Antarctica Ahoy!

Around Scott Base

Expedition Begins

Exploration Area

Exploration Routes

Plateau Loop map

Polar Plateau

Icy Panorama

East Quartzite Range

West Quartzite Range

Upper Glacier

Glacier Route

Middle Glacier

Lower Glacier

Final Stretch

Destination

Conclusion

Diary: Introduction

Diary: Preparation

Diary: Polar Plateau

Diary: Quartzite Xmas

Diary: Into the Glacier

Diary: Home Run

Appendix: Polar Life

Appendix: Logistics

Appendix: Mapping

Thanks

Tararua Antarctic Expedition, 1962-63

Diary: Polar Plateau

Tue 4th Dec. Scott Base – Polar Plateau Depôt. Survey baseline measurement.

At 7:15 a.m., John Millen's team left for William’s Airstrip, while Gerald's group sauntered into breakfast at the usual later hour, wondering how to fill in the day that we expected to wait. But at 9 a.m. a call came through that a second plane was ready, with instructions to proceed directly to the airstrip, eight hours earlier than anticipated. Hastily gathering our supplies and equipment, we trundled to the airstrip and piled into a US Navy VX6 Squadron R4D plane. There followed two hours of magnificent scenic flight over mountainous Northern Victoria Land to our field area .

About 1 p.m., the R4D descended to the vast snowy plain of the polar plateau, at an altitude of about 8000 feet [2400 m]. The aircraft taxied up to John Millen’s forlorn camp, some two miles [3 km] south of the Millen Range, which forms the boundary of the polar plateau in that vicinity. [Place names are used in this account for clarity, though actually most place names were assigned after the expedition, during mapmaking in NZ.]

Quickly, the R4D crew discharged its human cargo and their baggage. Within minutes, the plane taxied away and disappeared in a dense white cloud of JATO [jet-assisted take-off] smoke. The smoke almost choked John Hayton, who happened to be standing downwind. By the time the ascending cone-shaped smoke plume ceased to grow, the plane had vanished from sight, signifying our break with civilisation for 7½ weeks. It had taken about a month to reach the expedition starting point. The temperature was -16.4°C.

The expedition comprised two four-man teams, one team under John Millen and the other under Gerald Holdsworth. For the first few weeks, each team would explore part of the polar plateau, John's team to the south of the dêpot, and Gerald's team to the north. Each team would return to this dêpot, to re-provision at a food cache, then each team would leave the plateau by way of Toboggan Gap, a pass through the Millen Range. From Toboggan Gap, John's team would follow the Tucker Glacier, while Gerald's team would take the Pearl Harbour Glacier, to a rendezvous at the glacial confluence airlift point, almost two months after arrival.

Pitching camp and eating lunch took until 4 p.m. Then Gerald and Frank set out southwest across the plateau to measure a survey baseline, as Appendix “Mapping” discusses. Dragging the 396-foot [120-m] long calibrated steel tape across the snow, we measured tape length segments for 1¼ miles [1.9 km], at which point the tents at the starting place came back into view. There we built a cairn of snow blocks 7 feet [2 m] high, with a bamboo marker cane at the center. Unfortunately, using a ski to cut blocks from the crusty snow broke the ski.

A strong, cold wind hurried us back. At the tent, Gerald produced a bar of chocolate, which he had bought for the flight from New Zealand, and had not eaten. Was that ever delicious! By 10 p.m. a huge dehydrated stew was festering on the Primus, the first of more than fifty.

Wed 5th Dec. Polar Plateau Depôt. Survey station E2.

At 7:30 a.m., John Millen appeared at the tent door to announce plans for the day. Each survey party would ascend a nearby peak to establish a landmark, and to measure angles to snow cairns at the ends of the baseline, and to other selected mountain peak landmarks. Appendix “Mapping” describes the process.

John’s team left about 9 a.m., and Gerald and Frank about 10 a.m., each carrying a 35-pound [16-kg] backpack, yet wondering what we could have overlooked. We skied for an hour an estimated 3 miles [5 km] to the northwest, and there built Cairn D, 8 feet [2½ m] tall. The temperature was -20.7°C.

