Blazing Ice

by John H. Wright

A quick trip to McMurdo got our two CRREL friends back to catch their plane home. Brad had another field commitment, and also left our crew. Kim, recovered now, rejoined us, packing his guitar this time. That spelled promising evenings in camp.

  Another CRREL radar man, Steve Arcone, had by the sheerest chance come in from another field assignment. He could come out to the Shear Zone should we want that. With Shaun still on leave we had space and provisions enough in camp. Steve could only help us.

  But a lot of folks wanted to scope out our first steps on the “Road to the Pole.” While in McMurdo a few weeks earlier, Dave Bresnahan brought up the subject. He was then running things from NSF’s “big chair.” He decreed who would go out and who would not.

  “That’s a dangerous place, and we still haven’t got a handle on it,” I explained. “If you want artists and writers to come out, just say so. But know that when we are working everybody’s got a job, and nobody’s got time to guide strangers. If strangers come out, I will shut down everything and walk them around.”

  “John, I want you to understand that NSF would like to get some pictures. It would be more than a courtesy of you to have some photographers visit.” Dave remained firm.

  “Right now they’d see a bunch of us wondering what in the hell is going on. I don’t think the foundation wants pictures of that.”

  “How about a daytrip out there? Can you be ready?”

  “How about a couple of weeks from now?”

  “That’ll be fine. I can tell them to expect something. And that you’re on board with it.”

  That day was coming. But on December 11, only five of us returned to camp in the PistenBully.

  Back in the saddle, Kim filled a new crevasse we named Strange Brew. Its radar image had showed a screen-full of chaotic arcs and parabolas, the likes of which we’d not yet seen. Tom made sense of it when he rappelled into it. Crevasse 6.1 had split. The piece we called Strange Brew ran underneath our road for a hundred feet before it turned again and crossed it. For that hundred feet, our road itself was the bridge.

  After Strange Brew, Kim jumped over to Crevasse 7 and filled that one the same day. In crossing it, he brought the bulldozer to the post where it touched our first mile.

  “Somewhere out there,” I tilted my head toward HFS, “not far, is the Miracle Mile. Inside that Miracle Mile is our second milepost, our next stop. There’s one more thing to do here, before we call it quits for the day.”

  We took the picture.

  In the morning, the PistenBully and hot-water drill came to a new crevasse just past the milepost. We’d recorded only a black blob here, but now it was Crevasse 7.8.

  Tom cautiously entered the void after we shot our access hole. Fifty feet down, he hollered back to his rope tenders, “Haul me out.”

  Clambering over the lip of the crater, he explained loud enough for everyone to hear: “There’s not enough light down there. And it’s still pretty gassy.”

  “Very good. We’ll open a bigger hole. Maybe we’ll shoot the slot and have done with it,” I said.

  Tom approached me quietly then, his eyes big as saucers. “This is a really big crevasse. It’s bigger than Mongo. This one is really, really big!”

  I smiled. “Yes. But we know where it is. We have found it. Next, we are going to fill it with snow.”

  Tom felt he hadn’t got his message across.

  “ … And then we’re going to drive over it, and go on to the next crevasse, which is Crevasse 8. We know where that one is, too. Then we’re going on to Crevasse 9 and slam it shut. All bigness means is it’ll take us longer to fill. We’re OK, Tom.”

  We shot the slot that afternoon, and found huge blocks of broken ice walls had plugged off the south half of the big crevasse. The void aired out immediately. There was plenty of light in there now.

  Tom rappelled into it again, descending near the blocks. He explored delicately around them. “I think these blocks came off an intersecting crevasse,” he radioed.

  “Okay. Come on out now. We’ll shove some snow into it tomorrow, and you can walk down the snow pile,” I radioed back.

  Kim, who’d been tending the ropes, observed dryly: “It looks like I’ll only have to fill half a crevasse here.”

  Kim was exactly right. The fallen blocks held back all the snow he pushed into the slot. He only had to fill the north half. From the time he walked the bulldozer out from camp, Kim took three and a half hours to fill and cross 7.8. Add an hour to that for the time Tom explored down the spill slope, and the whole job was done by noon.

  Kim went on to Crevasse 8 after lunch. He filled that in another two hours.

