Frozen in Time

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  Bil and Alberto volunteer to leave to avoid canceling other obligations, but no one else wants to miss the hole-melting, camera-dropping finale. Steve clears his throat and reveals the names of the soon-to-depart: “So, going out today are myself, Terri, Ryan, Alberto, Michelle, and Bil. OK? Everybody else will be remaining, and the remaining group will figure out the lifts for tomorrow and Thursday.”

  Several people object on Michelle’s behalf, knowing how much she wants to remain in camp. Steve wavers, asking Jim if he knows which Air Greenland helicopter is coming and whether we might fill it with more equipment and fewer people. But Jim wants to stick to the plan they’d made before entering the dome.

  “We need to get people off the ice. That has to happen,” he says.

  Steve finds a way to commiserate with the rank-and-file yet also support the team leaders’ decision: “Every one of us wants to stay. Unfortunately, six of us have to go back.”

  Steve’s mixed message and his inquiry to Jim about fewer people leaving create an opening, and Michelle gains more voices of support. Frank, however, is silent, not wanting his relationship with Michelle to be seen as coloring his judgment as safety leader. Faced with more rumblings on Michelle’s behalf, Steve throws up his hands. “I’m not making a command decision on this one.”

  That sets off Rob, who as second-in-command of the Coast Guard contingent occupies a parallel position to Steve’s on North South Polar.

  “You’re the command,” Rob tells Steve. “That’s the job. You want me to make it?”

  The tent goes silent until Bil tells Steve what everyone is thinking: “The gauntlet’s thrown on the ground there, bud.”

  Lou steps into the fray, again raising the idea of sending gear before people. Discussion moves to the agenda for the day then circles back to the helicopter. Ultimately, Lou expresses support for the original plan, and both he and Jim say they believe that the six people Steve named should be the first to leave.

  Steve seems distracted, agitated by the public conflict with Rob about command. He detours the discussion to describe how the campsite should be broken down and to list tasks needing completion before the helicopter arrives. Finally he musters himself to declare who stays and who goes.

  “Michelle,” Steve says, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but—”

  “I’m useful,” she tells him, listing her skills in mountaineering, glacier climbing, medical care, and elsewhere.

  “Well, you know what,” Steve says, reversing field, “I’m going to make the command decision. Rob, you’re going.”

  Blindsided by Steve’s switch and frustrated by a week of leadership he finds lacking, Rob can’t restrain himself. “See how that felt? Feel good?” he asks Steve mockingly. “That’s what it feels like—command!”

  “Oh, really, thank you,” Steve shoots back. “Thanks for telling me what command feels like. Ever have a combat command?”

  “You were saying you didn’t want to make a command decision,” Rob answers. “That’s your job.”

  The glow is off the dome, and tension is now the order of the day.

  BEFORE THE MORNING meeting ends, the six departing team members are told to gather their belongings and break down their tents. With no radar or magnetometer teams going out, there’s not much for the rest of us to do before the helicopter arrives. Eager to get as close as possible to the anomaly, Lou, John, Frank, Michelle, Jaana, and I head across the glacier to BW-1. John carries an ice auger to drill holes to see if we might find pieces of the Duck near the surface. We also bring the beachcombing metal detector, more for kicks than with any expectation that it would be powerful enough to find the anomaly so deep in the ice.

  It’s an hour-long uphill climb, and we’re winded when we reach the orange flag. With time to spare, we soak up the sun and a spectacular view of Koge Bay, clogged with icebergs as big as cargo ships. It’s the clearest sightline we’ve had all week of the glacier where the PN9E crashed, a sharply rising, impossible-to-see hazard for any pilot “flying in milk.” Jaana and I take turns passing over the anomaly with the metal detector, which buzzes only when we accidentally bang it against our legs. John and Frank use the auger to drill enough holes to make a coffin-sized opening in the ice, but there’s no sign of the Duck. Soon the hole fills with frigid water flowing through the glacier, putting an end to the drilling.

  The sun is warm and skies are blue, so several of us use our coats as blankets and stretch out for glacier naps. By noon, Michelle leaves to make lunch and Lou goes with her to oversee the first stage of base camp breakdown. A tempest of problems awaits them.

