14 – Erebus and the Winter Journeys

The group attitudes of the whole expedition were now quite definitely swinging my way, until now it had been assumed (without any discussion taking place) that the support of the Crossing Party coming from the Weddell Sea would require that twenty of us would straggle down towards the Pole with dogs and sit in various places while the Beaver flew in the fuel depots. While at least one person with navigational knowledge would be needed to locate the three fuel depots accurately, it seemed to most of us now to be utterly pointless that three surveyors, and two geologists should spend the following summer lost in the wilds of the Inland Ice on the Plateau.
"I came here to Survey." said Brookes, "That was the reason I did not go on the Ice Cap Party when I was in Greenland, we surveyed the entire Dronning Maud Land mountains, a rather more useful way of spending our time, I feel!" Bob Miller echoed a similar desire.
"If I can't get any geology done," said Warren. "I may as well have stayed home!" which was my feeling exactly. To do him justice, Sir E was not entirely deaf to these sentiments and one day he called me into his office.
"Just what do you want to do?"
To be perfectly frank, I was more than somewhat hazy, having never been presented with thousands of square miles of unknown country before, nor, before leaving New Zealand, had there been any discussion, suggestions or possible plans of any fieldwork put forward.
"Well," I said. "it seems to me we should try and get as much of the mountain area between the Skelton and perhaps the Mawson mapped in and mapped geologically and we should do at least two detailed cross sections of the Victoria Range from the sea to the Plateau. There is absolutely nothing Guy and I or Richard can do laying depots towards the Pole."
"Um!" quoth he.
We obviously had to follow up our aerial work with some on the ground even though it was near the end of March and getting decidedly chilly and Sir E gave his guarded approval mentioning the food depots we had left at Butter Point. John Claydon declined to attempt to land the Auster on ice of unknown thickness anywhere in New Harbour and as we had seen ourselves it was still very thin indeed, for once I could not but agree. Major Rodin was still agreeable to try and land us by helicopter, but while in the absence of solid sea‑ice it was theoretically possible to get home in the event of an accident by climbing over forty miles of appallingly rough ice cut with thaw channels for which the lower, floating Koetlitz is famous, it was not really a practical route, so all depended on the ice in the Western Sound.
If only our stupid Scott Base had been on the mainland as originally planned! On April 1 Brookes went off with John Claydon to examine the coast beyond the Fry Glacier in the Auster, and as usual, I stayed on the ground, towing tractor Aggie with tractor Sue in and out amongst the huts to get it started! The plane returned at midday as I arrived back from Hut Point with another 14 drums of fuel. Richard was looking pleased.
"We can get up to the Plateau by way of the MacKay Glacier," he claimed. "There is a stagnant glacier called the Miller which would let us by‑pass the lower ice‑fall at the coast!"
Cranfield, over lunch casually let drop that he was going to take a flight over Erebus the same afternoon. While Cranfield was a great deal more amenable to suggestion that some of his associates, at that point it seemed to occur to no one that geologists had a special interest in volcanoes or indeed, looking at the country in general. I made sundry hints about what could happen to certain people if they could be enticed behind the sledging hut! "OK!" said Bill. "We are leaving at 3:30!" George Marsh and Ted Gawn the Radio Op. were also aboard and we spiralled up to gain the 12,400feet to the crater. Erebus has blown its top relatively recently and there is a well‑marked Somma ring and an inner crater rising above it. There were line of ice pinnacles which were puzzling until I realised they were fumaroles, the ice condensing from the steam. We finally stared down into the inner crater and the steaming vent from only a few hundred feet, deep within it was glowing red and the lava was moving, the damned thing was in eruption! Clots of freshly ejected lava showed black on the snow and steam whirled about. "Round again, Bill!" I cried, juggling four cameras. There was no doubt, Erebus was in an active state. When we arrived back at Base, away went more messages to the outside world and the mountain has been under constant surveillance ever since, there is now even a skidoo road to the summit via Cape Evans and The Fang, and there is a hut near the summit, Erebus being the only active nepheline‑basalt volcano in the world.
The lava continuously convects in a deep, narrow chamber and throws out clots containing giant anorthoclase crystals. I have one given me by Philip Kyle which is three inches long! There had already been three or four flights over Erebus and no one had noticed the boiling lava, the untrained mind simply accepts what is there as normal. I bitterly wondered if a lava flow a mile wide streaming down the flanks would also have been regarded as quite normal!