Meanwhile, John Millen constructed a similar cairn on the opposite side of the baseline. These two cairns, together with the previous day's baseline cairns, formed a diamond shape, from which to expand the survey triangulation.

Lunch followed, then three or four miles [5-6 km] more skiing towards the Millen Range, which made pretty good ski practice with the weighty packs. Leaving the skis at the foot of a rocky outlier ridge of the Millen Range, we scrambled up to a vantage designated E2.

From survey station E2, binoculars and the theodolite telescope revealed the tents and cairns on the plateau, the tents as a cluster of four black specks six miles [10 km] away, and the four snow cairns as scattered sparkles. Near the horizon, isolated islands of rock – nunataks – projected from the icy sea of the polar plateau. Gerald selected prominent plateau nunataks and Millen Range peaks to serve as surveying landmarks, along with the four snow cairns.

Surveying began with a full-circle panorama of photographs, using an accurately-aimed, specially-equipped camera mounted on the theodolite. The photos would be used during mapmaking, by techniques of terrestrial photogrammetry. Then Gerald and Frank took turns on the theodolite, measuring triangulation angles to the landmarks.

While Frank surveyed, Gerald sketched features of the landscape, with the aid of binoculars and the oblique aerial photographs, which the US Navy had provided. Gerald’s painstaking and discerning sketches were as valuable to mapmaking as the photographic panorama taken from each survey station. Then Gerald surveyed, while Frank correlated the aerial photos with the view.

Gerald also obtained several rock samples, recording for each sample the dip and the strike. He also collected some loose, gritty material, euphemistically called soil. A white Skua gull swept over, an eerie sight in such an otherwise lifeless and desolate land. That would be the only creature that we would observe in the field, to the writer's recollection.

After finishing survey work, we built a rock cairn about four feet [1.2 m] high, so that this point could be sighted later from other survey stations, as Appendix "Mapping" explains.

Departing at 10 p.m., by 10:30 we had reached the skis and were skiing home. The wind was not strong but it was cold, -34°C as we learned next day. Relieved to reach the tent at 1 a.m., we quaffed a hot brew of fruit crystals before retiring.

Thu 6th Dec. Depôt whiteout.

Waking at 11:30 a.m. after missing three meals, we devoured the previous evening's meal and the day’s brunch in one sitting. Gerald’s ear sported a huge blister, where it had been exposed during the previous night’s frigid trek. Frank forced himself to pee after 21 hours.

NZ Alpine Club member Wynn Croll had warned of dehydration. A member of Wynn’s 1957-58 Tucker Glacier expedition suffered such acute dehydration that he urinated crystals, which was excruciating. Antarctica finds devilish ways to gain respect.

It seemed balmy at -20°C, but a whiteout – cloud or ice fog down to ground level – obscured all landmarks. Surveying thus precluded, we endured a rest day. When walking in a whiteout, the snow surface ahead is invisible, so that each pace seems like stepping into empty space. Any crevasse or ice cliff would be undetectable and deadly.

In the afternoon, we repaired the survey tape and the broken ski, and began to calculate from the survey observations the relative positions of the landmarks that had been sighted. Bedtime came at 9:30 p.m.

Fri 7th Dec. Depôt whiteout.

More whiteout permitted another indolent day, and a sense of restoring energy from the earlier effort. Between meals we dozed, scribbled, read, and pored over aerial photos of the area, all from the sleeping bag. Sporadic notes on aspects of polar life began, which appear in the Appendix “Polar Life”.

Sat 8th Dec. Depôt – Camp I.

A 6 a.m. alarm call showed the weather to be still too foul for surveying. During breakfast about 9 a.m., John Millen dropped by to suggest that perhaps Gerald's team might care to move camp to Cairn D.

Drifting snow penetrated every cranny as we struck camp and packed in the blustery weather. At 2:30 p.m., we hauled away, waving au revoir to John Millen, Peter LeCouteur, Ian Joice and Roger Lloyd.

