankle was useless. He had to use his ski pole to point the ski in the right direction. Behind him
the four students would finish their breakfast, pack the gear, and haul the sledges along in Brian's trail.
Around midday they would catch him, and stop for lunch. Then they would continue on into the dis-
tance, leaving Brian to trudge painfully along in their tracks. By the time he arrived at the night camp,
food was already prepared, tents were pitched, and he could fall into his sleeping bag.
After five days they finally reached base.
Charity
bore Brian back around the coast to Svalbard's
main town, Longyearbyen, where he was ordered straight into the hospital. His broken ankle had fi-
nally earned him a “hot bath and excellent care”, which, he later wrote, made him “the envy of the
others” since they had to return to the privations of the field.
One of the other parties from the expedition, it turned out, had also fallen foul of the hazards of
Arctic travel. As Brian later put it,
Hope
was all but lost. Boat and crew had to be rescued from mid-
fjord by a rubber dinghy. But Brian had known all along that Svalbard wouldn't yield its secrets read-
ily. His contingency plans had been effective. His students were eager for more. And the various field
parties had only scratched the surface of the data to be had. By the time Brian reached Cambridge
again, he was already planning his next trip. He insists still that he wasn't drawn by the romance of the
place. What pulled him back to Svalbard, he says, were the
stories
. He wanted to understand what the
rocks could tell him. He didn't yet know that the rocks of Svalbard held a more extraordinary secret
than he'd ever imagined. Nor did he know what trouble that secret would cause him.
B
RIAN HAD
been pleased with much of the organization of that first venture, but during his next few
expeditions to Svalbard he was continually testing possible improvements. He began to build up his
equipment, buying a whole new set of Nansen sledges to distribute among different field parties. Even
though the Nansen hadn't protected his party from the ice cavern, such wide snow bridges were rare,
and in every other respect the sledges had been great. He even found a handy source of Nansens back
in England—buying several from the film set of
Scott of the Antarctic
, the movie that was just about
to catch Paul Hoffman's young imagination, across the Atlantic in Canada.
Brian also began to realize that self-sufficiency and self-reliance were the keys to operating in
Svalbard. Anything he left to someone else carried the risk of failure. Materials that had to be shipped
north every season could be lost in transit. Relying on someone else for transport by sea could mean
hanging around for days by the quay. Gradually, Brian established a base for himself in Svalbard,
where he could store goods over the winter. He set up mechanical and electrical shops there. He bought
covered motorboats that could sail safely around the coast even in the choppiest of seas. His expedi-
tions became like guerrilla raids. Every summer his geological parties swarmed over the ice of Sval-