As we lost height on our return, we planed westward over the Erebus Ice Tongue and across McMurdo Sound to see open water and thin rafted ice lining the western shore. The following night I walked over to Hut Point to tell Major Rodin that the mainland was still cut off and the helicopter flight would have to be abandoned. We all owed him a good deal as there is little doubt that it was his willingness to fly me over that prodded our own aircrew to take an interest in the area! Rodin was a well‑educated New Englander and we lingered over coffee and a whisky and discussed Indian and Maori customs. He presented me with a wolverine‑trimmed Army lined hood which I later sewed to my anorak and still have. Thank you , John Rodin!
Sheer frustration at being imprisoned on a stupid island sixty miles from shore was probably responsible for the fact that next day Brookes and I started packing tents and gear on our sledge. The only way off the island was due south over the Barrier and the only land within several hundred miles was the three volcanic islands, Black, Brown and White, with Minna Bluff beyond. Well, we would go there, no matter that it getting cold as it was the Fourth of April and temperatures low, in fact they ranged from ‑20 to ‑45 over the next few days.
Sir E, to give him credit, had a virtue which I had not really expected. He did not on any single occasion try to prevent us doing anything reasonable or not, that we really wished to do, he seemed to assume we were adult enough to know our own limitations. It was not until thirty years later when a Base leader tried to prevent me walking down to where our dog‑lines had once been because the tide crack was "dangerous", and, "Think of the Publicity!" (ie, if something happened to me), that I reflected that Our Leader of 1957 was at least not an old maid! We got away from the dog lines at 11am and placed five poles and cairns at mile intervals to measure snow accumulation and then turned towards White Island. The snow became patchy with rough ice in places or high sastrugi so we ran much of the way, getting a sweat up which was bad. The day was cloudy with intermittent snowfall and we only covered 12 miles with an easterly wind raising the drift.
Keeping the primus going for eight hours or more dried our clothes hanging in the peak of the tent but hoar frost formed on the tent walls and fell on ones face all night when the primus was turned off. The next day was clear and sunny and we were away at speed doing 3.9 miles in the first 50 min. using ski beside the sledge, and then 9 miles in 2 hrs 10min. We camped near White Id and gave our lead dog Fido a double ration of FIDO dog food. I lay in a warm double down bag made by Arthur Ellis and Co. and read of the privations suffered by Scott's First Expedition on this very spot though at least two pairs of gloves were needed to hold the icy book. I reflected that our gear was in fact very similar, with the same tents and primuses, but we simply knew more about how to live under these conditions. Their clothes were often much better, later at Cape Roberts we were to find a Norwegian Fairisle jersey left by Tryggve Gran in 1910. At the time we were wearing what are known as "Slaughterman's Jerseys!" of which are not quite in the same class for quality!
The next day we traversed the island which is about 2000 feet high, over snow and bleak scoria wearing Everest‑type High‑altitude boots. It was about ‑40 on top and my camera froze solid, but we could see the broken ice area round the end of Minna Bluff and we looked well at Minna Pass, near Mount Discovery which might, we thought, offer a short‑cut to the Skelton. Back at the camp Joe and Bottle were loose and had been fighting all the other dogs so we beat them all soundly before a long session of drying very wet clothes. At times dogs are as exasperating as people! I found that one had to carry at least three pairs of gloves and change them during the day, otherwise as they became damp the fingers froze. On the 7th we rattled on over wind‑swept ice towards Black Id then ran into three‑foot sastrugi. The ice descends several hundred feet as it flows to the north between the islands and obviously the two islands formed a wind funnel with glare ice and pressure ridges near shore. We made 22 miles riding, running and skiing but it was obvious that the rough ice ruled out Minna Pass as a route and we turned back to find a snow patch to camp on. It was ‑45 and pitmirk in the tent and a candle stub glowed in eerie fashion and the metafuel tablets burned a violet shade but then came the precious moment when the primus fired, the tent warmed and the Frost Giants moved grudgingly back. After a few days we had to dry our sleeping bags. One of Scott's big mistakes was to try to conserve on fuel. Once Sir Charles Wright told me that he returned from a similar trip to find his jersey weighed 7 lbs with the ice in it. Now 7lbs is nearly the weight of a gallon of kerosene with which he could have kept all his clothes dry! The upper half of the tent stayed dry, the next foot or two wet and damp ran down the walls to form ice stalactites which we scraped off with spoons. We kept a pair or two of dry socks to put on in bed as a bare foot in a nylon bag will get frostbitten. By day the frost built up round the face especially in the wolverine fur, but if one periodically bent over and gave it a slap, the frost fell out. Only wolverine fur will shed frost.
We turned home on the 9th, aiming for the shadowed outline of Mount Terror against the gloom in order to get round the Pressure, and when we judged we were far enough east, turned towards that old friend of the returning sledger, Crater Hill.
