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  BLAZING ICE

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  BLAZING ICE

  PIONEERING THE TWENTY–FIRST CENTURY’S ROAD TO THE SOUTH POLE

  John H. Wright

  Foreword by David M. Bresnahan

  Copyright © 2012 by John H. Wright

  Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wright, John H.

  Blazing ice : pioneering the twenty-first century’s road to the South Pole / John H. Wright ; foreword by David M. Bresnahan.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN 978-1-61234-451-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-61234-452-2 (electronic)

  1. Antarctica—Discovery and exploration. 2. Antarctica—Social conditions—21st century. 3. Antarctica—Environmental conditions. I. Title.

  G860.W75 2012

  919.89—dc23

  2012023729

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.

  Potomac Books

  22841 Quicksilver Drive

  Dulles, Virginia 20166

  First Edition

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  for Brian Wheater,

  whose cautionary tale of Linda kept us on alert,

  for the crew,

  who toiled on the trail and proved the concept,

  and

  for all those who helped

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by David M. Bresnahan

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  PART I. GETTING STARTED: MENACE AND HELP

  1 Linda

  2 Denver

  3 Frontier Attitude

  4 French Connections

  PART II. CREVASSES, SWAMPS, AND DISAPPOINTMENT

  5 Crossing the Shear Zone—Year One

  6 Crossing It Right—Year One

  7 Crossing the Ross Ice Shelf—Year Two

  8 That Word: Ruminations on the Meaning of Road and the Influence of Terrain

  9 Farthest South—Year Three

  10 Traverse to Williams Field

  PART III. YEAR FOUR: PROOF

  11 Return to Farthest South

  12 Sastrugi

  13 Farther South

  14 Going In with Airplanes

  15 Christmas at South Pole

  16 Return to McMurdo

  Index

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  I felt suddenly alone on the snowy flats of the McMurdo Ice Shelf near Williams Field skiway. Ann had just taken their group picture. Now, the eight of them walked away, back over the snow. Their waiting tractors and sled trains lined up on the snow road, pointed south under a blue sky and a bright sun. I knew they’d do it this time, get all the way to South Pole and back. John was right, though. It wasn’t a three-year project. I knew that too, but I had to sell it to others. I had no appreciation at the beginning of what really lay under the red lines drawn on those maps, no idea the level of effort it took to design and assemble the fleet. Support at the National Science Foundation was not undivided, either. But these eight were tenacious. And I was proud of all of us.

  Their yellow tractors and red tractors started crawling forward. In a half mile the caravan turned east, directly into the face of the gray blizzard-wall overtaking the Shelf. And that was the point: the weather grounded our LC-130 Hercules aircraft, but the traverse kept going. A perfect start. Damn, I wanted to go with them.

  The United States established a strategic presence at the geographic South Pole in 1956. Since that time, we have supplied the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station from our logistics hub at McMurdo Station on the coast of Antarctica entirely by airlift.

  Less than a hundred years ago, no one had even seen the South Pole. These days, World War II and Cold War interests in the unknown continent have quieted. The National Science Foundation now runs the entire scope of American interests in Antarctica through the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). Glimpsing the first thirty seconds after the Big Bang, measuring the annual dilation of the ozone hole, monitoring the front lines of global warming—we do world-class science down there. That requires extraordinary logistical support, and that was my job.

  I’d been intrigued with the idea of an overland supply traverse to South Pole for years. “Traverse” is what we call them in Antarctica—tractor and sled caravans crossing the ice and snow. Some shared the vision, but the concept was not a new idea. A 1962 Operation Deep Freeze report, for example, points out “an overland system for delivering large quantities of bulk fuel to Byrd Station” could substantially reduce airlift costs.

  Through the late 1980s and 1990s we advanced the traverse concept in workshops, studies, reports, and field investigations. I was frustrated that others in NSF’s Office of Polar Programs couldn’t see the future then. But vision is a hard sell in NSF when you want money, not just words. I finally took possession of the traverse development after I spent time in the field exploring a possible route in 1995. When George Blaisdell and I completed our study in 2000, “Analysis of McMurdo to South Pole Traverse as a Means to Increase LC-130 Availability in the USAP,” we found the benefits to the program were overwhelming.

  Building of the United States’ third research station at South Pole was then nearing completion. In 1998–1999 supplying Pole with building materials over and above its normal science support claimed 316 LC-130 sorties, leaving only 182 flights available for remote field science. Since that year, flights for field science dropped to 102, 103, and in 2001–2002 had fallen to only 64. Remote field science, the great strength of the USAP, was dying.

  Under these circumstances, we found support for the South Pole Traverse Proof-of-Concept Project. Our study showed the traverse would not only free up LC-130 flights for field science, but that it would be economical as well. Tractors would burn half the fuel to deliver the same payload to Pole as LC-130s. The environment would win in a big way, too: for the same fuel burned, modern tractor engines released merely hundredths of the noxious emissions produced by LC-130 turbo props.

  Could we pull off the proof-of-concept? Could we find a route, prove it safe, and show it could be done over and over again?

