Blazing Ice

by John H. Wright

  Safe crossings demand vigilance and maintenance. That includes keeping up the flags and monuments. We measured annual snow accumulation in the Shear Zone: 1.6 feet. Our flags would be buried in a few short years. Anyone who heads out there and finds no flags, no markers, will have to start all over again.

  7 Crossing the Ross Ice Shelf—Year Two

  “How far did you get?” asked a voice over the Iridium phone.

  “All is well.” We were warm, had plenty of food and fuel, and nobody was hurt.

  Sheltered in our living module, we enjoyed ample power from the energy module behind it. These red, metal-clad buildings came right off French floor plans. We even called them “modules” because the French did. But our modules, and the sleds under them, had been built for us in Alberta, Canada. The living module, ten feet wide by thirty-five feet long, had two bunkrooms at either end. Each bunkroom held two double bunks. A phone-booth-sized communications cubby and a twelve-foot-long galley separated the bunk-rooms. Our energy module, ten-by-twenty-five-feet long, contained two 35 kW generators. It held a snow melter, two sinks, a shower, a compact marine washing machine, an incinerating toilet, and a fuel pumping station. Outside both modules, electric outlets provided “hitching posts” where we plugged in our tractors to keep them warm.

  “Come on … you can tell me … How far did you get?” The Iridium phone offered confidentiality not available through VHF.

  “All is well,” I repeated. You don’t need to know anything else.

  It was the same message I transmitted daily to Mac-Ops over the VHF radio. Our daily report stated our condition and declared our intentions for the next day: either “remain at this location” or “advance on course.” It detailed the day’s weather and gave our coordinate position. A change in coordinate position, if it changed, told all. Mac-Ops distributed transcripts through the e-mail network, but that we were still in VHF range told anyone listening that we had not gotten very far.

  We were still at SOUTH on the Ross Ice Shelf, wallowed in soft snow. The steaming summit of Mt. Erebus on Ross Island and the stony tip of Minna Bluff on the continent still peeked over the horizons behind us. A bright sun glared down through a deep blue sky and burned hard upon our living module. Snow on its black metal roof melted. Inside, Stretch, John Penney, and James McCabe—an old Ice hand but new to our project this year—shifted pots and pans, catching rare liquid water that found every open seam in its new construction. Outside, I swept snow off the roof, boggled by the sudden heat. The heat was not in the brochure, and the growing swarm of footprints around our camp said we’d not moved off this spot for days.

  Last year we charged the hundred miles past the Shear Zone in two and a half days to get to this spot. This year it took us seven. Proven technology, my ass!

  In the beginning our project had only three instructions: establish a haul route from McMurdo to South Pole, execute a round trip traverse along that route in one season, and deliver “meaningful” cargo to Pole. Do all that in three years, of course. But myriad layers of authority held a stake in our project, and the rules of engagement multiplied.

  Before we’d ever seen the Shear Zone, Dave Bresnahan had called me in Denver. “As you begin your big equipment procurements, Erick wants to make sure the project uses proven technology only.”

  “Proven technology only …” I repeated, leaning back in my caster chair. Technology hadn’t been proven for a South Pole traverse. “What does that mean?”

  “It means ‘off-the-shelf equipment.’ He doesn’t want to invest in experimental designs.”

  Heavy cargo sleds, off the shelf, were made in Germany. The manufacturer had bankrupted. Another German company acquired the rights a year later. It could produce the sleds, but its two-year delivery didn’t do our three-year project much good. That same summer, the French came to our rescue. Since they’d been in the traverse business for years, their custom sled designs satisfied proven technology.

  Tractors were another matter. CRREL engineers had proven that bulldozers with segmented steel tracks were too slow for the two-thousand-mile round-trip. Bulldozers offered no great return in cargo delivery. So we looked at agricultural tractors with continuous rubber-belted tracks. These offered speeds like we wanted, and they were strong pullers. But these were not small tractors. An operator climbed up stair steps with guard rails, and onto a side deck, just to get into the cab towering above him. Caterpillar made a dual-track model called a Challenger, painted yellow of course. Case made an intriguing four-track model called a Quadtrac, painted red for contrast, naturally.

