I considered our team’s vital statistics. I was eleven years older than Mike and approaching my fiftieth birthday. I was taller by five inches and heavier by three stone. But in terms of sheer strength, especially of the vital lower limb powerbase, Mike was clinically tested as considerably stronger.
At home on our Exmoor farm, Ginny would give me twice her own food portions, although she worked harder than I did. Over the months ahead I would be consuming exactly the same calorific intake as Mike. I feared that, like the heavily built Evans on Scott’s team, my performance would deteriorate first and more markedly than Mike’s. I determined from the outset, therefore, to avoid my normal course of forging ahead at maximum output.
As each piece of equipment was loaded we ticked it off in our notebooks, alongside its weight, down to the nearest ounce. The total was, as we had feared, 485 pounds each, constituting far heavier loads than those of any previous polar manhaul journey on record.
We finished loading the sledges and looked at their bulk. Then at each other, and shrugged. The moment of truth had arrived. We adjusted the manhaul harnesses about our stomachs and shoulders. I leaned against the traces with my full bodyweight. The near half-ton sledge paid no attention. I looked back and spotted an eight-inch ice rut across the front of the runners. I tugged again with my left shoulder only, and the sledge, avoiding the rut, moved forward. I will never forget that instant. I could pull a 485-pound sledge. Mike was also on the move. The expedition was under way.
After a hundred yards I stopped, out of breath. I was pleased to see, looking back, that Mike was also labouring hard. The thought of pulling my sledge for an entire mile, never mind to the South Pole and beyond, was appalling. The map, or strictly speaking chart (since the sea was beneath us), showed a rash of blue lines, the crevasse symbol, running south along the foot of Berkner Island for some eighty miles.
Should we fix a safety line between us before reaching the first crevasse? I knew this was our agreed drill but the sheer weight of the sledge had already biased me against any action beyond the sheer task of progress. Even though we were descending a gentle incline, the sledge was totally inert. The very instant I stopped pulling, it stopped moving. There was not the least glissade. I conjured up a parallel. If I were to lash together three average-sized adults, each weighing 160 pounds, dump them in a fibreglass bathtub with no legs and then drag them through sand-dunes for 1,700 miles, the difficulties involved would be similar.
My sledge-load soon grew to represent something animate and hostile. I knew the pattern well. First my inner anger would be directed at the weather, the equipment and the ice. Later at my companion. The same would hold good for Mike. I determined never to allow myself to think unnecessarily far ahead. Sufficient unto each day is the mileage thereof . . . providing daily progress tallies with the schedule.
After two hours I felt certain we had reached the ice-shelf. About a mile behind us and to our immediate north was the ice-front, a chaotic jumble of giant ice fragments where shelf met true sea-ice. In every other direction there was nothing but mirage shimmer and the great white glare of Antarctica.
After five and a half hours it was time to halt for we had been awake for twenty-four hours since leaving Punta Arenas. For navigation purposes, we must keep to a carefully timed daily schedule. I intended to use my watch and body shadow to establish direction all the way to the Pole and that meant keeping the sun due north at local midday. There were, I reasoned, only another 1,696 miles to cover and, since we had rations for a hundred days, there was yet time to find a way of increasing the daily average to sixteen miles. There must be absolutely no rest days or we would fail.
Remembering the promise I had made to Mike, I alternated the navigation with him at hourly intervals. I found this increasingly annoying since I had spent well over twenty years leading expeditions from the front and mistrusted anyone else’s navigating abilities. Another thing that annoyed me, I reflected as my legs dangled inside my first mini-crevasse of the trip, was the ignorant complacency of journalists who said that of course it was ‘different nowadays’ with all our technological gadgetry. Crevasses are today, just as in the time of Scott and Mawson, the chief threat to Antarctic travellers and the danger has not lessened one iota over the intervening years.
