Call of the White

by Aston, Felicity

  Not for the first time I was struck by the irony of my perverse psyche. When at home all I could think about was the next adventure, the thrill of returning to Antarctica, the memory of the wonders of the South, but now that I was here my greatest wish was to be sitting in that wonderfully decorated room at Crofton with the warmth of a fire and the taste of good food, surrounded by those who are important to me. Compared to the scenes that I knew were taking place a thousand miles away, I felt cold, dirty and miserable.

  ‘Hello darling.’ My mother spoke quietly with a calm that told me how much the call meant to her. The sound of her voice made every emotion that I had subconsciously suppressed rise to the surface and fill my chest. For a moment I couldn’t speak, it was like my breath had been taken from me. I tried to talk but there was only a staccato cough, I felt strangled. Aware of Steph, Sophia and Era in the tent with me, tactfully busying themselves with the morning chores, I turned myself towards the walls of the tent so that they couldn’t see my face.

  I regained my voice, ‘Hello Mum. Happy Christmas.’ I wiped away the silent and unwanted tears that I couldn’t stop. ‘I wish I was there with you all.’

  ‘I know darling, we all miss you too.’ Sensing my tears, Mum filled the silence with news of the family’s day.

  My brother was handed the phone and he croaked a Christmas carol in his low voice in which I could hear the excesses of the night before. My sister interrupted, fizzing with excitement about the expedition, ‘We’ve been following the website. You are all doing so well. We’re all so proud of you, Felicity.’

  I wanted to reply but my voice had been replaced with a swelling, pulsating pain in my throat. The tears rolled down my face quicker than I could wipe them away and my nose began to run. The phone call ended and I sat for a moment staring blankly at the phone still in my hands. Wiping my face I turned back to the tent, swinging my legs into the porch to pull on my boots. Steph squeezed past me pausing briefly to ask if I was OK. I grinned at her gratefully and nodded. It was hard to be transported home but speaking to my family had filled me with new determination. They had reminded me of the real Felicity that existed beyond being the leader of this expedition. ‘Five more days,’ I told myself. ‘Keep it together for just five more days.’

  Christmas Day, Day 34 to us, turned out to be a long day on skis. At the end of it, the team pitched the tents in silence, each of us concentrating on getting our jobs done as quickly as possible, anxious to be in the warm where we could finally remove the ice-encrusted face masks and clothing that had felt like our own personal prisons all day. Nobody had the energy for much celebrating but we gathered in one tent to eat together. I had saved my favourite meal as a treat – probably the only time in my life that I will eat chicken tikka masala for Christmas dinner.

  Helen surprised us all with a Christmas tree made out of sleeping mat and hung with tiny stockings of dark blue fleece, stitched together with red cotton from our repair kit. Each stocking had an initial embroidered onto the front of it and a small roll of paper inside. ‘There is one for each of you,’ said Helen with obvious pride.

  ‘When did you do this?’ asked Reena in awe.

  Helen shrugged off the question, ‘Each night I’ve been doing a bit in my sleeping bag.’

  Reena looked at her wide-eyed, mouth open. None of us could imagine how Helen had had the energy to stay awake any longer than necessary, never mind do something as mentally taxing as sew tiny pieces of fleece together with such care. Most of us were asleep before our heads hit the ground each evening and barely had the brain power for conversation much less for being creative. It was an extremely touching gesture and the team were delighted.

  ‘Aww, look at the tiny little stockings!’ cooed Steph.

  I looked anxiously at Era, worried whether this gesture would contradict her strict rules regarding Christmas, but she was clapping her hands together impatiently, her face alight in excitement. ‘Have I got one?’ she asked as the tree was slowly turned so that everyone could see.

  ‘Helen, this is awesome!’ enthused Kylie.

  Sitting closest to Helen, Kylie enfolded her in a big hug on behalf of the team and I noticed Helen welling up. ‘Well, I have been such a monster this trip, I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone for putting up with me.’