  We advanced to Crevasse 9, the narrow crevasse Allan Delaney found. Here we drilled a series of blast holes along both sides of the crevasse. Loading them all with dynamite, the shot slammed the walls into the void. Kim smoothed out our work.

  “Three crevasses bagged in one day,” I grinned. “You are a mighty crevasse-hunter, Bwana Kim.”

  The really, really big crevasse earned a nickname that day, too: Personal Space. An attractive female research assistant, bearing a striking resemblance to actress Sandra Bullock, may have inspired it. Apparently one of our crew had attempted to get close to her. She warned him against invading her “personal space.”

  We were into naming things, and a jolly mood prevailed that evening in camp. Right before dinner, Steve Arcone walked around the front of the Jamesway where the short, curly-headed easterner surprised me in the act of coiling the day’s climbing ropes.

  “Who the fuck are you—Gene Autry?” he cracked.

  Steve’s abrasive New York humor was foreign to most of our company, certainly foreign to the Shear Zone. I “got it” moments later and started laughing. “Go on,” I growled, keeping my eyes to the ground. “Get inside.”

  The mood carried through dinner. Three crevasses in one day. “You find them, you fill them. It’s a simple concept,” Rick Pietrek summarized for us.

  Kim got out his guitar after dinner and hit a lick. He played all over—Beatles, John Perrine, Chicago Blues. One at a time, he roped each of us into song.

  The wisecracking New Yorker revealed an unexpectedly melodious voice. Steve had just accompanied Kim through a round of “Alice’s Restaurant” when he started in on “Love is Blue.” Here, though, his vocal chords stumbled.

  “Blue … no, too low … blue, no, higher … blue, no, too high … blue … blue … blue, blue.”

  “Who the fuck are you—Bing Crosby?” I nailed him.

  “More powder. More detonating cord. And we need to groom our road. Can you help us out?” I radioed to Gerald Crist. On this fine day, I hated to break our momentum to go into town for supplies.

  “We can do that,” Gerald answered cheerfully. “We have a fellow here this morning just waiting for something like this to come up. I’ll send him out with a tractor and a trail drag.”

  By morning, we’d flagged the snow farms for 10, 11, and 12. At lunch we set up the hot-water drill for their access holes. By afternoon, my old partner Marty Reed showed up with a tractor from McMurdo.

  Marty was now the McMurdo blaster. Looking like an Okie turning off Route 66, he had boxes of dynamite lashed all over the outside of his tractor. He brought John Penney with him to rotate for Rick. John showed up his first year at Pole with a face full of hair and a shaggy topknot. The burly mechanic came back to Pole, after an R&R excursion to McMurdo, sporting a mohawk. Now he showed up at the Shear Zone shaved completely bald. John brought boxes of fresh vegetables and eggs.

  Rick and John turned over special knowledge of the mechanical items in camp while Marty and I stowed the explosives on the old navy sled. Late afternoon, Rick climbed aboard the tractor returning to McMurdo with Marty.

  Just before he shut the cab door, Rick turned to me and hollered: “It’s a simple concept!”

  Sunday brought sleep-in, eggs for breakfast, and a gray overcast. We’d not take out the bulldozer, but the boys wanted to blow something
up. The holes were already drilled … and it was Sunday. We made an expedition of it.

  The five of us blew access holes in Crevasses 10, 11, and 12, and we explored inside Crevasse 6, easily walking down the fill plug’s slope to the bottom. A paper-thin gap between the plug snow and the icy crevasse wall prompted debate: Was the crevasse dilating, or was the snow plug shrinking as it set up? In the cavernous blue-whiteness, Steve studied minute details of the crevasse walls. He pointed out contorted folding in its icy layers, epiphanies before his eyes he had only imagined from the radar. When we came out, the wind came up, so we left our field of play for camp and an evening feast.

  Monday’s overcast again wouldn’t allow us to take out the bulldozer. But we could see the flags well enough to send Tom into the access holes, and to drill for slot blasting. When the afternoon weather cleared, Kim walked the bulldozer out and filled Crevasse 10. Tuesday he filled 11 and 12, and then we decamped at noon.

