Frozen in Time

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  Spina grew impatient and climbed atop the front end of the PN9E like a hood ornament. As he waited for the trail team, he spotted a can of milk some fifty feet away. Without thinking, he climbed down and walked across the glacier toward it. When Spina reached the can, he noticed a small crack in the ice. He stared down at it, mesmerized by the jewel-like blue-green translucence. Monteverde inched in his direction and told Spina that he was standing on a bridged-over crevasse. If it collapsed, he’d be enjoying the lovely view for the rest of his short life.

  Chastened, Spina backed away. Safe inside the snow cave, he got an earful from Best for risking his life—without retrieving the precious milk.

  Hours passed, and finally the survivors could hear sled dogs barking and the trail team calling out commands. For a time, rescuers disappeared from sight in the dip of a small ravine. Monteverde, Spina, and Best called to them for a half hour but received no answer. Fearing the worst—three more men lost in a crevasse—they slouched back into their cave and broke down in tears. The dread they’d felt that more men would die on their behalf, a motive for their brief suicide pact, had apparently come true.

  As they wept, the trio heard someone walking on the bomber wing that served as their roof. Spina heard a voice call, “I guess these ice worms don’t want to leave this joint!” The survivors rushed outside and shook hands with Strong, Healey, and Dolleman. The trail team explained that they’d disappeared in a gully a half mile away to pitch camp and to chain their dogs out of range of the crevasses. The men got to know one another, drank coffee, and ate ham sandwiches. Then the trail team returned to their dogs.

  Back in the ice cave, the survivors talked about how little exhilaration they felt at the rescuers’ arrival. Spina suspected that their emotions, like their bodies, had been dulled by the cold. He wrote in a journal, “After 129 days of fighting everything the Arctic could throw at us, I guess nothing could excite us.”

  That night, the PN9E trio unwrapped clean, dry socks and fresh clothes they’d saved for their departure. They’d been unwashed and unshaven for more than four months, their hair so long and unkempt that they barely resembled their fresh-faced military portraits. They reeked, and they knew it. But at least when they left their Greenland snow cave, they’d be wearing clean underwear.

  They climbed into their sleeping bags but couldn’t sleep, so they talked all night. Spina spent the next morning vomiting, either from too much ham or too much bottled-up anticipation. While Spina emptied his stomach, Best dug up the PN9E’s Norden Bombsight, which they’d buried in ice for safety. Spina pulled himself together, and the three men carried out their sworn duty, destroying the bombsight by throwing it into a crevasse. They listened for it to hit bottom, but they never heard a sound.

  When the trail team arrived, it was time for Monteverde, Best, and Spina to abandon ship. Before leaving, Spina suggested that they burn the PN9E’s cockpit, to keep its secrets from enemy eyes. Strong told him not to worry; no one would ever be brave, foolish, or unlucky enough to come this way again.

  22

  THE TEN-METER ANOMALY

  AUGUST 2012

  IN THE PREDAWN hours of Saturday, August 25, Jim Blow hears what sounds like frozen rain drumming against his tent. The noise takes him back two years, when the last attempt to find the Duck was nearly washed away by relentless downpours. Burrowed inside his sleeping bag, Jim turns to Rob Tucker, his tent mate and fellow Coast Guard pilot: “Rob, this is where the shit hits the fan.” But at daybreak they realize that the sound was granular snow beating against the tent’s nylon sides. Clear skies are holding on the Koge Bay glacier, at least for now. But good weather is meaningless if we don’t know where to search.

  After Spam on bagels for breakfast, science and safety teams head out from base camp hoping that the GPS issue has been resolved and the receivers are working properly. But by noon, Jim is smoldering: “We still can’t verify the points of interest.” He leaves camp, hiking more than a mile toward the rocks closest to the water. Ostensibly, he hopes to find scrape marks on a ridge if the Duck hit a nunatak, or pieces of the plane deposited by the flow of the glacier. He knows that the chances of success are slim to none, but it’s better than sitting idly in the dome tent, nursing coffee and aggravation.

  Jaana continues her radar work, roped together with Frank and John to again sweep the best-guess locations of Essex One, Essex Two, and Points A, B, and K. Terri straps the magnetometer onto her back, its mast antenna extending like a flagpole four feet above her head, and goes with Nick and Alberto. Nick writes later, “Terri stomps back and forth across Point O, mumbling to herself about the readings and the data not saving. Basically, the instrument wasn’t calibrated, she didn’t really know how to use it, and those issues could have been resolved in camp instead of wasting our time on the glacier. Oh well, another pleasant walk out on the ice.”