  At purchase time, when Dave’s call came, Caterpillar had just sold its Challenger line to another company. The new owner discontinued the old line and wouldn’t produce the new models until it was too late for us. That played well for trialing a Case Quadtrac.

  George Blaisdell and I flew to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to inspect a Quadtrac fleet used there by a seismic exploration company. The model needed modifications for our project, and the manufacturer cooperated. So, because Case tractors were used on the North Slope, they became proven technology.

  Meanwhile, an NSF accountant vetoed the Case. At the time, she occupied the big seat at McMurdo. It was a “one-off model,” she said. Caterpillar-brand equipment otherwise dominated the USAP fleet. Parts interchangeability and inventory simplicity argued for Caterpillar. But the new Challengers, whenever they were ready, would have completely different engines and transmissions. They’d be one-off, too.

  I wanted to try Cat and Case. We didn’t know which would work best. We didn’t know the terrain. And we didn’t know how many tractors it took to move just us to Pole, let alone cargo. The best cargo tractor and the best pioneering tractor may not be the same model. In the end, Case overcame the accountant’s veto simply because it was available. We called the big red tractor Quadzilla.

  Judy Goldsberry found our second tractor on a lot in Makoti, North Dakota, where she lived when she wasn’t the foreman at Williams Field. It was a new Challenger of the discontinued series. We fitted it with a hydraulic knuckle-boom crane, like the French did, and we named it Fritzy.

  Our D8R with its huge snow blade would be slow, but because we already had it, it became proven technology, too. We christened her Mary Lou, after Judy’s twin sister.

  Our fourth tractor was an odd looking machine, modified from the discontinued Challengers. A six-passenger cab perched on top of its engine. A flatbed deck with a fifth wheel hitch fit on the rear where the standard cab used to be. It pulled a train of tracked trailers. CRREL thought it might become the ultimate traverse tractor. We latched onto it to test the fifth wheel system. And, because the USAP had purchased it already for other purposes, it was also proven technology. We named it the Elephant Man.

  Fritzy and the Elephant Man disembarked the ship a month after we completed the Shear Zone crossing in February of 2003. Quadzilla, along with our entire sled fleet, arrived at the start of the next season, October 2003, in the bellies of United States Air Force C-17s.

  A lot of us showed up on those C-17s.

  James McCabe had been out of the program for a couple years. When Stretch learned McCabe was coming back as an equipment operator, he wrote two words to me: “Great score!” Russ Magsig demanded the snake-eyed Texas skinflint bring cigars. I knew the dry-witted Texan would be a popular choice.

  Stretch had been on the Ice since August. Same with Russ and John Penney. The CRREL contingent—Jason Weale, George Blaisdell, and later Allan Delaney—arrived in October. Buddy Truesdell and Richard Sievert, representing Case, trained our crew on Quadzilla. Herb Setz, master sledmaker from Alberta, came in to supervise our sled assembly. Our sleds had arrived in pieces. Throughout October in McMurdo we built sleds, we trained, we radared the Shear Zone, and we tested tractor trains.

  The trick with tractor trains was to strike the right balance between the tractor’s ability to pull, called “draw bar pull,” and the sleds’ resistance to being pulled. We measured both
pull and resistance by linking scales between the tractor and the sleds. Pull and resistance were only partially related to the equipment’s gross weight.

  We wanted more pull than resistance, naturally; otherwise we’d get stuck. So the character of the surface, where tracks met snow, became a factor, too. We figured the towed load should equal no more than 90 percent of the tractor’s draw bar pull. That became our “load planning tool.” We measured the towing resistance for each sled on snows near Williams Field, and we added sleds in a train until the sum of their resistance neared 90 percent.

  In early November we shook down our tractors on a local traverse, sixty miles across the frozen seawater of McMurdo Sound to Marble Point. At the end of that line, we delivered bulk fuel to a helicopter refueling station. Quad-zilla, Fritzy, and the Elephant Man made the trip.

  McMurdo Sound was ice hard, and we enjoyed great traction over most of the route. But when I drove the Elephant Man over one snow-covered patch, the tractor reared back under the heavy load bearing down on its fifth wheel. Pure blue sky took over my windshield. The rear of my tracks ground deeply into the snow, and we stuck.

