Land of the Long Day

13 – The Discovery of the Dry Valleys

Once the Base was tidied up, the garage built and the bunkroom cubicles habitable it was time to think of more serious things, before the sun left us for the whole winter. After all, we were supposed to be here to Map the last Unknown Frontier and all that kind of stuff, not fiddle about dabbing paint on mundane buildings.
I sought out Our Leader whose face assumed that "Oh, God, what now?" expression it habitually wore whenever I hove into sight.
"Ed," says I. "I want to fly over the Sound and have a look at those Dry Valleys I told you about."
"What the hell for?" he rasped in some impatience.
"You remember that corner of the photo of Trigger Hawkes' that I showed you on the way down? There must be a whole new valley over there without any ice in it like the Taylor. Remember Operation Highjump? They went bananas over what they called "Bunger's Oasis" a few miles of ice‑free rock. This could be miles bigger, it's pretty important!"
"Go and see John," he said wearily. I sought out Claydon and repeated the story.
"No way," he said briefly.
"What the hell do you mean, "No way!"? You remember that twenty hours of reconnaissance flying I put in the estimates? Well, this is a major part of it and we have to do it now!" said I in my usual somewhat less that tactful manner.
"Look, Boy," said Claydon in condescending tones. "We're not interested in Dry Valleys or Wet Valleys or any other bloody kind, we're going that way, (waving South), not that way," (waving west).
"You stupid ......!" but Claydon had gone. In retrospect, I had not even considered how the minds of people like Claydon and Hillary were tied up with the Crossing problems, to me we were here to Explore, so why did we stuff round so much with so much room to Get Out and Explore in? Back to Our Leader;
"That blue‑arsed clod ‑ " I began reasonably enough, but got brought up with a good round turn.
"If you are going to rant on about Claydon, forget it," barked Sir Ed. "He's in charge of planes and if he says "No" then you can't go and that's the end of it!"
All this seemed to be so completely short‑sighted to me as to be incredible. Were we really going to sit here for a year and a half and not look at totally virgin country only fifty miles away? I had also been badly spoiled by the Americans the year before who had fallen over themselves to give me planes and helicopters. If only that piece of country hadn't been clouded over when we made the David Glacier to Beardmore flight! Now, ten years later I would have realised that what seemed like pure obstruction to me at the time was merely preoccupation with the crossing effort, which to me was purely incidental to the job of mapping in a lot of unknown territory. A bit of reasoned argument and no doubt both Ed and John could have be brought to see that other activities could not simply be ignored. But I was not so patient in those days.
I sounded out Bob Miller who had the thankless task of being Deputy Leader and got sympathy but precious little else and in some dudgeon retired to the garage to my only confidant, Jim Bates, who was bashing at some piece of steel with gas‑jets flaring, all for some perfectly crazy reason known only to him.
"What th' bloody hell d'yer expect?" demanded he. "What does Ed know about Dry Valleys, mapping or why some dam' rock is important? Stuff all, I tell yer! How did he get to be Leader? Climbed bloody Everest! What does it take to climb a bloody hill like Everest? Two feet and stuff‑all intelligence! As for Claydon, what is he? A bloody bus driver! Th' only thing he has in his head is to fly a hundred barrels of gas out to the Plateau! Y' couldn't drive a new idea inter his skull with this bloody hammer!" All this punctuated with mighty blows on the shrinking plate of steel.
"I did think Bob Miller would be able to see ‑ !" said I.
"Miller!" snarled Bates who seemed to be in something of an anti mood. "Bloody Bob Miller hasn't got the guts to bloody well cross his Aunt Fanny!" (a gross slander on Miller who as an artilleryman had crossed whole German armies, but who had his temper better under control than most of us.)
It was all good mutinous stuff and cheered me up immensely. There are few more comforting feelings than knowing that, surrounded as you are by mental defectives and incompetents, there is at least one person out there with the intelligence to appreciate your problems. My pleasant feelings of mounting euphoria were interrupted by a wail from Bates.