The last 12 miles were a wearisome necessity but Richard pressed dourly on with few pauses. Once through the Pressure we swept past The Base at a spanking pace, spanned the dogs at the Lines and, leaving the sledge still packed, walked stiffly up the hill. The Mess hut was a blast of son et lumiere as well as heat.
"Oh, Christ!" prayed Richard on finding the kettle empty again. Sir E appeared looking disgustingly civilised in new tartan shirt and plus‑fours. "Have a good trip?"
"Oh, yes!" we said."Not bad, not bad at all, really!"

Others, it seemed, were planning excursions driven by the knowledge that soon we would have only, at best, two weeks of moonlight alternating with two weeks of only starlight to illuminate the day. Mulgrew and Ellis departed on some secret mission with a manhauling sled, aiming, they said offhandedly, for Cape Evans. The only problem of associating with Mulgrew was that half the gear carried would be radio! Actually we still did not have one that worked over any distance, Richard and I had taken a "Gibson Girl" fitted with a key to White Island, but could make no contact!
After a few days of hard work hauling more of our fuel drums from Hut Point, Brookes and I set off on April 14th with the dogs to test Scotts old route for crossing the Peninsular, north of Castle Rock. On the crest after climbing less that a thousand feet, the sun appeared for a few moments above Terra Nova and we positively basked in its warmth, though the air was ‑35. The sea was well frozen around the Ice‑tongue inside the Dellbridge Islands though we could see open water to the north‑west. I attempted to run a slalom course home but the snow was cold and gritty and I had to pole on quite steep slopes. That slope is now the site of the Castle Rock ski‑field and in the warmth of the summer sun, now the Greenhouse Effect is here, I have seen twenty teenagers of both sexes skiing there, tows clanking, A‑frame ski lodges below, but all that was 33 years in the future. Finding that cable bindings broke in the extreme cold I replaced them with lampwick longthongs for downhill work and soft bindings with a leather toe piece and a webbing heel‑piece for sledging. I went for a solo langlauf round the pressure and found that in deep snow with long poles, soft bindings and mukluks on one could make good speed and be warm. On the steep slope above the airfield however, the snow was gritty or icy and one needed boots and the longthongs.
Brookes, Warren, Bates (once North Island Ski Champ) and I bombed the slopes in near‑dark, with Bates in front being audible rather than visible by the scrape of steel edges on ice.
"Whee, come on you blokes!" he called and then there came "Crash!" We followed a little more cautiously to find he had taken a toss over the cornice on the ice‑cliff above the airfield, the vertical drop being invisible as we had skiied out of the moonlight. He had landed in soft snow and was unhurt and we thought this was all hilariously funny.
We staggered into the Mess hall laughing so much we had to hold each‑other up, but Our Leader was Not Amused at our antics.
"Bloody fine thing if one of you clowns gets a broken leg!" said he. People came and went on mysterious missions, the Long Dark lent an air of secrecy to the most mundane happening, no wonder our Nordic ancestors were mystics. Claydon and Cranfield slipped out of Base with a small sled, testing survival gear they said.... but one never knew. "Cape Evans" was on all lips, but though it lies only twenty miles north on the same side of Ross Island it can be cut off when the ice goes out. Was the ice round the Dellbridge Islands thick enough? On April 23rd we all left with, I think 54 dogs and to add to the drolerie of the whole situation, two bitches on heat. Or perhaps it was 60 dogs and three bitches?. Anyway, we swept out of Base through the pressure, team after team in full cry, drivers urging scampering dogs on, tally ho! Any stop was however, less than restful, to say those two females were the centre of attention of 54 sex‑starved hounds whose average weight must have been a hundred pounds is a but a mild summary. If any reader ever has the opportunity to take such a journey, do so, it will call for resources you may otherwise be unaware you possessed!
We climbed the ramp beside the ski‑slope and crossed between the Second and Third Cones north of Castle Rock, and, putting on rope‑brakes began to descend towards the sea‑ice at Erebus Bay. Brookes and I were leading and soon we became aware of crevasses and what appeared in the gloom to be an ice cliff below, but the light was already fading. Sir Ed appeared out of the snow‑filled dusk garbed in climbers rope and ice axe and threw me the bitter end. He attacked the thigh‑deep snow with a typical burst of savage energy, prodding, slashing and kicking at suspect bridges while I stayed well back and belayed. Soon we were staring over an Ice‑cliff perhaps thirty feet high and below, faintly visible, was the old bay‑ice on the sea. Scott had found a ramp hereabouts though sometimes they had to stand on each‑others shoulders to get up! After a short conference we decided to camp where we were rather than risk a descent in the dark.