  Era was the first to open the roll of paper inside her stocking. In pencil Helen had written sentences about her, each one beginning with a letter of her name:

  E – Era simply glides over the top of any sastrugi in her path

  R – Radiant smile at all times under her mask, goggles, down jacket etc.

  A – Antarctic arithmetician who counts our every nautical mile

  We all listened, munching on our dinner as each of us read out Helen’s careful observations, alternately nodding in agreement or laughing at the ridiculous truth of her words. I felt myself relaxing in the warm glow of our camaraderie and was struck by the surrealism of seven women sitting in a tent on Christmas evening laughing together in our 40-day-old clothes and plaster-patched feet. Despite the distraction of Helen’s gift, the thought of the next day’s exertion was never far from our minds and we were all anxious to be in bed. After a quick group photograph outside the tent, bunched around the miniature Christmas tree, we drifted away to our sleeping bags.

  The polar plateau hadn’t lived up to its name. We were still climbing hill after hill although the slopes weren’t as obvious as they had been. The undulating ground made Era furious, ‘They should call it the Polar Bowl or the Polar Hump,’ she fumed. ‘This is clearly not the polar plateau.’ At least we had left sastrugi land behind. None of us could remember exactly when the sastrugi had disappeared but the ground was definitely smoother now. It felt as if the snow was more granulated, the carpet of white glittering brilliantly as if scattered with crystals. If I squinted I could almost imagine that we were skiing across a vast Caribbean beach of white sand rather than snow. Small lumps of crystals began to appear on undulations in the snow, like bobbles on an old woollen jumper. Soon these ice flowers spread to cover the entire landscape so that the ground had the texture of a cat’s tongue. The wind continued to blow directly into our faces and chilblains began to appear despite the careful face protection. Everyone wore the fleece-lined smocks which earlier in the expedition had barely been needed.

  Struggling with the ice around her face mask Steph missed her mouth while trying to drink during a break and spilled some water down the front of her face mask. A few legs later she complained about having a cold chin. Kylie, next in line, solved the problem by tucking her spare glove into Steph’s face-covering so that it formed an extra couple of layers around her jaw. Seemingly satisfied, Steph continued with a Bruce Forsyth profile; it looked ridiculous, but she didn’t care. Era too was struggling. From the back I noticed that she was repeatedly falling behind. I stepped out of the team’s tracks to ski alongside the line and catch up with her but the sudden exertion left me breathless. The altitude still occasionally took me by surprise. Pushing my thighs harder I slowly caught up with Era. She was wearing her windproof under her fleece-lined smock and the down mitts I had lent her the day before. ‘I’m OK,’ she said in response to my question as I drew level with her. ‘Just a bit tired.’

  Fishing inside my jacket I surreptitiously switched on the GPS and checked on our progress. It had been a slow day and although it was already late afternoon we had only completed half of our target distance for that day. ‘We need to push on a bit if we are going to hit our target for today,’ I said gently. ‘Do you think you can do that without exhausting yourself?’ Era nodded, already starting to close the gap in front of her.

  Where we had used to count down the minutes in anticipation of our next break, the cold now made breaks an unwelcome interruption in the business of keeping warm. We each dreaded the moment we would stop skiing and instantly begin to freeze. Laboriously pulling on the down jackets that were kept accessible on the top of our sledges, the breaks we
re a series of unpleasant tasks, from disturbing our temperamental face masks to eat and drink, to baring our bottoms for a pee and finally, being obliged to remove the delicious warmth of the down jacket as we set off once more. Knowing that we would eventually warm up again as we skied was no consolation for those first few minutes after a break when fingers were numb and joints were stiff with cold.

  I was glad it was Reena out in front for the last leg of the day. She had a peculiar knack of being able to set a pace that felt slow and steady and yet covered more ground than anyone else. I knew I could rely on her to cover a solid 2 nautical miles in the next hour – it was what we needed to reach our target for the day.