Ascent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Antarctic Plateau
Up to my armpits in deep soft snow, with my lower torso treading air over nothingness, I only wished the gadgetry fallacy had some basis in reality. Too much movement on trying to extricate my body could in an instant collapse the whole snow-bridge. My attempts to look back at my sledge failed, for the hood of my parka and my cotton balaclava prevented sufficient lateral movement of my neck. Furthermore I had breathed into the balaclava as I fell, which had the immediate effect of misting up my goggles and the mist had frozen across the insides of the lens. To all intents and purposes I was blind since I had no hand free to tear off the goggles.
The alloy poles leading back from my body harness to the sledge had snapped close behind me, which actually helped me by allowing sufficient movement for me to wriggle up, inch by inch, until my hips were out of the hole. The rest was easy. I replaced the broken poles with rope traces.
Many of the crevasses we were to negotiate were over a hundred feet wide with sagging bridges. The weakest point was not, as might be expected, in the centre but along the fault-line, where the bridge was joined to the crevasse wall’s lip. In the most dangerous cases the whole bridge had already descended a few feet down into the maw before catching on some unseen temporary stopper. New snow had then partially filled the resulting trough.
Hauling the sledges down on to such teetering bridges presented no great physical task since gravity was on our side. If the bridge held under our initial weight, we pulled onwards over the centre span. At this point the going became singularly off-putting because, in order to manhaul our monster loads up the far side of the disintegrating bridge, maximum downward pressure with skis and sticks must be applied to its weakest point. There were moments of sickening apprehension as our straining ski sticks plunged through the crust, or part of a sledge lurched backwards, its prow or stern having broken through. I never grew inured to the crevasse hazard and continued to sweat and silently curse as each new death trap passed beneath us.
Fifteen miles above us was a feature first discovered by the British Antarctic Survey nine years before, the hole in the ozone layer, which is also the nest where man-made pollutants called chlorofluorocarbons come to roost. Stratospheric winds carry these compounds, long used in aerosols and coolants, south, where they mix with high-altitude clouds in the cold and dark of the Antarctic winter. As the sun returns in spring, these frozen chemical clouds react with its rays, releasing chlorine molecules that temporarily dissolve the thin layer of ozone that protects earthbound life from harmful solar radiation. Since we were travelling directly below this hazard, it made sense to cover our skin. But, hauling huge loads in our tight dog harnesses, we needed to breathe deeply, gasping for air without fogging our goggles, so the sun shone day after day on our uncovered lips and noses. Mine deteriorated rapidly. The lip scabs always stuck together overnight and, when I woke, the act of tearing my lips apart in order to speak and drink invariably opened up all the raw places. Breakfast from a communal bowl consisted of porridge oats in a gravy of blood.
Soon our minds churned over the fact that we were not averaging ten miles a day. We had to cut the loads.
‘Mike, I’m chucking my duvet jacket. I have hardly worn it all week. We work so hard we will keep warm even when winter comes.’
He nodded. We both knew it was a big decision. The weather was now warm, in polar terms. Maybe we would have second thoughts later. But there would be no later if we could not get a move on now. Next morning we buried the two down-filled jackets along with the empty ration packs. I was later bitterly to regret the decision but it is easy to be wise with hindsight.
At the end of the first week we ent
ered a zone of great instability. Thunderous roars warned us that the whole ice-shelf had entered a hyperactive phase, causing hitherto safe snow-bridges to collapse all around us into their crevasses. No amount of ice lore could keep us out of trouble here. A gaping hole opened up with an explosion of snow spray as we watched. Some ten paces ahead of Mike, and 45 feet wide by 120 feet in length, it lay directly across his intended path. Had it occurred but a few seconds later he and his sledge would have disappeared, along with several tons of plunging snow-bridge. All around us renewed implosions announced further cratering. The sensation was memorably frightening. We must escape at once to a safer area. But where was safer? Only the looming bulk of Berkner Island offered certain stability. We roped up with nervous fingers, fearing that at any moment the snow beneath us would open up and dump us hundreds of feet. The surface of the ice shelf all about us rumbled and reverberated again and again. Geysers of snow dust rose into the air. The feeling was similar to closing on enemy troops when under mortar fire. As each new crump exploded at random, the fear increased that the next catastrophe would have our name on it.