It was an unquiet night, the snow was deep and soft and the spans tied to buried lengths of 3ft 4x2 were not too secure. The dogs yipped and howled in true wolf fashion and 56 dogs simultaneously going "Yeowwwwllll" chills the blood! Periodically a dog would manage to slip a clip and make for the bitches while the rest erupted in a paean of hate and jealousy. On more than one occasion a entire team pulled out a deadman and surged in pursuit. Exasperated drivers pulled on a minimum of clothing and shot out of tents cursing, to beat the contestants, untangle the mess and resecure them. Once, nine infuriated dogs linked by the wire span swept across our tent almost bringing it down.
"Oh, God!" said Richard, the third time one of our normally impeccable team broke loose to savage yells of hatred from the remaining eight. "Shall you go or I?" so it was out again in mukluks, longjohns and anorak to catch the culprit. Have you ever tried to separate an amorous husky, especially one like Dismal who weighed 120lbs, from an eager bitch? It is one of the "musts" of Polar travel.
At one point I awoke, startled, as a large dog placed a paw the size of a dinner plate on my face. It took some time to work out that he was not actually in the tent but had cannoned into the sagging uphill wall. It was not one of ours and we lay warm and sniggering as another weary driver emerged to deal with the culprit. Came the dawn of that short lingering period of greyness around which our lives now revolved, Sir E, Murray Douglas and I located a snow ramp and we descended to the sea‑ice and soon all seven teams were cantering over to the Glacier‑Tongue leaving Turtle Rock to larboard. There was a strong, evil easterly wind, drift and murk and the visibility was a scant 200 yards but we found a ramp up onto the Tongue which projects about three miles out into the Sound and was then a couple of hundred feet high. On top was ice with narrow crevasses and a steep descent off the northern side. We put on chain‑brakes and slid down, Ayres followed, then Marsh. Then it happened! George's chain‑brake broke and his sled came down rapidly, struck something and capsized. Ayres left his team to help right George's sledge, and Ayre's team, a powerful lot and not as yet that well trained saw their chance and took off.
Harry let out a cry and I ran a few steps and flung myself over the load as the sled flashed by, and managed to climb over and get on the brake. Unfortunately the sea‑ice was hard, very hard and the steel shoe would not bite in. To my cries of "Aah, aah! You sods!" and similar restraining exhortations they were deaf, they were enjoying a jolly run and the sledge was as nothing on that ice surface. At one point there was a patch of snow, and the brake shoe dug in and I slowed them but then we were out of it and away again, straight towards the ice‑edge with the black waters of the Sound, rimmed by frost smoke. The dogs would not see the dark water until the last moment and then they might swerve but would the sledge skitter sideways and fall in dragging the dogs down? The Gods smiled benignly and created another snow patch, only a chain wide and another chain from the evil water, the sledge slowed and those appalling dogs having enjoyed their run, dropped panting on the snow with a scant yard to spare. I dared not move until Ayres appeared, also panting, to recover his runaways.
We went back to the Tongue and the visibility still being a minus quantity, camped. Claydon and Cranfield appeared out of the murk like the masts of a Marie Celeste, I took them at first for Emperor penguins but penguins don't drag sledges! They chatted for a few minutes like Victorian gentlemen encountered in a park.
"Are you chaps going on to Evans? Jolly interesting place what? Well, I suppose we should potter on, what do you think, Bill?" and they strolled on, soon lost in the flying drift. Ellis and Mulgrew were reputed to be hereabouts and Warren and I walked for a couple of miles along the crest of the Tongue, partly working out the flow mechanics of a semi‑rigid material, which, changing from a flow on land where the centre flows much faster than the sides due to friction, and then , finding itself afloat, flows uniformly. The result is a series of equally spaced tension tears in the sides producing the characteristic saw‑tooth pattern. At the same time we looked for mukluk tracks and found them at the end of the Tongue. Ellis and Co couldn't fool us!
That night only eleven dogs obtained a brief liberty with dalliance in mind! North of the Dellbridge Islands the sea‑ice was only inches thick, George Marsh was ahead and the weight of his sledge depressed a trough while we created a second trough with a crest between that rolled along with us.
"George!" I called. "Isn't this a bit dangerous?" He stopped and pulled out an ice chisel, held it at knee height and let it drop. It did not go through. "Perfectly safe!" he said. "Come on dogs!" but I skied as far away from the heavy sledge as I possibly could! There was some relief when we rounded Cape Evans and pulled up in front of Scott's 1910 hut and spanned the dogs. Already it was dark and Erebus was silhouetted darkly against the stars. We entered the hut via a window and found it very dirty and littered after the occupation of Frank Wild's party in 1914 and there seemed to be more snow inside than there had been fifteen months before, some visitor having left a window open.
On the 27th of April we made a fast run home.

< Prev | Next >

©2007 - may not be reproduced without permission