  Reena didn’t let me down. I glanced at the GPS as we finished the leg – we’d travelled 15.2 nautical miles since our last camp. If we could manage another four days like this, we would be at the pole. Steph slumped on her sledge beside me as we stopped, leaning back with her arms and legs hanging wide, head back in a flamboyant expression of exhaustion. Later on, as we pitched the tent, she pulled back her face mask to reveal her chin and neck, which had got cold earlier in the day; her skin was an angry crimson. The water that had spilt from her water bottle had turned to ice next to her skin and given her a cold injury. The skin hadn’t blistered, so it wasn’t serious frostbite, but it spread like a birthmark over a large area. She would need to look after it to stop it getting any worse. As Steph inspected her injury in our tiny team mirror she was at first horrified, then worried and finally surprisingly relaxed about it. The next morning as we prepared to leave the tent I helped Steph bandage up the affected area which had been left to air overnight. Most of the bandage tape in our first aid kit had been used up to cover blisters, which left us with only gaffer tape. Placing some gauze over the discoloured skin I taped it into place as best I could. The gaffer tape was reluctant to stick to her skin (‘It’s probably all the layers of dirt,’ joked Steph) so I had to place layer over layer until it finally stuck. As the bottom half of her face was gradually covered in tape we couldn’t help laughing. It looked like she had a bad case of lockjaw. We were distracted from the taping by a sudden outburst from Era at the other end of the tent, ‘Shit! My mask has dry-frozen.’ Steph and I looked at each other, startled, before breaking into laughter. Era looked up confused.

  ‘I don’t think I have ever heard you swear,’ laughed Steph. ‘What is your husband going to think when we send you back swearing like a soldier?’

  Era smiled with pretend menace. ‘He has already seen me angry.’

  Even though, rationally, I knew it was too early to expect to see any evidence of the South Pole ahead of us, I still couldn’t help scanning the horizon. The South Pole is not an unmarked spot on the landscape; it is now the site of one of the largest scientific research stations in Antarctica. The American-run Amundsen-Scott Station has operated year-round at the South Pole since 1957. During the summer over 300 people work on the base, a population that diminishes to just 100 during the winter. It was Day 36 and I hoped that, even though we were too far away to see the station itself, we might see outlying research sites, storage buildings or perhaps even the tracks of vehicles. In fact, we saw nothing.

  I wasn’t the only one watching the horizon restlessly. We were all experiencing the most frustrating case of being ‘so near and yet so far’. On the map we were barely a finger’s width from the South Pole and in our minds we were already there. We had passed the 89th parallel and after skiing six and a half degrees since leaving the coast, covering the last degree seemed to be little more than a formality. And yet the last degree was still a full 60 nautical miles that we would have to ski, mile by painful mile. We were impatient now to be finished and that was the source of the frustration. I knew that the team were already day-dreaming about our arrival at 90 degrees south. We had already been warned that as a non-scientific expedition the rules were that we were not allowed to use any of the facilities at the station but it didn’t stop us fantasising about flush toilets, fresh food and perhaps even a shower. There were more practical reasons to be anxious to finish, too. We were beginning to run low on essential supplies. We had started rationing toothpaste because it had run so low, toilet paper was being carefully watched and some people were now using empty zip-lock ration bags in place of the Louis Poo-uittons because they had run out.

  The next day felt like the last day of school. There was a euphoria running between us, an irrepressible excitement. At just 20 nautical miles from the South Pole, we all expected to see some sign of the station in the next ten hours of skiing. It was a calm and sunny day, the sort of weather that would usually have us stripping off layers and cursing our steamed goggles but it was noticeably colder than ever. After a break I barely had time to warm up completely before it was time to stop again. I worked my fingers inside my mitts constantly to ward off frostbite and wriggled my toes in my boots as I skied, just to make sure I could still feel them.

  Nobody talked to each other during the breaks; everyone concentrated on keeping warm. I stood scanning the horizon as I munched on mouthfuls of popcorn. My chewing slowed as I realised what I could see. On the horizon was a dark rectangle and a little distance away from it, a white dome that was catching the light. I looked away for a moment before finding the shapes again to reassure myself that this wasn’t a case of wishful thinking. During the expedition we had seen distant sastrugi form all sorts of shapes but this time there was something different. The rectangle was too perfect to be shadow or mirage, the white dome too prominent to be merely another block of ice. The shapes were definitely man-made. I was looking at the South Pole.