"It won't bloody work after all," he said glumly, glaring at the Heath‑Robinson assemblage of steel and brass on the bench.
"What won't?"
"This bloody thing. I forgot about the ambient temperatures being so low, the coefficients of expansion are too close to each‑other. Oh, hell! Let's go and get a cup of something!" and we crossed the icy strip from our home‑made garage to the yellow door of the covered way and into the warmth of the Mess, made cups of milo, and joined a throng of grinning friends, Wally Tarr, Murray Ellis and George Marsh and lost our woes in an exchange of repartee. With the hindsight of years, of course, it is obvious that the thing to do was to type a:

“Request for Flight Time,
   Project...........................Dry Valley reconnaissance.
   Expected Duration ................3 Hours.
   Max. Distance from Base ..........85 Miles.
   Special Requirements..............Aerial camera.
   Justification for Flight .........Discovery and reconnaissance of suspected new system 
         of Dry Valleys, these being of great geographic importance, and publicity value.
   etc. etc. etc.,
   closing with a
   Request ...Granted/Refused

   Reasons ...................................................

 Signed by ................"

and it might have worked, but it is hard to explain the importance of any activities from astronomy to biogeology to those ignorant of the subject.
I was often to be puzzled by the very real intelligence and quick insight into new concepts shown by not only the scientists but by technicians and self‑trained craftsmen like Bates compared with the inflexibility so often found not only in senior ranks of administration of the Civil Service but also not infrequently in the Universities, the minds of the latter often being totally closed to any idea not connected with their salaries or retirement plans!
In our group there was always an obvious bond of sympathy between those of technical skill, such as Bates, Wally Tarr, Neil Sandford, and Murray Ellis. Instead of saying "Let us reason together!", for the next few days I went round conversing loudly within the hearing of certain people with those interested about the possibilities in the great blank areas on the maps of the mainland opposite, and the absolute necessity of a so‑called scientific expedition to do something about it, and speculation waxed quite hot round the mess tables. It was of course the ideal way to rub senior flyboys up the wrong way and was less than tactful but in the end, it affected the course of the whole expedition.
The Americans had always been much more helpful and acquiescent to my demands, prophets having little honour in their own country, and I backed a Weasel out of the garage and took off for Hut Point to talk to Major John Rodin of the U.S.A.F. and to put in the hard word. He saw the point of the request immediately once he had seen Hawkes' aerial photos and promised to help but it appeared that they had bent more than the usual number of choppers that year and in fact had only one flyable at that time. Not for the first time I wondered why it was so much easier to get a point across to Americans.
What about emergency? I pooh‑poohed this pointing out that one could walk back across the Sound in two days given reasonable weather and he promised me that if it proved that reasonably thick ice was set in the western Sound, that I would be lifted over and left for a few days in any Dry Valley which might be over there. Commander Flynn and I went down to the ice and drilled it, Flynn popped a piece of steel bar through on a string and found 14 inches, fine if it was the same thickness on the other side of the Sound forty miles away!
In retrospect, the whole plan was one of desperation. What I was proposing was, that if something happened to the chopper and I could not be flown out, I would either walk over a 5000ft mountain range to the Taylor Valley and about 80 miles more around the bottom of the sound, or perhaps walk twenty miles down the Wright Valley, over the piedmont glacier to the sea and so home. No one seemed very concerned, Sir E. simply remarked there was a depot at Butter Point if I needed it. I could have done it in those days in spite of the very short days, but anno domini conturbat me!
Meanwhile work round base went on. My diary records days in early March spent converting an unused toilet into a darkroom, but unfortunately it adjoined one of generator rooms and some dreadful things happened to the developing films, one belonging to Bates having the emulsion fall off. Other films would dry so rapidly in the super dry and hot air that the film would crumple and I experimented with alcohol and wetting agents.