  Although the magnetometer’s effectiveness is suspect and the GPS coordinates remain dubious, the work continues under the theory that maybe the flags are close enough to the points of interest for the equipment to spot a large metal object embedded in the ice. Also, there’s nothing else to do. With our days on the glacier numbered, the only alternative would be to give up.

  Both teams return to base camp hours later, tired and empty-handed. “I really was not seeing anything,” Terri says. “It was flatline the whole way.”

  Throughout the morning, Lou’s been furiously making calls on his satellite phone, seeking answers everywhere from the Kulusuk Airport control tower to Colorado, where he reaches a geophysicist from the 2010 expedition. The call evolves into a lesson that helps Alberto to program the high-tech Trimble GPS receivers. From a separate call, Lou learns that an Air Greenland helicopter is en route with a technician to service a nearby ground station that enhances the accuracy of GPS satellites. GPS ground stations serve as fixed reference points; when they work correctly, they allow GPS receivers to pinpoint latitude and longitude coordinates within inches. It’s not clear what service the ground station needs—a reboot is one guess, a swift kick is another. But Lou thinks that the ground station might be the culprit for our problems, and when it’s fixed the GPS units will work properly.

  Jim isn’t buying it. He dismisses the service visit to the GPS ground station as an unrelated coincidence. Instead he blames human error, caused by Lou and Steve’s mistaken assumption that Jaana or Bil would know how to operate the Trimbles. Because they’re unfamiliar with the devices, we’re forced to rely on the personal GPS units brought by John and two Coast Guardsmen, Rob Tucker and “Doc” Harman, which are putting out misleading readings.

  By Saturday afternoon, after days of trial and lots of errors, Alberto and several others realize that the personal GPS units were programmed to the wrong setting. That setting, Jim says, “works great for the United States, but can be off by as much as four hundred to five hundred meters in southern Greenland.” He’s certain that the mistaken settings are the real reason for the misplaced flags.

  The personal GPS units are reset for Greenland, and Alberto loads the Trimbles with the mission’s points of interest. Tests show that all the units—the personal devices as well as the Trimbles—now display the same readings for the same locations. Best of all, when the units are checked against the known coordinates of the base camp, it’s a perfect match.

  “Mistakes happen,” Lou says. “It’s how you fix them that counts.”

  On our third day on the glacier, we’re in business. Just in time, too, as relations between North South Polar and the Coast Guard have deteriorated. One exchange between the teams’ leaders outside the command tent captures the mood.

  “We’re almost starting to plan the evacuation,” Jim tells Lou, “and we haven’t done much of anything.”

  “What do you want me to do, Jim,” Lou asks, “just start digging random holes in the ice?”

  “No, Lou,” Jim says, barely containing his anger. “I want you to dig six fucking holes where I told you to d
ig six fucking holes, at the points of interest.”

  After more discussion, the expedition’s leaders walk off in opposite directions.

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, with a fully loaded Trimble in hand, Nick, Alberto, and I suit up to return to Essex One, Essex Two, and Points A, B, and K, to place the flags in their correct locations. Before we leave base camp, Nick and Alberto argue over whether we need to be roped together on the glacier.

  “I’ve been on expeditions where the work doesn’t get done because of ‘safety’ getting in the way,” Alberto says. Nick says his wife wants him to return home alive, so we’ll use ropes. Alberto, who has a wife and three children, tells Nick that he resents the suggestion that he’s cavalier about safety or his family’s interests. He points out that repeated treks to the area where we’re headed have proved that the glacier there is stable, and we’ll be able to see the crevasses along the route. Nick holds his ground, arguing that a few minutes to rope up would be insignificant compared to the delays we’ve already faced, and the small investment of time might prevent a crisis that would doom the mission. Soon we’re roped together in a line, with me in the middle, twenty-five yards behind Alberto and twenty-five yards ahead of Nick.

