A cautious inspection revealed that the summit was the confined but solid apex of three corniced ridges, and we relaxed. Sitting on our sacks, drinking in the space, the silence and the sunlight, we picked out far below the two specks which were the dog teams. To the north were the massive rock walls of Mount Hope. In the west, the mountains of Alexander Island were clearly visible over a hundred miles away. Sixty miles south, we could trace the route we had taken, mostly on dead reckoning navigation, through the South Eland Mountains, a beautiful cirque of 10,000 feet peaks; and thirty miles beyond them, Mount Andrew Jackson, climbed by John Cunningham a few years ago, poked its head above the horizon. Somewhere to the east lay the Weddell Sea, but the low cloud which is the bane of the east coast had, unnoticed, obscured the view and was rising insidiously towards us. The first wisps were already eddying playfully about the base of the mountain. It was time to go.
The mist engulfed us as we sledged back to more level ground and we pitched camp in white-out. When it next lifted, two weeks later, we were far away. For we were not on a climbing holiday, we were employees of the British Antarctic Survey, and we had a job to do. Our ascent of Charity was simply a perk, made possible by a lucky conjunction of good weather and the right day.
At present BAS maintains four bases along the west coast of the Antarctic peninsula which is known as Grahamland in the north and Palmerland in the south. Argentine Island, a purely ‘static’ base, offers virtually no possibilities to the mountaineer. Fossil Bluff, the furthest south, is a little four-man outpost which usually confines its activities to the ice shelf of King George VI Sound. Adelaide Island, from which the Survey’s two aircraft operate in the summer, boasts half a dozen fine peaks of 4,000 to 7,000 feet (see the article by Bugs McKeith in the SMC Journal 1969), but for most of the year is cut off from the mainland. The fourth base, Stonington, is an unprepossessing, rocky little island, littered with debris from the two American and one British expedition that used it prior to the last twelve years of continuous occupation. Its all-important asset is a steep ice ramp, giving field parties access to the North East glacier. Once they have relayed loads up the notorious ‘Sodabread Slope’, ten miles further inland, they are free to sledge the length and breadth of the Peninsula. Most of the BAS geology, geo-physics and survey field programmes are based on Stonington and depend upon its twelve dog teams to cover country often too crevassed for motor vehicles. Field parties usually comprise two men, a scientist and a General Assistant, each with a team, and to sledge 2,000 miles in a year is common. One of the chief qualifications for the post of GA is mountain experience, since sledging in Grahamland poses many familiar, as well as some unfamiliar, mountaineering problems. It is, in many ways, akin to ski touring. I was lucky enough to spend a year at Stonington as a GA.
It is not generally appreciated, even among climbers, that all over Antarctica there are mountains. Grahamland, in the scale and accessibility of its mountains and the beauty of its fjords, resembles a southern Greenland. Curving like a crooked finger out of the bulk of the continent, for hundreds of miles mountains and glaciers rise abruptly from its complex coastline to a 6,000 feet central spine which widens into the Palmerland Plateau as the finger thickens towards its base. Travelling through intricate glacier networks, one is surrounded everywhere by unclimbed peaks – faces bigger than the Lauterbrunnen Wall, ridges comparable to the Brenva classics, spires and pinnacles reminiscent of Chamonix, and lesser peaks and rock nunataks without number. From a mountaineering point of view, Grahamland must be one of the least exploited regions left on earth. It seems a climbers’ paradise. And yet the mountains remain unclimbed. True, Mount Andrew Jackson, Faith, Hope and Charity in the Eternity Range, Bagshawe in the Batterbees, Arronax on Pourquoi Pas Island, Gaudry, Leotard and Bouvier on Adelaide, these and a number of the nunataks have been climbed. And no doubt there have been many ascents, particularly those made to establish survey stations, that have gone unrecorded or, at any rate, unremembered. But to all intents and purposes the reservoir remains untapped.