  In an ironic twist, modern technology perfected in the 1990s and available in 2000 enabled this more primitive means of delivering supplies to South Pole. We had GPS for navigation, ground penetrating radar for finding deadly hidden crevasses, Iridium phones with data links for e-mail, and satellite imagery. None of these were available when we’d dropped a bulldozer in a crevasse not far from McMurdo in 1990. The time was right for us now.

  Who would lead the project?

  At NSF’s urging, the USAP support contractor hired John Wright. I knew him, but not well at the time. He had pulled off some challenging jobs in the USAP and had built an impeccable record for safety. I remember pictures of a stunningly accurate hole-through in the South Pole Tunnel Project he ran where two tunnels met face to face in the dark. John always placed his crew in the forefront, while he stood in the background, smiling. For the traverse job, he put together a field team of Ice veterans. They collaborated with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, and a host of other contributors. John brought out the best in all his crew. But he sure was hardheaded at the merest shadow of a threat to their safety.

  When they came back
to McMurdo on January 14, 2006, the nonbelievers stepped aside. They had delivered eleven LC-130 loads of cargo to Pole. They’d done it safely, and with little more impact to the environment than the tracks they left. And they made history. No one had ever traversed from Mc-Murdo to Pole and back. The concept was proved.

  Because of that, USAP logistics will never be the same. At maturity, the traverse would give us back ninety flights or more. In 2000, George and I thought it’d take three tractor fleets to do that. These guys showed us it could be done with two. And that’s only the beginning of change.

  I am pleased to have John, my friend and colleague, tell our story.

  DAVID M. BRESNAHAN

  SYSTEMS MANAGER FOR OPERATIONS AND LOGISTICS (RET.)

  OFFICE OF POLAR PROGRAMS

  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  MARCH 15, 2010

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my wife, Samantha, and my friend Ann Hawthorne, I give my deepest thanks for suffering through early manuscript drafts of Blazing Ice, and for their encouragement throughout to bring our worthy story to book.

  Author William Fox’s (Terra Antarctica) meditations on rendering geography into landscape through human imprints made him a soul-brother for our undertaking. Tom Sawyer (technology editor, Engineering News-Record) recognized both the technical component of our achievement and the dramatic story underlying it. I thank both these writers for their enthusiastic counsel.

  Chris Landry, snow scientist, and learned man David Emory, both of Silverton, Colorado, graciously provided critical reads of the manuscript in its middling and later versions. Mountaineer Tom Lyman, intimately familiar with the story by virtue of having lived two years of it, kindly offered his read and comments. And special thanks to Andy Hanahan III for hints on Chicago style.

  As pupil, I bow to master Bruce McAllister (mcallistercoaching.com) who helped me wrench Blazing Ice out of the technical operations reports it inhabited into the narrative in which the story truly lives. I thank Bruce for ongoing guidance through the forests of modern publishing.

  I am profoundly grateful to Anne Devlin of Max Gartenberg Literary Agency for bringing Blazing Ice to Potomac Books and arranging this perfect publishing marriage.

  Finally, I wish to acknowledge with deepest appreciation Roald Amundsen, Fridtjof Nansen, Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, Vivian Fuchs, Edmund Hillary, Albert Crary, and John Evans for the legacy documents they left behind. These added immeasurably to our effective route planning, and to ensuring our mission safety and success in the twenty-first century.

  PROLOGUE

  The white world of snow and ice lay below us now. A frozen cascade, big as Niagara Falls and broken by hundreds of gaping crevasses, draped over the plateau’s rim. Downstream, the Leverett Glacier flowed gracefully around the stony buttress of Mount Beazley.

  The first of our heavy tractors appeared just below the rim, laboring up the final grade. The place was strangely silent. The snows absorbed all sound. No wind blew.

  Finally the tractor topped out. It was a ponderous, stately event.

  Today was January 4, 2005. I looked back on the ground we crossed getting here. Seven thousand feet below, icy turbulence had blocked us from the Transantarctic Mountains for a month. Three hundred miles of snow swamp behind that had held us up for a year. And just a day trip out of McMurdo Station, blasting and dozing a path across three miles of hidden crevasses, had taken another year of our lives.

  Now, 738 miles out of McMurdo, not one human lived between us and there.

  Six hundred miles behind us, on the sea-level realms of the Ross Ice Shelf, lay the frozen flesh of four British explorers and their leader. Robert Falcon Scott, known as Scott of the Antarctic, had been the last one to try for the South Pole and back from McMurdo. They went on foot. They died on their return. Now their scurvied bodies drift slowly toward the Ross Sea, buried under nine decades of snow. We drove right by them.

  Only fifteen years ago, not far from Scott’s body, a Caterpillar D8 bulldozer broke through the snow and fell into a black crevasse. My friend went down with that bulldozer. He lived. But the dozer’s steely carcass drifts on in that hole toward its own rendezvous with the Ross Sea.

  There were eight of us now. We were equipment operators, mechanics, mountaineers, and engineers. I picked them for their years of Antarctic experience. We respected and liked each other. Together we ran five heavy tractors pulling heavy sled trains. We ran a light scout tractor in front of us, rigged with modern crevasse-detecting radar.