  AFTER SPEAKING WITH airport officials by satellite phone, Steve reports that a thick fog has grounded the helicopters at Kulusuk at least until tomorrow afternoon. When the sky clears, Air Greenland will send a helicopter to move the Hotsy and to get as many people as possible off the ice ahead of the storm. In a small way, it’s good news for everyone who didn’t want to leave the glacier today. But that’s little consolation compared to the larger costs.

  No helicopter today means no Hotsy move tonight. That means no hole-melting tonight or tomorrow morning to explore the anomaly. Even if the helicopter does come late tomorrow and moves the Hotsy, the storm might leave us no time to investigate BW-1. In that case, our only option would be a profoundly disappointing backup plan: place a satellite-tracking device above the anomaly and go home. We wouldn’t know whether we’d found the Duck’s crash site and the resting places of Pritchard, Bottoms, and Howarth. A year or more might pass before some or all of us could return. That is, assuming enough money might materialize to support yet another expedition. With no evidence more solid than radar and magnetometer hits, it’s doubtful. The thought casts a pall over camp.

  In hushed conversations held in clusters around the rocks and tents, there’s talk of riding out the storm and moving the Hotsy after the bad weather passes. But that idea is soon squashed. We don’t know how bad the storm might be or how long it might last. And even if we did hunker down, we’d have little or no time afterward to melt holes. The Coast Guard’s C-130 is due to return to Kulusuk in three days, and that’s the only way to get our four tons of equipment back to the United States. There’s no hope of delaying the big plane, and the cost of flying the gear and everyone on commercial airlines is beyond prohibitive.

  The bottom line is that if we want to investigate the BW-1 anomaly, it’s now or possibly never. Without a helicopter’s help, we have about twenty-four hours to somehow move the Hotsy 1.3 miles from Point A to BW-1, largely uphill and across innumerable hazards.

  Lou, Jim, and several others stand in a tense knot on the ice field, discussing and rejecting one option after another. Lou is already on record as being uncharacteristically pessimistic about our chances: “There’s no way we can move the Hotsy over land.” It’s physically impossible, he thinks, and there’s a danger that a bridged-over crevasse might give way and swallow some or all of us.

  Writing in his journal, Nick sums up the risks by recording observations from his first trip to the anomaly site: “The route to BW-1 was an indirect path through a series of open crevasses, surface meltwater channels, and hidden moulins [deep vertical shafts within a glacier]. These last ones raised my eyebrows. Not far beneath the surface you could hear water running. Not crevasses, but drainage tunnels, the plumbing of the glacier. Fall into one roped and you had a chance of getting out. Fall in unroped and you might just get flushed down to the fjord over the next thousand years.”

  Jim isn’t cavalier about safety, and he doesn’t pretend to be a glacier expert, but he refuses to surrender. Just as Lou has scrounged and sacrificed to be here, Jim has put his reputation on the line. With the anomaly at BW-1 staring at him from Jaana’s screen—he’s a frequent customer asking for a look—Jim refuses to return to his desk at Coast Guard Headquarters without knowing what’s down there. Despite concerns from Nick and others, Jim believes that the safety team can find a solid path to move the Hot
sy to BW-1. To make the trip less arduous, Jim and several others wonder whether the lids of large Pelican cases might be converted for use as sleds under the Hotsy’s wheels.

  Several team members discuss abandoning the Hotsy altogether and carrying a second auger, fuel, and a pickax to BW-1, to see if those tools might reach the anomaly. The idea of leaving ahead of the storm, without any melting or drilling at BW-1, also hasn’t been ruled out.

  As the chief hole-melter and Hotsy wrangler, and someone with a seemingly inexhaustible appetite for hard work, WeeGee keeps tabs on the swirling discussions. He moves among the groups, listening more than talking, assessing the ideas and attitudes of the would-be planners. After suffering through hours of inactivity and indecision, WeeGee’s frustration gets the best of him. He has no intention of leaving before he can perform exploratory surgery on the glacier. He’s certain that the Hotsy is our only hope, and he dismisses the idea that Pelican lids might help us push the seven-hundred-plus-pound machine to BW-1.