We used seal skins bound under the skis, to help ski uphill. Bristles on the seal skins point backwards, so as to prevent one from sliding back at each stride. However, the seal skins were of dubious aid that day; perhaps snow conditions were not ideal.

 A stiff tailwind – coupled with renewed energy from the rest – enabled us to ski the 3 miles [5 km] to Cairn D in 90 minutes, quite a clip for upgrade man-hauling. In improved weather, we set up camp. The barometer had risen, though the thermometer remained at -20°C.

That evening, consensus decreed that the pemmican stew tasted better without Marmite — the strongly-flavoured dark-brown condiment based on brewery yeast. A luxurious desert of milk pudding with dried apricots celebrated the first short leg of man-hauling on the polar plateau loop.

Sun 9th Dec. Camp I. Surveying astronomy.

A perfect day cried out for fieldwork, but first it was necessary to calibrate the chronometer for astronomical positioning. The radio time signal comes from WWV, a US government station that continuously broadcasts accurate time signals. Tuning in to such a distant station proved difficult. It was 8 a.m. before we received a time signal.

Shortly after, Gerald and Evan departed for a peak designated K2, some four miles [7 km] north-east of the camp. Peak K2 overlooks Toboggan Gap through the Millen Range, so the vista from K2 would help Gerald plan the passage from the polar plateau through Toboggan Gap into the upper Pearl Harbour Glacier a few weeks later.

Meanwhile, John Hayton and Frank dismantled the snow cairn at Station D, in order to survey from there. After measuring angles to landmarks it was almost mid-day, time for solar observations for latitude and azimuth (north point).

A dark filter on the theodolite eyepiece protects the eyes when observing the sun, but the dark filter makes it hard to see the theodolite telescope crosshairs. Seeking accuracy, Frank doubled the usual number of readings on the sun and got quite bug-eyed, while John’s feet almost froze.

Gerald and Evan returned from their sortie, engaging the group in some geologists versus surveyors banter. Evan's geological mapping requires direction, but his magnetic compass was too feeble to use so close to the south magnetic pole [1200 km west-north-west].

Gerald continued the theodolite work while Frank tried to reduce the azimuth, in order to tell Evan which way was north. With only a vague notion of the longitude at that stage, the azimuth ascertained from noon sun observations was only approximate, but perhaps adequate for geology.

Solar observations for longitude require accurately timed paired readings to the sun at roughly 4 a.m. and 8 p.m. The same method of geographic positioning had been used with little change for 200 years. [Within a few decades, such methods would become obsolescent, with the advent of satellite-based GPS positioning.]

As Gerald was completing the photogrammetry panorama, a strip of fog appeared across the plateau on the southern horizon. Within half an hour the fog bank swept across the plateau to block out the entire view. Fearful of a storm brewing, we battened down loose items and secured ourselves inside the tents. But no blizzard came.

Mon 10th Dec. Camp I - Camp II.

A glorious day “dawned”. Gerald cooked breakfast. Packing the sledge and rebuilding Cairn D took until 9:50 a.m. "Must learn to pack more quickly", someone muttered.

A man on skis and a man on foot pulled each sledge. On level or descending firm snow we maintained almost a walking speed, perhaps 2 mph [3 km/h], though man-hauling was more energetic than walking. We marched for fifty minutes and rested for ten minutes in each hour. However, the first break was 35 minutes, after an ice axe was found to be missing, and a member ran back to retrieve it.

At lunch at 12:35, John and Evan tried to start the Primus to melt snow to slake fierce thirsts. But the Primus would not start outside, apparently only in the relative warmth of a tent.

As the grade steepened, man-hauling the 650-pound [300-kg] sledge became more strenuous. Harness straps riding over the abdomen pressed on the ends of the pelvis, which seemed to stretch the stomach. The words of Alan Beck of the 1957-58 NZ Tucker Glacier Expedition came to mind: "Man-hauling demands shutting yourself off completely from the world, and marching in a trance. Counting minutes or even watching the country pass makes the task miserable. The terrain is so vast that to cross even a minor snowfield between ridges can take at least an hour."