Despite the number of competent climbers employed every year by BAS, remarkably little has been, or is being, climbed. Why? The chief reason is undoubtedly the weather, which must rival that of Patagonia. The severity of winds and temperatures, and the speed with which the weather deteriorates make caution far more necessary than in other parts of the world (though electric storms are one hazard virtually unknown). Katabatic winds of 100 mph blowing off the plateau are by no means rare and far higher winds have been recorded. These winds can blow up from nothing in a matter of minutes; the only warning will have been a few wisps of drift at the plateau edge. And even where wind is less of a menace, weather systems are no more predictable. Temperatures lower than –30 °C are unusual, even in winter, but they are quite cold enough for the slightest wind to have a drastic effect and for a bivouac to be an unpleasant prospect. All in all, one is well advised to wait for clear, settled weather before venturing on to a mountain, and such weather is infrequent. During autumn and winter it is possible to spend as much as fifty per cent of the time lying-up and, while this drops to nearer twenty per cent in the summer, one can be tent-bound for days on end at any season. Nor can sledging conditions be equated with climbing conditions. As the pyramid tent can be easily storm-pitched and a mobile home recreated within minutes of stopping, it is possible to risk travelling when climbing would be out of the question.
Only once did I try climbing in doubtful weather. That was on a peak overlooking the Reid glacier, in the Arrowsmith Peninsula, north of Stonington. At the time, we were camped beside a food depot at the very foot of the long spur which seemed the obvious way up the mountain. Gwynn Davies, the geologist with whom I was working, did not seem very interested even though he was a climber, but he was too good-natured not to come along. So one day, when visibility was too poor for plane-table mapping, rather than lie in the tent all day, we decided to give it a go. It was a fine route, a delicate notched arête of alpine length, with a blue-gouged icefall on one side, cicatrices sweeping up to the crest of the ridge in places, and rock walls dropping sheer to a hanging glacier on the other. But on the heavily corniced summit ridge, visibility was nil and we found ourselves suddenly exposed to the full blast of a gale. Spectacles were soon hopelessly sheathed in ice and beards became solid lumps. Peering through the mist for the cornice edge, it was impossible to tell how far away it really was. On a wind-packed surface, crampons were leaving no imprint and it was no place to get lost on the descent. After groping our way higher and higher, skirting a sérac which loomed up in front, discovering crevasses by putting our legs through them, we eventually turned back. When we looked out of the tent in brilliant sunshine next morning, we realised to our disgust that we had been only twenty metres from the top. But it had been a salutary reminder not to underestimate the weather.
All too often, the right place and the right time do not coincide. Movements in the field are governed by the exigencies of a work programme and depot logistics. Thirty days’ food for men and dogs is usually the maximum that can be carried (giving loads of about 450 kilos per sledge), and by the time scientific work has been carried out and a safe margin allowed to reach the next depot, there may be little time left for diversions. During our summer journey south, Malcolm and I sledged through two mountain groups, the Waltons and the South Elands, which had never been visited before. In each we set our sights on one particular peak that stood out both by virtue of its appearance and the ease of access to a feasible route. But either weather or fatigue thwarted us on each occasion and in neither instance did we have the food to linger.
Access can be a problem, but that is true of any glaciated mountains and it is certainly far safer to ski beside a sledge than to travel on foot. Nevertheless, the hardest part of one small peak I climbed with Gwynn, at the bottom of the Helm Glacier in the Arrowsmith, was reaching the foot of it. Leaving, as night fell and temperatures plummeted, after an easy but exhilarating day in golden autu
mn sunlight, my dogs suddenly chose to take a short cut, ignoring a loop in our tracks where we had skirted poorly-bridged crevasses. Before I knew what had happened, my lead bitch Morag had fallen out of her harness and was sitting, fortunately unhurt, sixty feet down a large hole. It was dark by the time I had abseiled in, attached her to a rope, jumared out and finally hauled the unfortunate dog to the surface.
Even given a fine day, remoteness renders any climb extremely serious. Travelling and working in pairs, climbers are closer to the position of Shipton and Tilman on Mount Kenya than they are to most expeditions in the Andes, the Himalaya or even Greenland. Aircraft are only available four months of the year and although sledge parties are often separated by only a day or two’s travel, it could be as much as a week before failure to come up on the radio aroused serious alarm. Should a rescue operation be necessary, it would not only be costly but it might well involve international co-operation and would certainly mean the disruption of the survey’s scientific work. Moreover, it is unusual for two keen climbers to find themselves sledging together. Consequently, climbers have kept well within their limits and, to my knowledge, nothing technically difficult has been attempted. Understandably enough, BAS frown on climbing, whilst powerless to prevent it entirely. After all, you cannot employ mountaineers as such, place them in a mountain environment and expect them suddenly to lose all interest in climbing.