  WeeGee disappears from the brainstorming sessions and grabs the second aluminum extension ladder bought in Keflavík. He separates the ladder into two parts, each twelve feet long, and carries one to the rocks past the toilet tent. He finds two closely set boulders and jams the ladder’s end into the opening. What seems like the act of a frustrated madman reveals itself as the inspired work of an innovator. Pulling down on the ladder, he bends it at the second rung. He pulls it out, inspects it, then bends it some more. When the ladder’s end is curved upward like the tip of a ski, he flips it around and does the same to the other end.

  His orange boots stomping against the ice, WeeGee carries the custom double-curved ladder toward Jim, Lou, and the other planners. He halts twenty yards away and wordlessly slides it in their direction. The ladder skims across the ice like a sharpened skate and stops near their feet.

  Jim gets the idea immediately. “Hell, yes,” he says. “Money.”

  Bil wraps WeeGee in a hug: “You gave nobody any choice. This is how we’re doing it.”

  WeeGee repeats the bending process with the second half of the ladder, and soon the plan is apparent to everyone. With the curved ladders serving as strong, lightweight runners, WeeGee intends to turn the Hotsy into a giant sled and use us as huskies.

  Lou snaps back to his natural optimism and muses about moving the Hotsy tonight. Nick and several others tell him he’s nuts—the glacier’s surface is too slushy from the day’s sunshine. He relents only when WeeGee declares that we’ll wait until morning, when the route to BW-1 will have frozen overnight. WeeGee’s primary concern is about someone getting hurt, but he also worries that the ungainly Hotsy might tip over and break if conditions aren’t close to ideal.

  As dusk approaches, WeeGee, Jetta, and Nick leave base camp for Point A to fasten the twin ladder skis side by side under the Hotsy. En route, WeeGee explains that he bent both ends of each ladder as a precaution, so the Hotsy can be pushed in either direction if one ladder end breaks or nose-dives into a ditch. When he says “ditch,” most of us hear “crevasse,” in which case a double-curved ladder won’t do anyone much good. On the other hand, even after WeeGee’s end-bending trick, about nine feet of each ladder makes contact with the glacier, or enough to span the widest crevasses we anticipate. As a last-minute tweak, WeeGee places shovels underneath two of the Hotsy’s tires, so they sit more squarely on the ladders’ rails.

  Fully assembled, with the twin ladders strapped to the upper frame suggesting biplane wings, and the turned-up ladder skis evoking a central pontoon, the Hotsy’s homage to the lost Duck is complete.

  “GOOD MORNING, CAMPERS!”

  It’s 5:15 a.m. on Wednesday, August 29. A wide-awake WeeGee marches among the tents sounding reveille. The rest of us crawl bleary-eyed from our sleeping bags out onto the ice. The air is 23 degrees Fahrenheit, but swirling winds make it feel closer to zero. Icicles form instantly when Michelle pours water from a jerry can to prepare breakfast. There’s little chattering except our teeth as we gather in the dome to eat. Everyone knows what’s riding on today, and thoughts bounce from safety to our collective strength then back to safety. Jim breaks the silence by predicting that it will take four unrelenting hours to move the Hotsy to BW-1, a grind of fewer than six hundred yards per hour.

  In groups of twos and threes, we trek to Point A, and by 6:20 we assume our positions. It’s an all-hands operation, with nine of us on the pushing ladders and nearly everyone else either yoked to a harness attached to the front of the Hotsy or walking out front to scan for hidden crevasses. A half-dozen orange flags bundled together on the Hotsy give it a festive look, as though it’s a crude carnival ride being moved onto a frozen fairground.

  During the early going, Frank acts as the last line of defense, holding a rope tied to the rear of the Hotsy in case we lose control and it slides left, right, or headlong down the glacier. I doubt that Frank could stop it, but having him there is comforting. Considering his strength and resourcefulness, I suspect that he’d manage something. When everyone’s in place, Ryan calls out, “On Prancer! On Dancer! On Comet! On Vixen!” Doc Harman adds a benediction: “We’re going out for Pritchard because he would have gone out for us.”

  The first two hundred yards are smooth, and under our power the Hotsy ladder sled fairly glides across the glacier. We hit a rough patch of ice and bounce across it. I’m on the right side of the front pushing ladder. WeeGee is on the left side. He catches my eye across the machine and smiles. We both know what he’s thinking.