Approaching survey landmark Q2, the slope steepened even further. Now, only a momentous coordinated effort could restart a stopped sledge. At a call, one man would heave at the front and the other would push from behind. When the sledge budged, the front man strained with all his might just to keep it barely moving, while the rear man raced ahead to join in pulling, slithering about in his ungainly mukluk footwear in his haste. The jolt upon arrival unsteadied both of them momentarily. Had there been any observer unaware of the desperation of the situation, surely, the antic must have been comical. With prodigious effort, gradually the sledge's momentum and rhythmic marching were restored. Appendix "Polar Life" discusses some rudimentary physics of man-hauling.

From the first stop after lunch at 2:15 p.m., the grade approached the limit for two-man hauling. Any steeper would require double hauling, with four men on each of the two sledges in turn. After only ten minutes more, Gerald decreed that we quit to pitch camp near a small nunatak, which would become survey station Q2.

As we scrambled about nunatak Q2, and settled in for the evening, high cirrus cloud appeared to the west, a sign of a weather front. Jelly desert made a treat, as did listening to the news on the radio. After some Japanese news, some Indian music and an American program, Gerald found Radio New Zealand on a Chatham Islands program.

To justify using the radio we tuned to WWV to get the time, finding the chronometer 6.4 seconds fast. For the finely timed astronomical observations, consistency is timing is more crucial than absolute accuracy, because a consistent discrepancy can be corrected for. To keep the chronometer watch running consistently, Gerald suggested winding it at about the same time each day, and keeping it close to the body to minimise temperature effects on the mechanism. [A few decades later, a quartz watch costing only a few dollars would be more accurate than this more expensive one.]

Everyone became pretty sunburned today, which perhaps helped alleviate mild frostbite at the tips of the fingers from surveying wearing the thin gloves needed to manipulate the theodolite.

Tue 11th Dec. Camp II. Survey station Q2A.

Again, Gerald cooked breakfast. Today the group would climb a higher nunatak with a survey designation Q2A. Leaving at 8:30 a.m. we sidled for an hour around some small nunataks towards Q2A. Having mounted crampons and roped up, we reached Q2A at 10:30 a.m. The barometer showed the elevation as 9500 feet [2800 m]. Gerald and Frank set to surveying, while John and Evan continued to another peak beyond, some 30 feet [10 m] higher, on a geological pretext. It was entirely a snow peak.

The first task was to take a photographic panorama, in case threatening cloud should blot it out. The view swept from Murchison Peak to the south, across the immense polar plateau sprinkled with nunataks, right around into the névé of the Rennick Glacier, which drains northwards towards the Oates Coast of Antarctica. In the Rennick basin lay imposing distant peaks, including Station I30 of the earlier US Geological Survey telurometer traverse.

Routine activities filled the afternoon. Gerald studied our route, sketched landscape vignettes, and identified landmark peaks on aerial photos for survey observation by Frank. Evan pursued his geology, and John collected soil samples, together with a white salt that he found "leached" from some rocks.

At 5 p.m., Gerald and Evan departed to catch the 7 p.m. radio schedule with John Millen. John Hayton and Frank continued their work until 7:15, when they packed up the theodolite and built a rock cairn. Slabs of laminated phyllite rock stacked so easily that a cairn rather higher than its four feet [1.2 m] would have been feasible, but pyramid building was not our mission.

Back at camp shortly time after 8 p.m. gave time for a cup of coffee and a smoke before listening in on John Millen’s postponed radio schedule with Scott Base (ZLQ). We learned that the US Navy did not expect to be able to air-drop re-supply us at Christmas, which had not been mentioned before in any case. Then John Millen (ZLYL) and Gerald (ZLYK) exchanged reports. Finally a check with WWV showed the chronometer as 4.7 seconds fast.

Cloud descended as we prepared to haul onwards next day. After tea, Frank surveyed until 1 a.m. at the Q2 theodolite station, beneath an exquisite, pastel cloud blanket.

Wed 12th Dec. Camp II – Camp III.