The nylon rope between us was sixty feet in length. We moved as fast as the sledges and the wings of fear allowed. Time stood still. I came to an abrupt halt as a wave of cold air rushed past, accompanied by the loudest and closest of the explosions. I ducked, for the all-engulfing sound seemed to pass both overhead and underfoot.
Immediately between Mike and me an immense crater appeared. One moment the ice-shelf ahead was solid and white. The next a maw like the mouth of the Underworld, steaming with snow vapour, lay across our intended route, wide enough to swallow a double-decker bus. The roaring echoes of imploding snow cascading into the bowels of the ice-shelf returned in successive waves, like shore ripples from an undersea volcano. Although a cold wind scoured the ice-sheet, I sweated with fear. The next hour was a nightmare of apprehension; nowhere was safe. Only pure luck enabled us to escape from this volatile zone.
On the ninth day the ice-shelf showed signs of climbing towards the interior. There were no spot heights on my local chart and my small-scale map of Antarctica showed only that we were about to enter the largest crevasse field on the Filchner Ice-shelf. Mike agreed that we seemed to be climbing but maintained that the undulating series of rising steppes, which I could see through the wafting mists, was in reality only an illusion in our minds caused by the heavy loads and mirage effects. We could not actually see any gradient.
Fortunately the deep drifts of the ice-shelf did not extend to these wind-scoured flanks so the going was easier than at any time since the firm coastal strip. Temperatures of around –15°C were not low enough to coarsen the surface and Mike, when navigating, set a pace that seemed to me as the day went by increasingly and unnecessarily fast.
I resolved to make no comment and at first found no difficulty in keeping hard on his heels. My shoulder blades and lower back screamed at me but the old competitive urge came back. Why let this guy steam ahead? For almost twenty years now I had pulled sledges, in all conditions, faster than any colleague of any age, and on the northern expeditions over the past six years I had out-pulled Mike, day after day, in even the worst of Arctic conditions.
I talked persuasively to myself in this vein but all the time Mike’s small but powerful legs pulled on piston-like and I began to realise it was self-defeating for me to keep up such a pace. At thirty-nine Mike was in his prime. In Siberia, when he was thirty-six and I was forty-seven, I had no difficulty keeping well ahead. So, at that stage, his eleven-year advantage made no difference. Something must have happened since.
Like Shackleton, the first man to plan a crossing of Antarctica, I found myself preoccupied with the ageing process. Each new ache of muscle or tendon soon achieved obsession rating and blisters and chafing sores screamed their presence through every long and toilsome day. I swore silently when Mike was leading and moving faster than suited my pace for then I was forced by pride to abandon the rhythm of my polar plod. Self-pity is not an attractive trait and I do not remember indulging in it on previous occasions. As the days struggled by and the stress mounted, we faced increasing tensions between us. We could not ease the pain, the fear, above all the sheer burden of the sledge-loads by kicking our sledges, so we took it out on each other, at first silently, as had been our wont in the Arctic, but then with controlled outbursts.
After only five miles on the seventeenth day Mike’s foot blisters became painful and he told me he thought it would be sensible to stop. I said nothing in the interests of diplomacy and we camped four hours early, to my mind a dangerous precedent.
We reached the Antarctic coastline some time during the twentieth morning. We could not actually see where the floating ice-shelf stopped and the continental ice began since the joining point was covered in seamless snow, but once we crossed over we began the true continental crossing journey. At first any uphill gradient was imperceptible but by the afternoon each and every heave on the traces required concentrated mental and physical effort. And then we reached the start of the first sastrugi field, a great rash of iron-hard furrows lying directly across our route. I know no other way to advance when the ice gets nasty than to attack it head-on with every ounce of gristle at your disposal. Tightening my harness and stick-straps, I focused on each successive wall of ice and threw energy conservation to the winds. Towards the end of the day, after eleven hours of uphill hauling, we came to an especially rugged zone of serrated ice and Mike lagged well behind, despite my pauses for him to catch up. At the end of the final hour I had the tent up in time for his arrival and knew at once that he was livid. Mike let rip. I had surged irresponsibly ahead despite the evil terrain and, worse, I had gone straight at the sastrugi instead of taking a sensible indirect route through the worst of it. Fortunately, the hostility we nurtured towards each other on the route almost invariably evaporated once we were in the tent, which saved the journey for both of us from becoming a non-stop nightmare.