Finally, the nature of the climbing itself can be a deterrent. Most rock has been badly frost-shattered, making spectacular aiguilles and attractively crenellated ridges lethal to set foot upon. There are exceptions, of course. Ian Sykes has climbed a fine 600-metre pillar on Roman Four, near Stonington; and Nery Island only a mile from base, gave surprisingly enjoyable scrambling one evening. But by and large, we found rock of any description (granite is the most common) best left well alone. This was borne home to Malcolm and myself on Ridge Island. As its name implies, the island is a long thin comb of rock, 2,000 feet at its highest point, rising steeply from the waters of Bourgeois Fjord. Having sledged across the fjord’s winter coating of sea ice, we had difficulty finding a strip of ‘beach’ wide enough to pitch the tent, and the dogs had to be spanned up a rocky slope. Six miles long, for much of its length the ridge looks closer in character to the Diable Arête than to, say, the Cuillin Main Ridge. Unfortunately, on closer acquaintance it resembles neither. We had covered less than a quarter of a mile, and had not even reached the first major gendarme, before we abandoned the route as downright dangerous. The view was superb, over grey sea ice, broken into gigantic crazy-paving by thread-like leads of black water, to the 5,000-foot walls that enclose the fjord. The positions were dramatic. But the rock, beneath an unhelpful layer of fresh powder, was simply too fragile for climbing to be in any sense enjoyable.
With so many potential obstacles, the few routes we did climb had all the savour of a well-earned reward. The opportunity never occurred to attempt any of the notable ‘plums’ such as Mount Wilcox, Bartholin Peak or The Fid. But although none of our climbs was spectacular or particularly difficult, they were unforgettable mountain days. Most memorable of all, I think, was an ascent with Malcolm of a 1,200-metre peak on Blaiklock Island. Blaiklock is only an island in theory, since it is permanently attached to the Arrowsmith Peninsula by the Jones Ice Shelf. Six of us had been dropped on the Jones by ship, in March, to remain on the Arrowsmith until sea-ice enabled us to return to Stonington for mid-winter. (In the event we were not all back on base until the beginning of August.) Although sledge parties have been visiting the Jones from Stonington for years, as far as we knew only one of the myriad peaks surrounding it had been attempted, and that unsuccessfully.
We had our eyes on this particular peak for nearly two months, but it was 15 May and late in the year before weather and circumstances permitted us to climb it. However, we were far enough north for the Long Winter Night to be a myth. The sun did not finally disappear until the end of May and even at mid-winter, there remained five hours of passable daylight. So, although we harnessed the dogs by the light of a tilly lamp, the sky was tinged with saffron behind us and flushing rose in front by the time we reached Scree Cove Col, beneath the north face, an hour and a half later. It was eleven before we had picketed the dogs, exchanged canvas mukluks for leather boots and sorted out some gear, and as we plodded up the first snow slope the sun came down it to meet us, warm and friendly. The weather was perfect. Carefree and relaxed, we could consciously enjoy every minute of our day off.
Straightforward step-kicking took us up one of several couloirs seaming the rocky face. Ill-defined at first, it was etched more deeply into the mountainside as we rose, becoming steep, narrow and, in places, icy when we entered the right-hand branch of a fork. Finally it terminated in a formidable ice cliff which was, in fact, the left wall of the summit ice field, and curved round not far below to guard the bottom edge of the ice field also. As I uncoiled the rope and searched for a belay, the bored, disconsolate howling of the dogs was carried to us, faint but clear, on the stillness. Behind, the huge dark mass of Rendu’s 7,000 feet south face still scowled down from six miles away, on the far side of the Jones Ice Shelf.
Descending a little, Male found a weakness in the barrier, a short vertical wall. He climbed it quickly and competently, as befits one who can assess conditions on Lochnagar from his bedroom window, and disappeared over the top. There was a long pause, the sound of prolonged hammering and, at last, a slightly anxious voice asking me not to fall off. I set out hopefully brandishing a pristine Chouinard hammer, but the ice was crumbly so it had to be handholds after all. I found Male belayed to a peg stuck optimistically into a suspicious-looking and almost vertical crack in ice which was too brittle to take a peg anywhere else. All at once, our position had become startlingly exposed. Beneath and to our left, nothing was visible between the abrupt drop of the ice cliff and the col 2,000 feet below. It looked a long way. Hastily, I embedded the pick of the Chouinard, and cut a step to stand in while I gazed at the breathtaking view down Scree Cove suddenly revealed. The richness of colouring was what gave it such impact, a long gleaming arm of black water carrying the eye straight to the gold-fired peaks of Pourquoi Pas Island, named by Charcot after his famous ship sixty years before. The ice field itself was alight with a glow in which sunrise and sunset were inextricably merged in a single conflagration.