I lagged diesel exhaust pipes, chained out a Base line for surveying behind the pressure for Richard, made a sawhorse for the seals to be cut up on for dog tucker, and then, when Marsh hit a boulder and broke off a hydraulic arm on the half‑track, spent a day removing it, getting Wally to weld it and putting it back, there never seemed to be a lack of something to do.
Unbelievably, on the 12th of March, the Beaver took off with Sir E, George and Harry Ayres to look at the Darwin Glacier area, about 200 miles south. The aerial camera was taken but froze up and no pictures were obtained. Later I was to have to write up a geological and geographic description of this area without having seen it except from the Skymaster the previous year and without a map or aerial photos! Still there was no mention of looking at the other side of the Sound! When I asked what they had seen, the reply was along the lines of:
"Pretty icy and broken down there!" I am quite certain no "expedition" has ever gone the Arctic or Antarctic where the acquisition and recording of knowledge of the terrain was valued less.
Bates and Ellis had been conspiring with Sir Ed and dexion‑framed cabs with green canvas covers was being added to the tractors which would give the drivers some protection. The point of the whole exercise was rather obscure but all this was grist to the arm‑chair strategists who had a field‑day speculating "What is our Gallant Leader up to?" but Sir E kept his hand covered. Marsh especially was perturbed because of rumours of tractors being taken into the field with the Crossing Support party, and George's lifelong ambition was to do this with dogs. The petrol supplies for the Crossing Party were to be flown in by plane, what was the need for tractors?
"Two dog‑teams and two men, that's all it would take, Bernie!" said George, shaking his head. "What in God's name would be the point of tractors ? Just think of it...!"
"I know," said I with a smile. "Twenty point eight miles a day!"
On the 21st of March the temperature dropped to ‑23F and, to get away, I went for a run with George and his dogs, George still not being happy with the way his team was performing. It was ‑27 deg. a few miles out and cold on the face but otherwise fine in ordinary clothes and windproofs as we trotted along. We were barely back in time for tea and George enthused over the possibilities of Hemp as a leader. Roy Carlyon who had had experience of Hemp on the run out to the Skelton was rather sceptical:
"Yes, a good dog," he said. "He does have four legs!"
One day I was cutting some rock sections on our little diamond saw in the sledge room when Claydon walked in with guilt stamped all over his face. "Oh!" he said, offhandedly, "Just thought I'd tell you, you were right about those Dry Valleys, they are there!" I very slowly put down a piece of granite.
"I know they are bloody there," said I carefully. "The question is, how do you know ? Been reading horoscopes?"
"Oh, no! Old Wally just pulled a hundred hour on the Beaver and we went for a test flight over Erebus. We had all that altitude and I thought, 'Why don't we just buzz over and see what old Bernie has been ravin' about, and there they were. In fact I think there are two of them!"
"You think! You ‑ you ‑!" I forget what I threw , I think it was the piece of granite, and Claydon skipped out through the centre door of the sledging hut very nimbly for a man of his dignity and years.
"Do you know what that ineffable clod has just done?" I demanded of Our Leader in a voice just possibly raised somewhat.
"I don't want to hear any more about Claydon!" snapped Sir E.
"Look!" I said, or just possibly yelled, being exasperated to a point beyond recall, "Our moronic Flyboy says he thinks there may be two valleys, two whole dry valleys that no one knows about. He thinks, for Christ's sake! Mother of God! What with? If he won't take me, he can take Guy, or the House Mouse or the Cook or anybody who can bloody‑well look, count and take a photograph or I'll, I'll... Grrr!"