That is not to say that our irritations with each other eased. He would surge far ahead and complain at my steady plod, when not attacking sastrugi. I was infuriated when his watch stopped because he had not put in a new battery before leaving England, despite several reminders. This meant I had to let him have mine and shout when it was my turn in front. His blister and diarrhoea stops also outraged me. I was all set to have the whole thing out with him when he announced that the abscess on his heel was so swollen that he had decided to operate. I watched with intense admiration as he gave himself two deep injections of anaesthetic and then plunged a scalpel deep into the swelling with diagonal incisions. Pus poured out and the swelling visibly decreased. Mike then bandaged up his heel and packed away his medical kit. I am not sure whether or not he felt faint but I certainly did. I said nothing more about the early halts or the stricken Rolex.
Over the next three days we climbed to 5,000 feet above sea-level with constant Force Eight winds in our faces. Arriving some distance ahead of Mike one evening, I began to erect the tent by fixing a safety line to my sledge before trying to slot the ten-foot alloy poles into the sleeving. The fourth and last pole was almost positioned when an especially violent blast tore the tent from my mitts and buckled one of the poles. Since I only carried a single eighteen-inch spare pole section for the entire journey, I left the bent pole in place and prayed we would be spared a big katabatic event in the days ahead.
I thought of Ginny back on Exmoor. She had lit an outsize church candle in our kitchen and intended to keep it burning day and night until I returned. It was four feet long but so many hundreds of miles stretched ahead of us I could not help but think the candle would run out long before I came home.
One morning I noticed a black item behind Mike’s sledge. It turned out to be a spare battery. Mike looked grim, as well he might, for he had packed the battery deep inside his load and there was no way it could have escaped but through a hole in the hull. We rolled the sledge on to one side and then the other, revealing a ra
gged split across its entire width. This had been caused by Mike falling twenty feet into a crevasse days earlier. We had done our best to repair it at the time, but not, it now seemed, well enough. We erected the tent as a new gale blew up, unloaded, repaired and reloaded his sledge, then set off again to make mileage over the last four hours of the day.
The following day brought our first true white-out as well as sastrugi. When we camped, after a memorably nasty ten hours lurching over unseen obstacles and crashing into invisible trenches, I found both my cheeks burning and inflamed by UV rays. I had exposed my cheeks to help demist my goggles but it had been a mistake. Mike’s eyes, even though he wore goggles for all but two hours, were also affected. Soon after we camped he developed snow blindness symptoms. Only the mildest of attacks, but enough to have him lying back in considerable pain.
Since our overall speed and rate of progress for the first forty days were slightly better than for any previous Antarctic manhauling journey on record, our pace should not theoretically have caused dissension. But we were both under increasing strain and our bodies, under the stress of slow starvation combined with enormous energy expenditure, were altering chemically. Subsequent analysis of our blood samples was to show that our whole enzyme systems, everything that controlled our absorption of fat, were changing and we were recording levels of gut hormones twice as high as were previously known to science. We were adapting to our high-fat rations in a way hitherto unrecognised. Furthermore, with zero remaining body fat, we were losing muscle and weight from our hearts as well as our body mass.
By the fifth week Mike’s intermittent surges of speedy sledging were telling on him. He confided to his diary that he was feeling hypoglycaemic. He told me that he could ‘feel the weight falling off’. On Christmas Eve we were able to take full advantage for the first time of a wind driving us south and use the sails we had optimistically brought along to attach to our sledges. But on Christmas Day the wind veered again. I was now suffering from haemorrhoids, which at least allowed me to forget the pain in my feet due to the new aggravation. Cherry-Garrard wrote: ‘Sometimes it was difficult not to howl.’ I understood how he felt.
Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know Page 17