  The hardened snow crunches beneath our boots as we head northeast from base camp. The sky is a brilliant aquatic blue. Sunshine bounces off the ice. We hike up and down moguls and drainage channels, occasionally coming across areas as smooth as a skating rink. There’s no sign of life anywhere: no plants, no birds, no animals, no insects, just ice. Nick and Alberto don’t make small talk, so the glacier is quiet except for the wind, our footsteps, and our breathing. When we reach a seven-foot-wide ice bridge spanning a crevasse, I take two fast steps across, then silently celebrate that Nick prevailed on the safety ropes. If I fall through, I tell myself as I cross, they’ll pull me up. The bridge holds firm and we keep going.

  We reach the first point of interest after twenty minutes and spend the next hour moving the orange flags, writing the date and the Trimble-supplied coordinates on each. Most of the new placements are about one hundred yards from their previous positions, far enough to have put Jaana’s initial radar sweeps out of range of the most promising anomalies. Before returning to base camp, we look across the glacier and see the flags arranged in exactly the pattern the mission map predicted.

  JAANA GUSTAFSSON DISPLAYS A COMPUTER IMAGE OF THE RADAR LINES SHE HAS WALKED ON THE GLACIER WITHOUT GETTING A RESPONSE SHE THINKS WOULD COME FROM THE DUCK. (MITCHELL ZUCKOFF PHOTOGRAPH.)

  The correctly plotted points of interest spark a wave of enthusiasm. The feeling intensifies when Jaana runs her radar over the newly confirmed flag locations and reports possible anomalies near Points A and B. Nothing turns up at the other spots, but at least now we have something to melt toward.

  That night, I sit next to Jaana in the dome as she reviews the data on her laptop. She’s quiet by nature, with a dry sense of humor. It’s obvious that she’s not excited about the readings. She shows me her computer screen and explains that although the hyperbolas near Points A and B depict something under the ice, they seem likely to have been made by empty voids or crevasses. There’s a chance they might be the Duck, but she wouldn’t bet on it. They’re just the best options she’s seen so far. I slink to my tent and crawl into my sleeping bag, the raw discomfort of the ice sheet beneath my back fitting my mood. My only consolation is that WeeGee didn’t have a chance to ask me tonight how the book ends.

  ALBERTO BEHAR LEADS THE MAGNETOMETER TEAM FROM CAMP, FOLLOWED BY TERRI LISMAN, WITH THE DEVICE STRAPPED ON HER BACK, AND W. R. “BIL” THUMA. (U.S. COAST GUARD PHOTOGRAPH BY JETTA DISCO.)

  THE NEXT DAY, as everyone eats breakfast in the dome, Steve tries to pump us up: “This is probably the most critical day of our little jaunt out here, and hopefully it will be a success.” In a flurry of activity, Jaana, Nick, and John head out to Point O, while Terri, Bil, and Alberto take the magnetometer to survey the anomalies that Jaana identified around Points A and B. The rest of us fall under WeeGee’s command as members of Team Hotsy.

  Compared to the expedition’s other critical pieces of equipment—the radar, the magnetometer, the Trimbles, and Alberto’s down-hole video camera—the Hotsy is a dancing bear among ballerinas. The seven-hundred-pound pressure washer is the size and shape of a basement freezer. It sports a red steel frame on twelve-inch tires; a silver, keg-sized burner filled with heating coils; a Honda engine; tanks for gas and diesel; a car battery; a muffler that doesn’t prevent it from sounding like a jet engine; and assorted valves and hoses. One hose draws water into the Hotsy, which heats it to 225 degrees Fahrenheit. The boiling water is then spit out through another hose at 3,500 pounds of pressure per square inch. In civilian life, the Hotsy’s purpose is high-powered cleaning, with enough force to tear barnacles off boat hulls and graffiti tags off buildings. Here its job is to interrogate the glacier until it surrenders its secrets.

  To do its job, the Hotsy must be stationed above the site of a radar anomaly, so WeeGee can melt down to check it out. The problem is that the shortest distance between base camp and Point A is a half mile uphill, across a crevassed glacier. Ideally, we’d call for an Air Greenland helicopter to airlift the machine, but none is available. Our only option is brute force. WeeGee assesses the situation and decides that in a match between the Hotsy and us, we’d lose. So he changes the odds. He detaches the two halves of one of the extension ladders bought in Keflavík, then straps one half across the front of the Hotsy and the other half across the back. With two ladders extending parallel to one another from the body of the machine, the Hotsy bears a squinting resemblance to a certain World War II amphibious biplane.