  We pick up the pace as we approach the first bridged-over crevasse, hoping to gain enough momentum to fly across without testing its load-bearing capacity. Increasing speed also allows us to enjoy the pleasant illusion that, like barefoot walkers on hot coals, the faster we cross the less likely we’ll get burned. Grunts, groans, and shouts of “Push!” ring out. The ladders shudder but hold and we clear the crevasse.

  On the other side we rest, congratulating WeeGee on his invention and ourselves on our teamwork. Conflicts and tensions of the previous week fade away, replaced by fatigue and the shared goals of reaching BW-1 and firing up this awkward beast on improvised skis.

  WE PUSH ONWARD, crossing smaller crevasses and shallow channels where meltwater drains toward the fjord. We rearrange the crew for maximum power as we approach the steep four-hundred-foot ice-covered hill that we’ve known from the start will be the true test. Out front on the pulling ropes are Alberto, Nick, and Rob on the left side, and John, Jaana, and Frank on the right. On the front pushing ladder, left to right, are WeeGee, Jim, me, and Ryan. On the back ladder are Terri, Doc, Michelle, Lou, and Bil. Steve alternates between pulling a tow rope and shouldering a heavy ice drill while navigating our path, and Jetta helps everywhere she can while exhorting us and photographing the work.

  The Hotsy’s weight seems to double as we begin the climb. Muscles strain, joints ache, faces contort. Breathing grows louder. Joking disappears. Maybe Lou was right and this is impossible.

  After a hundred yards we rest and drink from canteens until heart rates drop and energy rises. Halfway up the hill we encounter the biggest and ugliest crevasse yet. More than twelve feet wide in spots, its mouth opens to a depth of ten feet in places, to the top of a ragged ice bridge. The bridge has a disturbing grayish cast that makes it look anything but solid.

  Our chests heaving as we gulp the cold air, we halt our uphill climb. Safety team members map out a route, and we ignore fears that we’ve tested this glacier one too many times. I can’t help thinking about Max Demorest.

  For several hundred yards, we push and pull the Hotsy parallel to the glacial scar. We’re headed toward a spot where the crevasse opening is narrower, about six to eight feet wide, with a bridge one foot below the glacier surface. Several team members test the bridge and declare it solid, but we all know that the true test will be the Hotsy passing over it.

  We move toward the potential crossing, then point the Hotsy sled uphill on the rope team’s command. Perpendicula
r to the crevasse, we make a full-power, full-throated charge. Driving our feet into the ice and our shoulders into the ladders and ropes, we plow toward the abyss. I grasp the forward ladder rungs in a white-knuckle hold, partly to push with all my strength and partly to be sure that I’m holding on to something if the bridge gives way.

  As we begin to cross, the front metal curls of both ladder skis slam into the lip of ice at the far side of the crevasse. The ladder tips bend backward, threatening to break off, but that’s not our main worry.

  We’ve stalled atop the ice bridge.

  Commands ring out from front and back: “Keep going!” “Lift the front end!” “Don’t stop!” Fierce growls we once feared from polar bears now come from us. We push as one, forcing the nearly half-ton machine up and out of the bridged-over crevasse. Several members of the ladder brigade stumble as we gain speed. They hang onto the rungs and are dragged across the last few feet of the bridge. It holds.

  EXPEDITION TEAM MEMBERS PUSH THE HOTSY UPHILL OVER A CREVASSE. (U.S. COAST GUARD PHOTOGRAPH BY JETTA DISCO.)

  On the far side of the crevasse we pause, allowing our spent muscles to relax. Relieved smiles creep onto our faces. The worst is behind us. Slowly but steadily we crest the hill; then we quicken our pace upon catching sight of the orange flags. The last leg seems almost easy. We erupt in whoops and cheers at BW-1.

  Jim checks his watch: 7:56 a.m. A trek that we thought would take four hours has taken less than two, with no injuries and no damage to the Hotsy. As we hang onto the ladders or sprawl on the ice, Steve reflects on his military career. “I’m thinking about Iraq, Pakistan, doing things with a pretty elite group of guys. And that was amazing,” he says. “From WeeGee’s inventiveness to the team effort, any Special Forces unit would have been proud of that accomplishment.”