  That was not a good sign. Deep snow covered the Ross Ice Shelf.

  “When are you going to go?” everyone in McMurdo asked.

  “When we’re ready,” we always answered.

  I wouldn’t launch until we were ready. We loaded our sleds, married our sled trains, and settled on the order we’d head down the trail and how we’d stagger our tracks to compact the snow.

  “When are you going to be ready?”

  “Soon.”

  At the end of day shift, November 16, I passed out cigars and we enjoyed an outdoor smoke. The afternoon was calm and sunny at our staging area on the Sea Ice Runway. We stood around with nothing left to do.

  “Are you ready?” I asked James McCabe.

  James squinted in the bright sun. “Let’s go,” he nodded.

  The others bought in: “Ready.” “Let’s go.” “I’m in.”

  “Then take tomorrow off. Meet here after breakfast day after tomorrow. We go.” Grinning, I added, “Our hearts are pure. Our cause is just. The time is now.”

  Across McMurdo Sound, the Royal Society Mountains pierced the sky in crisp detail. Morning operations at the Sea Ice Runway got under way. The still air buzzed with humming engines. Forklifts carried pallets about the frozen sea surface. Cargo handlers loaded airplanes. LC-130s taxied across the parking apron to the fuel depot.

  We gathered on the ice by our machines. The station padre offered up a tractor-prayer. David Pacheco, a large and gentle man who accompanied the padre, gave us an inlaid wooden cross, handmade from his home in Peñasco, New Mexico. When we hitched to our loads and lined up in the order of march, I hailed the control tower:

  “Tower, South Pole Traverse requests permission to transit the apron.”

  “Proceed as requested, South Pole Traverse.”

  Allan Delaney and Allen O’Bannon led the way in the PistenBully, dragging a long rope tethered to two snowmobiles, each lashed down on plastic sheet–sleds. Stretch and the D8R fell in line. He pulled a long train beginning with our module sleds. These two alone weighed over ninety-nine thousand pounds. And behind those he pulled three more supply sleds at thirty thousand pounds each. John Penney, who’d captain the radar and flagging team once we passed SOUTH, rode with me. We slipped into the line with the Elephant Man, pulling two trailers on its fifth wheel. Each trailer carried a five-thousand-gallon fuel tank. They were partially full, and we hoped to deliver them empty to South Pole as cargo. Russ followed us with Fritzy, pulling three three-thousand-gallon fuel tank sleds. James McCabe and Quadzilla rode drag, pulling five three-thousand-gallon tank sleds. All together, we weighed 772,000 pounds, moving out at four miles per hour.

  An hour and a half after leaving the runway, we climbed the thirty-foot rise from the sea-ice onto the McMurdo Ice Shelf. The Shelf road, a compacted snow road rather than an ice road, led to Williams Field skiway at the city limits of McMurdo. We stopped along the way to hitch up trail grooming “drags” behind our sled trains. These were an assortment of long, heavy pipes and anchor chains we had staged a few days before. The drags leveled bumps and filled ruts made by our passage.

  At the city limits, a group of well-wishers cheered us with balloons and signs bearing encouraging words like “Party on, Dudes!” We stopped to share their fun and stand for photos.

  Crossing the city limits after checking out with Mac-Ops, we headed onto the less-traveled path to the Shear Zone. James strayed off the track at the first turn, and Quadzilla wallowed up to its belly pan in the soft, virgin snow. Russ unhitched Fritzy and went back to pull James out of his mire, still within sight of Williams Field. But no one was looking. The well-wishers had gone back to town.

  Nobody witnessed what happened after we passed over the horizon.

  “Split your load and go on up to the Shear Zone camp. We’ll come back for the rest tomorrow,” I radioed James, behind me, as the blizzard swelled in front of us.

  We were headed for disappointment this year. I just wished I didn’t know that on this first day. Quadzilla couldn’t pull all five tank sleds over the soft snow. The Elephant Man had enough trouble with its twinned trailers. Russ pulled both of us into camp with Fritzy.

  Four days later we shuttled our fleet across the Shear Zone and started south. Harsh truth struck again. The Elephant Man made a quarter mile riding nose-high before we, I, and it got stuck. Angry, I unhitched my second trailer and left it. We’d pick it up on our way back to McMurdo, someday.