  Bordering on frenzy, we were seizing crevasses one at a time, right down the green flag line, closing on the Miracle Mile. But Steve had to go home now too. That meant another trip to McMurdo, and progress interruptus. Steve had kept us in stitches. He certified our radar practice. He explained the puzzling black imagery. We educated him about the side-scanning cone of influence. We’d lose this guy who had helped us, and we’d probably come back with tourists.

  “We can take visitors,” I confided to Dave back in town. “We have bridges already drilled out, ready to shoot. When we shoot, they can get some nice pictures of smoke and fly-ice. They can take pictures of the bulldozer pushing snow into a crevasse. If you like, we can set aside a day to walk them through all the operation.”

  “Some of them wanted to stay with you for a week.” Dave upped the ante, jolting me.

  “Can they cook?” I recovered.

  “I don’t know …”

  “In that case, the answer is no,” I was quite firm. “We just came back in to drop off Arcone and get a shower. We’re heading back out tomorrow … early.”

  “What would you say to a helicopter bringing some out for a day?” Dave could order a helicopter.

  “We can handle that. You should come, too.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll let you know through Mac-Ops.”

  I found Russ Magsig in the galley for dinner. He looked haggard from his prolonged stint in town and pleaded for escape. I wanted Russ for the three-year show and couldn’t afford to break his spirit. Tomorrow we’d go out for a short stretch, but we’d be back. “When we go out again after Christmas, Russ, you’ll go with us.”

  Having my promise, Russ visibly relaxed. Only then did he ask, “How’s it going?”

  “We just stuffed 12.”

  Russ brightened. “Stuffed 12? It really is going good then?”

  To whet his appetite, I threw back my head in imitation of the great Civil Rights leader, half-singing, half-chanting: “I can seeeee … the Miracle Mile… . It’s a Laaaand of Milk and Honey!” Then I lowered my gaze. “I appreciate your patience, giving the others their turn. But I want you with me when we go into the Miracle Mile.”

  We sealed our compact with a nod.

  Four of us returned to the Shear Zone Wednesday morning, same crew but missing Steve Arcone. We went right to work drilling and blasting access holes in Crevasses 13, 14, and 15. The next day brought high winds and blowing snow. Same the day after. We did what we could during the sucker holes. Otherwise we mucked storm drift out of camp. The storms that kept us mucking also kept the helicopters away. Visitors never showed up.

  The weather broke by noon on Saturday. Bwana bagged Crevasses 13 and 14. Shaun, back on the Ice from family leave, hijacked a snowmobile from town and rejoined us in the afternoon. When he’d left us for home, we were dealing with Crevasses 3, 3.1, and Mongo. Now we were fast approaching the Miracle Mile. Shaun’s return added that much more mass to our momentum.

  Sunday we bagged 15 and drilled access holes in 16, 17, 18, and 19. The Miracle Mile started just past 19, but we wouldn’t cross into it that day.

  Monday we returned to McMurdo. Tuesday and Wednesday were Christmas holidays in town—two days off and a feast.

  Gerald Crist in McMurdo asked if I were ready to rotate dozer operators. But I thought we were going to win this one now. I’d not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with an unknown.

  “Mind if I keep Kim?”

  “Not at all.” Gerald understood perfectly.

  Bwana Kim came back out. So did Russ. Shaun, too, with another mountaineer from the McMurdo stable. This one was new to the Shear Zone. Allen O’Bannon was a tall, fit fellow with the look of John Lennon sporting a stubble of whiskers.

  Straight away we ran out to the crevasses and blasted the next four access holes. Through two days of high winds and blowing snow, we got our mountaineers into all four. We blasted the slots at two of them, and we would fill those when the dozer could come out.

  Sunday, the weather broke, and we pounced. Kim bagged all four crevasses, crossed 19, and rolled into the Miracle Mile.

  The D8R stopped long enough for the picture at the second milepost, then rolled all the way up to Crevasse 20 at the far side of the Mile. Between us and the post at HFS, six more crevasses blocked our way.

  We returned to McMurdo for the New Year holiday. When we when came back, we’d finish the job.

  Russ and I sat down in a quiet corner of the galley.

  “There’s one more mechanic at the Heavy Shop that signed up for duty. The first-year guy. Brandon.”