I thought I was being very cunning because after all, it was my project, I alone had done hundreds of hours of aerial reconnaissance work in various countries and at last I would be able to see, sketch and photograph what lay Over There. You guessed it! A few days later, on the 22nd March, the Beaver went out again with Guy Warren, Buck the cook and who‑ever was on House Mouse and I stayed home beyond words. Guy returned with a description of a long straight dry Wright Valley, with a complex K‑shaped valley system to the north inland from what Scott had called the Victoria Glacier. He must have taken photos but I do not have any record of them. However, the atmosphere had changed, the conversation at the mess tables was about nothing else other than Dry Valleys, frozen lakes, meltwater streams and how we must map them in.
The saga had been interrupted by the departure for Cape Crozier of a tractor party consisting of Sir E, Murray Ellis, Bates and Mulgrew on the 19th. A couple of days afterwards, Claydon rather stiffly asked me if I would like to come flying in the Auster, not over the Sound to the Dry Valleys, but to Cape Crozier. Well, a look at anything was better than nothing! I walked down to the airfield accompanied by a juvenile husky of extroverted disposition know only as "Pup" who fell down the tide crack and had to be rescued. I played a blowtorch on the heater which finally kicked over and then with its petrol motor roaring Wally Tarr and I heated the Auster engine. Finally the Gipsy Major clattered into life and we took off for Crozier.
It was a grey day and cold, and at Crozier drift was streaming over the east ridge of Terror over a kind of pass between Terror and a much lower parasitic cone near the sea called "The Knoll". We saw the tractors and camp on the Barrier and finally located the men walking down towards the penguin rookery in streaming drift. We dropped them some cigarettes and a small medical kit which apparently was the reason we had come all this way! From the Knoll through the peak of Terror and Terra Nova to Erebus itself was a continuous line of parasitic cones the arrangement of which could really only be seen from the air. This suggested a continuous underlying rift zone and not for the first time I wondered how much more there was to be found if only we could get the use of one of the planes for a few days or even a few hours! We bucketed home in strong wind, a nasty flight as my head was jammed against two overhead struts, Austers are not built for such as I.
This was the very day, that on returning, I noticed the Beaver was gone with Cranfield and an hour later it returned from the Dry Valley flight! Having decided that both lead and steel were too good a death for some people, I brooded over the likely effects of dragging by the neck attached by a thin cord to a dog sledge. In retrospect I doubt anyone was being especially vindictive, they just didn't think it was important! Had it been Cranfield acting obstructive, one could simply have invited him out to a level patch of snow and tousled him round a little, a bit of bare knuckle behind the sledging hut will convince most people but one does not do that to people fifteen years one's senior and my juvenile RNZAF days had left me with a compulsive tendency to leap to attention whenever a figure with several rings round a sleeve was seen!
However, a lot of ice has flowed down the Beardmore since those days and as I approach three score and ten I forgive our senior Flyboy his several sins and recall only his many virtues though like Sandy, "If ah get weel, it'll no' count!"
Only three days later, on the 25th, while Sir E and party were still away, came an announcement that there would be a flight to Granite Harbour with Cranfield as pilot for Richard, myself and Guy Warren. One could only assume that Sir E had left a directive to this effect before leaving or else the Good Lord moved in exceeding mysterious ways! It was a clear day at ‑39 deg. Wally and Bill were having trouble starting the heater motor again and I played a blowtorch onto its carburettor until the petrol boiled! Hot air was finally blown into a jacket over the Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine for an hour and then Bill climbed into the cockpit and the inertia start whined. The motor kicked over on one cylinder, coughed, fired again, the engine almost screwing off its rubber mounts but finally she settled down to a barking roar.