  I spoke to no one in particular, ‘Guys, can anyone else see something over there?’ I pointed towards the shapes with my ski pole, holding it steady as the others followed my line of sight. With my other hand I switched on my GPS. The South Pole was a little over 12 nautical miles away.

  Kylie was the first to react. She flung her arms in the air and let out a huge cheer. She shuffled towards me on her skis and flung her arms around my neck. ‘We’ve made it!’ she bellowed.

  Reena was frustrated, ‘Where? I don’t see anything.’ I leant over her shoulder so that her eyes followed the line of my ski pole and I guided her gaze towards the right section of the horizon. ‘Oh, oh, oh, yes! I see it!’ The three of us tried to pick out landmarks near the shapes so that the others could find them too but by the end of our break they had still seen nothing.

  Helen was silent. ‘It’s easy to mistake sastrugi or shadows for anything out here,’ she said sceptically as we skied on.

  I watched the shapes as we moved. After a while they disappeared and I worried that perhaps I had imagined it after all. Eventually they reappeared and I realised that in fact we were skiing over unseen undulations and gentle hills. We could see the distant station as we reached the high ground but it would disappear from view as we crossed the shallow valleys in between. As our view of the South Pole returned I noticed another white shape on the far side of the rectangle. It was too equally spaced to be a coincidence, it had to be another building. My eyes were so transfixed on the ephemeral vision to our left that my neck began to hurt. I forced myself to look away, promising that I would only take a peek in the base’s direction once every ten minutes. I lasted about 30 seconds before my eyes automatically flicked towards the rectangle. It looked more solid now with defined edges and what appeared to be a tower, or perhaps a cloud, hovering above it. During our fourth leg the dark rectangle had disappeared but we were heading directly for a tall plume of smoke or steam that rose from the ice. As we approached our fifth break of the day there was not only a clear line of buildings ahead of us but several spherical communication domes and at least one outbuilding, which appeared to have a chimney belching steam into the air.

  ‘So, is there anyone who can’t see that now?’ I exclaimed loudly as we pulled our sledges together for a break. Era had made a mental note of her exact position when she had first spotted the base; she h
ad been just over 5 nautical miles from the South Pole according to our GPS. ‘So, tall people can see it from twelve nautical miles away; short people from only five nautical miles away,’ she stated matter-of-factly.

  Despite the sunshine, Era had been cold all day. She had permanently adopted my big down mitts that had been packed for emergencies but I had noticed that she still spent a good five minutes pumping the air with her fists as we continued after breaks to encourage the blood to circulate and warm her hands. Helen had let gaps open up in front of her in the line several times during the day and I could tell from Sophia’s brittle body language that she was concentrating hard on her knee. I considered what to do.

  We had one more leg of skiing before we would normally stop for the day but if all went well we would be barely 3 nautical miles from the end of the South Pole station’s VHF antenna, a long cable hung above ground on regularly spaced steel masts. Once we reached the end of the antenna we would have to ski into the base itself to reach the actual South Pole. Estimates on the distance from the end of the antenna into the base were a bit sketchy but Steve in Patriot Hills thought it to be approximately an extra 4 nautical miles. To extend our day by another 7 nautical miles didn’t sound like a lot but it represented another three hours’ skiing at least. It seemed like an unnecessary pressure to put on an already cold and exhausted team and besides, I wasn’t in any hurry for the expedition to be over. I wanted us to enjoy our arrival rather than collapse on the finish line in a lifeless heap.

  However, if we were going to stop short of the South Pole I didn’t want to be camped in the station’s backyard. We would need to keep our distance. As our GPS flashed that we were 3 nautical miles from the end of the antenna I skied along the line to stop next to Steph, who was leading the final leg of the day. The buildings were now large on the horizon and unmistakable.