  “Yeah …” Russ saw what was coming. “He’s a good kid.”

  “We’re going out there to stay until we finish the job. I’m going to take the kid. You’re going to stay in town.”

  Russ sighed with resignation. He didn’t see what was coming next.

  “While you’re in town I want you to scout the old navy sleds parked at Willy. See what we can put together for a road trip. We’re going to finish this job, and if we don’t screw up, we’ll finish early. Early enough to get out on the Ross Ice Shelf and grab a few more miles before McMurdo closes for the winter.”

  Russ saw his future, then, and liked it. “Let the kid be with you at the finish. He deserves it.”

  Back at the Shear Zone, marginal weather devolved to crappy weather, which then improved to poor. That day we filled and crossed Crevasse 20. which we named Snap. Crackle soon followed.

  “More powder!” I called into McMurdo on our radiophone. We were running short of dynamite again. Brad came out with a load of explosives. On January 8, Pop went down. Then we buried Crevasse 23, not stopping to name it.

  Shaun and Allen prospected thirteen miles southward past HFS. They found not one crevasse.

  January 10, Bwana filled Crevasse 24 in two and a half hours. He bagged 25 in another three. Then he mowed down 26. Seconds later, he brought the D8R to the post at HFS.

  We climbed atop the bulldozer and raised our American flag.

  From camp that evening, I transmitted a digital image of the scene to our project counterparts at NSF, and to my bosses at McMurdo. The straightforward message that accompanied it read: “January 10, 2003, at 5:30 p.m.: The D8R arrived at HFS, and traveled a half mile beyond it. You may say we have crossed the Shear Zone.”

  The Ross Ice Shelf was open for business.

  Winning those three miles from GAW to HFS took from October 31 until January 10. One thousand miles of unexplored terrain lay between us and Pole, and our mission called for a round-trip in one season.

  Yet we crossed the Shear Zone earlier than expected. With a light traverse train, we headed out onto the Ross Ice Shelf and flagged another one hundred miles of trail. Russ went with us. We turned around at a place we named SOUTH.

  Another pair of CRREL investigators showed up. Tom accommodated them with study time in the Shear Zone before we broke camp all together.

  Sometime in February at Pegasus Field near McMurdo, I shuffled along with other day-dreamers waiting to board a
jet airplane home, staring blankly at the snow.

  Dave Bresnahan strode across the runway toward the plane. He placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, turned me around and looked me right in the eyes. “Outstanding! I congratulate you on a stunning season. Well done!”

  To the moment of stepping onto the airplane, I’d not heard anything like that from anyone. I thanked Dave for his courtesy. We shook hands.

  Onboard the plane, I strapped into my jump seat, and began shutting out the ice world. My wife was pregnant with our second child when I’d left for the Ice. She was due in April, and I’d told no one here. I couldn’t risk losing focus on the safety of my crew. I found peace now dreaming of homecoming, of the love of my wife and son, and wondering what new life grew in her swollen belly.

  My eyelids drooped. A young man with a Marine-like bearing approached. He gave his name, stating forthrightly, “I am interested in your project. What can I do to get involved?”

  His appeal sounded different from the eager, gung-ho requests I’d become used to hearing. Many wanted kicks blowing things up and jumping down crevasses. Some wanted their names associated with the grand project.

  “Here’re two paths to get you into the traverse business. You get a job next season with the equipment operations group, or you get a job with the heavy shop. I plan on hiring out of those two departments. Do you have a resume?”

  He had one. I glanced through it and saw something about command of an amphibious assault vehicle company. “I will support you,” he told me.

  We learned a lot about Shear Zone dynamics over the years. This first year we looked down a straight road. It didn’t stay that way. It got crooked.

  Strain grid measurements said GAW moved north at 2.3 feet a day. That’s 840 feet a year. HFS moved slightly east of north at 3.75 feet a day, or 1,370 feet a year.

  Spreading between GAW and HFS accelerated. Our last measurements showed the distance growing 160 feet a year. Most spreading manifested in plastic deformation, stretching the ice like taffy. But annual radar surveys detected new cracks appearing. We observed growing separation between some crevasse walls and their fill plugs. Perhaps 20 percent of the spreading manifested in new crevasses and the dilation of old ones.