We took off at 1pm on a most memorable flight and the only dedicated flight I was to have in a year and a half. From the coast we could see the new Dry Valleys, but we flew up to Granite Harbour where we could see that the long Mackay Glacier Tongue, seen the previous year, had broken off. There was some cloud and we had to climb higher up the Fry Glacier toward the Plateau. The shoulders of the hills here were softly rounded in deep snow and it seemed that the Fry is a mountain glacier, not an Outlet Glacier draining the Icecap as Sir Edgeworth David thought in 1907. Beyond a pass we could see the great Mawson Glacier which also forms an Ice‑Tongue where it enters the sea. We turned south, over the upper MacKay Glacier which must have been thirty miles wide at the Plateau edge, and over black rocky hills to drop into the first of the Dry Valleys, the north‑west arm of the Victoria. A wide barren valley, littered with moraines and erratics, with small, wasting glaciers in the valley‑heads, small meltwater lakes and streams, now frozen, the valley walls fretted with arid little hanging valleys, jutting bluffs of yellow layered Beacon Sandstone or red granite, dark chocolate layers of dolerite sill, black lines of lamprophyre dike swarms, I squirmed with excitement in the front seat beside Bill, taking photos and sketching. Bill would give an enquiring look and point at a towering layered castle of rock and rotate a finger. On down the valley or round for another look? I wiggled a digit. Round! and the Wasp thundered, the propeller screamed and we banked about for another pass. We crossed over a broad rocky saddle now known as Bull Pass, after Colin Bull, a well‑known polar geophysicist, into the long straight Wright Valley which we had seen into the previous year from North‑west Mountain. A large frozen lake lay in the middle ( now called Lake Vanda and the site of Vanda Station, occupied in summer by a staff invariably known as The Vandals!) and I sketched it in. To the west the valley divided and in the south branch near the snout of a rock glacier was a small unfrozen pond which I later named "Salina Pond". It stays unfrozen because of the incredible over‑saturation in salts. Above and west was a labyrinth of ice‑worn channels in dark dolerite (now named The Labyrinth) and above this a broad cascade of ice over a fall like the Niagara Falls which we had also seen from North‑west Mountain and which I had called "Wright's Cascades". It appears now on maps as "Air Devron Six Icefalls", scarcely an improvement. The thin ice now only extends a mile down valley before being lost by ablation, the glacier ice which carved the valley thinning as the mountains grew higher and the climate colder so that the snowfall decreased to only a few inches per year and the thinning ice could no longer wear its way down through the dolerite sill forming a threshold to the edge of the plateau. Instead the deeper Mawson and Mackay drained the ice increasingly to the north, and the Wright and Victoria glaciers slowly wasted away. How many millennia did it take? Perhaps thirty.
We passed into our familiar Taylor Valley and I pointed out Finger Mountain, the Inland Forts, the Beacon Heights, our camps of sixteen months before and we photographed the now famous dike swarm on Terracotta. We passed high between the Inland Forts, down the upper Taylor and into the Upper Ferrar between Mount Feather and what we later named Pivot Peak, then turning and throttled back, swept whining back down the Ferrar, past Knobhead, past Cathedral Rocks to the coast. The Upper Ferrar had not a crevasse to be seen and though icy in parts, it would have made a first‑class vehicle route.
The sea was covered in a web of thin rafting ice barely able to carry a penguin and soon we were back at Base, feeling smug and contented. What an incredible area, one of the most scenic in the world, thousands of square miles of it and all ours! We had covered an area of perhaps 4,000 square miles of which only the coastline and the Ferrar‑Taylor valleys had been previously seen by man. Radio messages went out, the attention of the world was focused and in the forty years which have elapsed since not one but has seen up to several hundred scientists, adventurers, politicians, and tourists flocking to the Dry Valleys. Permanent huts and stations litter the country, radio repeater stations clutter the hills, soon it will be television transmitters!
Should I have simply kept my mouth shut? Actually, pilots of American military planes flying into McMurdo must have seen the area from sixty miles to the east as they passed down the Sound, but they would take no notice, it takes the trained eye! Sooner or later some passenger with a scientific background flying into Williams Field, (the ice runway), would have realised that to the west was a vast, snow-free and unmapped area and the rush would have been on!
It would be nice to be able to say I discovered it all on my own, but fate, as fickle a jade as ever, decreed otherwise!

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