We rose at 6:30 a.m., and sledged away by 8:30, first measuring a short check baseline that had been observed during the previous evening.

Sledging began with a welcome stretch downgrade, in the first minute of which the sledge unexpectedly ran ahead into us. We untangled a heap of bodies and harness traces, and settled on a safer means of descent.

Off we romped again, clumsy in our bulky clothing and footwear but light-hearted, sometimes trotting to keep ahead of the sledge. The sledge lurched, bucked and reared under its load, slithering over the undulating, slick, wind-sculpted snow crust called sastrugi [sas-TRUE-jee].

Any tug on the harness seemed to provoke the sledge to charge us. It was quite a sport, continually dodging to stay clear of the sledge, yet always tethered to it, reminiscent of Roald Amundsden's Norwegian party elatedly whizzing homeward down a glacier 51 years before, having just conquered the South Pole.

After a joyful few minutes of descent, a stoic uphill trudge resumed, until at last we reached a pass for a blissful ten-minute break. Ahead we beheld a ridge of striking pink rock, contrasting with the dour gray hue of the mountains behind us. Beyond the pink ridge were more nunataks in varied warm pastel tones, some fantastically steep-sided, like building blocks and pyramids stacked on the snow. Such was our first thrilling sight of the Quartzite Ranges.

Off we galloped down an even steeper slope – ungainly in bulky Antarctic attire – ski sticks and cameras flopping about. Like a lumbering, ravenous bear, the sledge dogged our heels. We decided too late to ride the bear – perhaps fortunately – only managing a short, sedate jaunt before the sledge stopped.

In fifteen delirious minutes we must have travelled a couple of miles [3 km], and descended perhaps a thousand feet [300 m]. Looking back brought the sobering realization that we had burned our bridges, as the slope seemed too steep and long even for double-hauling.

The polar plateau undulates along its boundary at the Millen Range. Near mountainsides, the icy surface of the plateau rises to marry into the rocky slope. Conversely, the surface of the plateau dips near any gap in the range that feeds ice from the plateau into a glacier. These undulations in the plateau surface are not obvious in aerial photos, notwithstanding the great value of the photos in other respects.

Evan and John Hayton still had not appeared at the pass above the slope that we had dashed down. Could they have become stuck on the other side? Then they appeared.

So we resumed hauling, still downhill but more gently. At first hauling amounted to little more than nudging the sledge. Soon the slope flattened, so pulling became steadier. The firmer tread made our feet break through the sastrugi crust. Then the sledge runners broke through too, which increased the drag and made heavier work of pulling.

Weary an hour after leaving the pass, we stopped to await Evan and John. Lying on the inflated air mattresses unstrapped from the sledge, 45 minutes passed in blissful reverie, pitying the poor blokes slaving in offices worldwide.

The rough ride had loosened the sledge rigging. Some items of the load hung precariously over the edge of the sledge, which itself looked as if the frame might be skewed. These Nansen sledges are constructed of bent wooden members lashed together, originally with seal sinews, but nowadays perhaps with nylon cord or the like. The lashings might have loosened.

We carried a sledge repair kit. Gerald suggested examining the sledge at the next camping place. In the meantime, we straightened the load as much as possible without unloading the sledge.

Evan and John arrived, so we lunched. From the broad saddle there, it looked like a couple of miles [3 km] to the next campsite, set on a low pass west of peak H2, where a survey station was planned.

In the ascent to the next campsite our Faustian bargain with gravity would begin to be settled. Expecting a long haul perhaps steeled us, for it took only 1½ hours of dogged effort to reach the campsite at a pass near landmark H2.

The pass revealed a sweeping "terra nova" panorama of the mountain-ringed Rennick Glacier névé, fed from the plateau by a broad icefall, later named the Lloyd Icefall. Peak H2 overlooking the icefall was stunning pink rock, which Evan later said is pegmatite with metamorphosed feldspar.

Nearing the end of the first twenty-man-day ration box, the evening meal was a slap-up affair, devouring such hoarded luxuries as dried apricots, before hitting the sack at 8:30 p.m.