  When the last of our tractors topped out we had won our foothold on the Polar Plateau. We planted four flags on the plateau’s edge and called that point SPT-18.

  This was the final year of our three-year project. Between us and South Pole lay three hundred miles of unexplored ground. We wanted to go, but to get back we needed more fuel than we had. The National Science Foundation could give us that fuel at Pole.

  Within our warm bunkroom we waited for word. Then sometime during the “night” we felt our shelter rocking in the wind atop its sled base. We would wake to a blizzard.

  In his opening remarks at the May 2002 United States Antarctic Program Annual Planning Conference, headman Erick Chiang from the NSF Office of Polar Programs uttered these words: “The National Science Foundation announces its full support for the development of the South Pole Traverse.” His was a simple, declarative statement.

  I spent the next four years figuring out what he meant.

  PART I.

  GETTING STARTED: MENACE AND HELP

  1 Linda

  Linda was thirty-three years old. She might have been good for another twenty years. On Thanksgiving Day, 1990, Linda chugged onto the Ross Ice Shelf. The floating, snow-covered sheet of glacial ice reached endlessly ahead. A gray overcast stole the horizon and robbed the Shelf of all its shadows. Linda carried her blade high over the snow. She pulled a twenty-ton sled loaded with thirty thousand pounds of dynamite.

  Linda was special, a D8-LGP bulldozer built for Antarctica. Steel spliced into her chopped frame stretched her over twenty feet long. And she was light-footed. Sixty thousand pounds of yellow iron spread over a pair of fifty-four-inch-wide tracks made her a low-ground-pressure machine.

  Brian Wheater had just finished his four-hour stretch at Linda’s stick. He’d brought her from Williams Field skiway that afternoon. Now he sat off to the side in Linda’s spacious cab while his partner took a turn. A diesel-fired heater at their feet kept them warm.

  Working only his second season on the Ice, Brian volunteered for anything. Now he staged explosives for a seismic project to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. This was the glacier that Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackle-ton before him, traversed over the Transantarctic Mountains onto the Polar Plateau. To get to the Beardmore, Brian had to cross four hundred miles of Ross Ice Shelf. It had been decades since the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) sent anybody out this way over the surface. From airfields on the ice, near the stony ground of McMurdo Station on Ross Island, the United States flew supplies to its remote outposts on the continent.

  The Ross Ice Shelf was a long way from the jungles of Vietnam for Brian. Nothing green here. Nothing growing, nothing wet, nothing warm. Brian kept his vigil no less keen. He was rock solid, a decorated sergeant of the U.S. Marines. Behind his rigid bearing lay an amazing mix of literary erudition and an often-silly sense of humor. He thought carefully before speaking. He chose his words well. But he rarely spoke. Grim-faced, Brian peered through the blank whiteness outside Linda’s windows for the other tractors in their caravan.

  Linda’s sister Pam followed a hundred yards behind. Pam pulled another twenty-ton sled of fuel drums. Two mechanics from Williams Field alternated at her controls. A four-tracked Tucker Sno-Cat, one-quarter Linda’s weight, ran out in front carrying their food, survival gear, and blasting caps. A Kiwi mountaineer ran the Tucker, leading their caravan along the same route explorer Edmund Hilla
ry took in the 1950s.

  The orange Tucker disappeared from time to time, and then reappeared. Brian watched it closely, never losing sight of the flag atop its tall whip antenna. He sensed they were on uneven ground, on a lazy ocean of long, slow snow rollers. The Tucker disappeared again. Brian elbowed his partner, pointing. Both stood up, craning for a look. No shadows, no tracks. The last thing Brian saw was the flag on that whip antenna when gravity struck.

  Linda plunged right. Snow exploded through her window. She ricocheted left. Her side door broke in. Snow blasted Brian against his partner, burying them both. Then Linda fell, completely vertical, racing straight down, pulling her sled after them.

  Linda crashed against the edge of an ice wall, wedged. Her windshield broke out. The snow that had encased Brian and his partner spewed into the black void below. They hung up on Linda’s dashboard, waiting for the dynamite sled.

  It never fell.

  They found the throttle under what snow remained in Linda’s cab and killed her engine before its fumes killed them. One hundred gallons of diesel from Linda’s tank had spilled over everything. Brian killed the pilot flame on the cab heater, refusing to burn to death in the icy crevasse.

  Neither Brian nor his partner spoke after that. Moments became minutes. Brian checked to see if he was all there and working right. He looked straight up through the broken rear window. A promise of light filtered through a ragged aperture at the surface. The dynamite sled’s front skis dangled in space, held back by a heavy chain. Its deck had rammed across the collapsed snow bridge into the opposite wall of the crevasse.

  The dark fissure clouded with their frosty breath. All was silent but for the “tink” of metal on metal shrinking in the intense cold. A scratching sound prompted Brian to dig for their radio. Its red light came on when he pressed transmit. They still had battery. Brian looked at his watch for the first time: 7:45 p.m. He couldn’t make out the reply, but he recognized the mechanic’s voice.