The ice was hard but not too steep, so we moved together to save time on a rising traverse across the face for 200 metres of so, uncomfortably aware that a slip would mean a long, long toboggan ride for both of us, with a sizeable ski-jump en route. Meeting snow again with some relief, we headed straight up until compelled to weave our way through a number of cauliflower growths, or ‘donglers’, of sugary snow and rotten ice, caused by rime. The summit itself was a ‘dongler’, perched on top of two long ridges like the bobble on a ski-hat, giving fifty feet of steep, unstable climbing. It added a final airy flourish to the route.
In every direction stretched mountains and glaciers, intersected by channels, bays and fjords. Among embryonic sea ice, leads of open water glinted amber in the dropping sun. Away to the south, beyond Ridge Island and the mountain-islands of Square Bay, the inviolate arrowhead of Mount Wilcox stood out above its neighbours against a sky of palest beryl. In the west, over Pourquoi Pas and a distant Adelaide, the sky was filled with reds, oranges, yellows. It was an empty, silent world, alive only in its shifting, spreading colours. Not a bird. Not even a wind. Just ourselves, alone with a dying sun, witnessing the final defiant flaring up of life that precedes extinction. And all the while the shadow line was creeping stealthily up towards our sunlit sanctuary. We lingered as long as we dared. I, for one, was reluctant to forsake, not so much the splendour of the scene, as the peace I felt in myself. Such moments of complete harmony with oneself, a companion, the universe, are all too rare ...
Then we headed swiftly downwards, delayed only at the ice cliff where, on the bare ice, our crampons had left no traces to signpost the w
ay over. We reached the col, to a frantic reception from the dogs, as the light faded, and raced back to camp in the dark and minus twenties, brim full with the content that is born of a perfect day.
– Chapter 16 –
SKI TOUR IN ALASKA (1987)
We sallied forth that morning lightheartedly, revelling in the knowledge that we were fifty miles from the nearest road and off to climb our first peak. Leaving the tents up, we climbed on skins round a small icefall and up into a side basin of the Yanert glacier. The sun was shining and we carried only light day sacks. There was a sense of being on holiday after the hard graft of the previous week.
Almost immediately, however, the atmosphere changed. Gusts of wind swept down the basin, teasing at first, but quickly becoming vicious. The dry, loose powder that had lain so passive up to now, swirled aloft into stinging, blinding curtains of spindrift. Mike Browne and David Williams cached their skis beneath a bergschrund and swam slowly up a short but steep slope of bottomless powder. It was too cold to wait around, so Richard Cooper and I contoured round our little mountain to try our luck on another ridge. By now we could see nothing and relied for a sense of direction on the angle of our skis across the slope. Hoods up, heads turned away from the blast, we plodded on until we reached a col where, in a lull, we could dimly discern an easy rock ridge leading upwards. At that moment, Richard lost his balance and fell over. A boot released from its binding and while he struggled to relocate it, he dropped a mitt. That settled it. Summit or no summit, this was no place to be with nothing but polypro gloves on your hands. We groped our way down, skins still on the skis. My glasses were hopelessly iced up, but I needed them to protect my eyes and had to peer over them to take advantage of the occasional lull. Mike and David caught us up, having reached the summit on their side. For a few minutes we became disorientated and strayed into a zone of crevasses. Visions of an epic began to loom before us. Wearily we climbed back uphill, then with relief, recognised a glacier trench we had followed on the way up. Soon afterwards we dropped out of the wind, and its attendant cloud of drift, and could see where we were. Off came the skins and we skied rapidly back to camp where there was scarcely a breath of wind. As we pulled clots of ice from our eyelashes, we congratulated ourselves on our choice of campsite and joked that it had been like a good day on Cairngorm – which was not, I suppose, wholly facetious. Soon we were inside the tents, brewing up. Although our faces were burning we were all chilled through and Mike was anxiously warming white, frozen toes.
Over the Hills and Far Away Page 9