  By attaching the ladders, WeeGee has turned the Hotsy into a huge blocking sled. Nine people—four in front and five in back—can grip the ladder rungs and the Hotsy’s frame to push in unison. At the sight of this innovation/contraption, Coast Guard public affairs specialist Jetta Disco coins a slogan for whenever problems arise: “Just ask yourself, ‘What would WeeGee do?’ ”

  Team Hotsy gathers along the ladders as WeeGee directs the ascent to Point A. While the rest of us assume our pushing positions bundled in heavy layers, hats, and gloves, WeeGee works gloveless and hatless, in black snow pants, a black sweater, and his trademark orange boots. Koge Bay doesn’t qualify as cold to WeeGee, who spent months carving Glacier Girl out of the ice. A consensus emerges that after so much time in Greenland, he’s now half polar bear.

  We get rolling to cries of “Let’s melt some ice!” The combined North South Polar–Coast Guard effort gains steam. We’re almost trotting as we move up the steady incline. It’s not an ideal moment, but during a rest stop I tell the story of Clarence Wedel falling through a hidden crevasse seventy years ago, a few miles away. Fortunately, the glacier allows us to remain on its surface, even as we push the Hotsy across at least five bridged-over crevasses to Point A.

  While the rest of us catch our breath, WeeGee fires up the engine, arranges the hoses, drills a hole to create a water source, and gets to work. Normally, the Hotsy uses a spray gun at the end of the hot-water hose. But WeeGee replaces it with a ten-foot black steel pipe. On its end he screws a pointed silver nozzle that pushes against the glacier as it melts a six-inch-diameter hole. It takes forty-five minutes or more to reach a depth of fifty to sixty feet. While WeeGee works, there’s little for the rest of us to do but wait and hope that he hits something.

  With countless details to manage, Lou returns to base camp. While looking through his bags, he finds a gold ball that’s supposed to screw into the top of the flagpole. He cradles it in his hands and waits for help mounting it. Jetta tells Lou that military lore suggests that a hollow flagpole ball should contain a match and a bullet. A commander facing defeat is supposed to burn the flag to prevent its desecration and use the bullet to commit suicide.

  AFTER MELTING SEVERAL holes at Point A, and instructing me in the little-known art of Hotsy glacier drilling, WeeGee drops Alberto’
s camera into the holes, hoping to see signs of Duck. The camera’s images are projected onto a twenty-inch diagonal video screen Alberto has embedded in a small Pelican case, and we crowd around to watch. The images resemble a colonoscopy in an icehole, although here everyone hopes that the camera will spot a foreign object. But one hole after another contains nothing but ice.

  That wouldn’t bother WeeGee—the radar can be imprecise, so maybe whatever caused the anomaly is a few feet from the holes. Under normal circumstances, he’d simply melt more holes. But WeeGee notices a disturbing pattern: water from the Hotsy pipe builds up as though stopped by a clogged drain. But when each hole reaches a certain depth, the water disappears. It’s a mystery to the rest of us, but to WeeGee it’s bad news: the holes are draining into an underground ice void. The anomaly that Jaana spotted isn’t the Duck. As she suspected, it’s a subsurface pocket of air in the glacier. WeeGee delivers the disappointing news to base camp via walkie-talkie. The other anomaly proves no different. We leave the Hotsy on the glacier and trudge back.

  LATER THE SAME day, on the ice beyond our sleeping tents, WeeGee helps Jim test the magnetometer. They bury a three-foot-long steel spike in a shallow hole and, without telling Terri the location, ask her to scan the area. A beachcombing metal detector Lou brought as a backup device has already failed.

  Terri walks back and forth, the magnetometer on her back, staring at the little screen at her waist. At one point the device seems to register a slight signal, but the test is a bust. Terri says a plane engine would give off a much stronger response, but Jim walks away shaking his head.

  With few remaining options and little time, Jim, Lou, Jetta, Jaana, and I walk along the rocks to the spot overlooking Balchen’s X. Jim still hopes that the Duck is out there, and he again describes the flight path Pritchard might have taken. But Jaana’s radar search of Essex Three, a heavily crevassed site closest to Balchen’s X, turned up nothing, removing another once-promising point of interest. Out of earshot from the others, Jim concedes, “I’m starting to think we’re not going to come up with anything.”