  Launching again with the D8R leading, Fritzy, the Elephant Man, and Quadzilla all broke traction through the day, grinding their tracks into the soft snow. Each time a tractor wallowed-in another tractor unhitched and went back to unstick its stranded companion. We made less than fifteen miles, slogging forward at two miles per hour. At day’s end, Russ had left a half-load several miles behind us.

  The 90 percent load planning tool wasn’t working.

  Several thought our slow pace, lined up as we were behind the bulldozer, didn’t give the momentum needed to avoid wallowing-in. So the next day I ordered the other tractors to lead while Stretch brought up the rear. The strategy worked. We stuck less, and we advanced between three and four miles per hour. When Stretch caught up at the end of the day, we’d covered another fifteen miles. Happy about that, I walked back to the D8R that hauled our home.

  Then I spotted the wreckage: two containers mounted on Stretch’s trailing sleds now lay on the snow with all their tangled sled pieces still linked to his train. Their tracks extended well over the horizon. Stretch had dragged them that way for miles. He could never have noticed that, for he couldn’t see around the living module from his cab.

  No one had witnessed this wreck, and I’d never considered a repair job like this on the trail. The crew gathered around it, one at a time, thunderstruck.

  Fritzy’s crane helped in the heavy lifts. In two hours we’d rebuilt one sled, discovering the culprit turntable pin had snapped in two. We carried spare pins. These were case hardened steel, two-and-a-quarter-inch diameter by two feet long. But what forces could break such a pin?

  “We figured this one out,” I sighed. “Let’s call it a day, and go eat.” The other sled could wait till tomorrow.

  From that day on, the D8R always took the lead. The other tractors ran packed close behind it. And we watched each other, hawk-like, for signs of trouble.

  A new snow form appeared over the next few miles that became our bane for the next hundred. These were long, narrow hummocks of hard, dense snow. In flat light we saw nothing of them. Windblown snow filled the troughs between the hummocks so that their tops appeared level with everything else. A tractor passing over the top of a hummock might not leave a mark on it. But on plunging into the fluffy traps between them, the tractor wallowed-in. When that happened, we all stopped to help.

  We hadn’t seen these snow forms the year before dur
ing the dash traverse. We were too light then to notice them. But this year we were heavy, and we noticed every one. At an evening meal Russ volunteered an explanation.

  “When my uncle and I’d be plowing a field, and the tiller hung up on a rocky ledge we couldn’t see, we’d jolt to a stop. I always fell off the tractor. My uncle called them dorniks. I think that’s German.” Russ had been raised on an Ohio farm.

  “Dornik” is of Gaelic origin. It means a buried fieldstone one might use to build a dry stone wall, something that would stop a plow. Dornik stuck for us, and as an epithet it fit. When John Penney called out on the radio: “Fucking dornik!” everybody knew what he meant. The whole fleet halted and we went back.

  But even helping was not easy. The stirred up snow made terrible footing. We worked cautiously around stuck tractors and broken sleds, checking that everyone stood safely out of the way before making a big move, or a heavy lift. Still, we fell down a lot.

  To get that first hundred miles to SOUTH, we even traveled at “night.” When the sun sat lower on the horizon and the temperature chilled, we thought we’d find a firmer surface. That was an illusion. We still got stuck. And I stopped counting the number of times it happened.

  Crossing the Ross Ice Shelf wasn’t going to happen for us this season. And hauling cargo to South Pole was sheer fantasy when we couldn’t even pull ourselves. None of us had any idea a snow swamp lay ahead, waiting to swallow us whole.

  We dragged ourselves into SOUTH seven days after crossing the Shear Zone. In camp we discovered a cracked pinion seal on Quadzilla. Repairing it required a spare part from McMurdo. Since we were immobile without it, I radioed to McMurdo, hoping a Twin Otter ski plane might fly the part to us. And we waited.

  For days a cloudy ceiling stretched from one horizon to the other, disappearing into dim shades of gray on gray. A plane would never attempt the landing. One day a Twin Otter flew over us. We heard it, but we never saw the plane through the pall. It refused even an airdrop.