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

Appendix: Polar Life

Clothing

In Antarctica, the usual outdoors upper clothing
is a wool shirt and jersey,
worn under an anorak.
An anorak is a knee-length, windproof parka-type garment,
pulled on over the head.
At first, donning an anorak is quite a claustrophobic struggle,
the head opening is so tight.

An anorak fits snugly around the wrists and neck.
Drawstrings pull it close around the waist and thighs.
Fox fur trims the hood, and wire stiffens the hood.
The wire can be bent to form a fur-lined slit to protect the face.

Even with the hood wide open,
the fur and the wearer's whiskers can become frosty
from water vapour exhaled in the breath.

A down jacket worn over the anorak
gives extra insulation when needed,
such as during hours of standing at a survey station.
This clothing is comfortable at -20°C, provided the wind is not too strong.

For the lower body, wool trousers and short underpants are usually worn,
sometimes with windproof over-trousers.

Outdoors footwear are the surprisingly warm mukluks [Inuit boots].
Mukluks are rubber-soled, insulated canvas boots,
worn with several insulating layers as described below.
Mukluks require some adaptation of climbing technique,
being bulkier than leather boots.
One selects larger-than-usual footholds on rock,
and chops large steps on snow with a shovel rather than an ice-axe.
Wearing leather boots risks frostbite.

Thick wool mitts are the usual hand-wear.
Some brief tasks like photography
can be done with bare hands,
quickly slipped back into mitts
conveniently retained by a strap around the neck.
Light wool gloves serve for protracted outside work
that requires some dexterity,
such as writing notes,
or operating the survey theodolite,
occasionally clapping vigorously to warm the hands.
Nevertheless, light frostbite of the fingers
is a distinct occupational hazard.

Sunglasses are essential for eye protection.
Snow goggles are unsuitable, as they tend to ice up.
Sunburn can cause insomnia.

Shelter

The two-man tent is the British Polar type,
as used by the 1957-58 Hillary-Fuchs Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
Perhaps some of our tents were used on that trek.

The tent is tetrahedral (pyramidal) in shape,
• 8 feet [2.4 m] high,
• a 7-foot [2.1-m] side square base,
• a sewn-in floor, and
• double walls separated by a 6-inch [150-mm] air gap.
Four poles support the tent, hinged at the top.
In all, the tent weighs about 60 pounds [27 kg].

In calm weather, one person can pitch the tent in a few minutes.
Usually, the tent is pitched facing east,
except if drifting snow is encountered,
when pitching the tent with the door facing across the wind
lessens the accumulation of snow around the door.

For the tent door, the twin tent walls have tubular sleeves,
large enough to crawl through.
With the sleeves tied shut,
the tent is dark enough for sleeping,
despite continuous daylight outside.
In windy weather, with the sleeves closed,
a candle is needed to illuminate household chores such as cooking.

Usually, in waking hours, the door sleeves are tied open,
and a transparent polyethylene window covers the opening,
suspended between the inner and outer tent walls.
The window admits enough light for reading.
Though uninsulated, the window retains heat
generated in the tent from cooking and metabolism.
Also, on sunny days, the dark material of the tent
apparently absorbs solar heat.

The contrast between the relative warmth inside the tent
and the bitter cold outside can be astounding.
For a quick trip out, an initial temptation
is to dash out without bothering to dress fully.
One quickly learns to resist that temptation.

Breathing, cooking, and drying clothing
generate plenty of water vapour inside the tent.
Some moisture condenses as frost inside the window.
The frost showers down if the window is touched.
Rolling up the window instead of pushing it aside makes less snow.
A small whisk-broom removes snow
from clothing and footwear upon entering the tent.

Most of the water vapour generated inside the tent
is released from a 1-inch [25-mm] bore rubber ventilation hose
projecting outside the tent at the peak.
Viewed from the outside, a misty wisp emitted from the hose
tells that a tent is occupied.
The ventilation hose can be closed, but we never did.

The tent has an external flap,
which serves as an exterior door mat.
Food boxes and blocks of snow stacked on the flap
secure the tent adequately in the winds that we encountered.
We never had cause to use the tie-down ropes that come with the tent.

Household

Perspiration from the skin and breath freezes in clothing,
requiring daily removal.
Nylon plastic mesh innersoles worn in mukluks
can be tapped out to remove frozen perspiration.
For cloth apparel, the perspiration needs to be dried out.
Clothing is never laundered in the field.

Small items of clothing:
mukluk felt inner boots, socks, mitts and balaclavas
quickly dry on strings in the peak of the tent,
in an array called "The Christmas Tree".
Larger items of clothing dry while being worn in the tent,
or by laying them over the sleeping bags while asleep.

Inside the tent, bedding is placed against the walls
to the right and left of the door.
Between the sets of bedding is a foot-wide [300 mm] gap,
which is covered by the canvas tent cover, as a groundsheet.

On the groundsheet are placed two boxes,
with the food box under the peak of the tent,
and the kitchen box behind it,
and behind that the enamel mugs and plastic eating bowls
and a quart bottle of Primus fuel.
Near the door is a square foot or so of floor space,
sufficient for pulling on mukluks.

Other items squeeze in at the foot of the bedding,
such as the radio and the pressure cooker.
At the door, the space between the tent walls stores
mukluks, and blocks of snow collected to melt for water,
and a one-gallon [4½-liter] can of kerosene Primus fuel.

Bedding

Gerald’s bedding is to the right and Frank’s to the left.
Each man has two sleeping bags:
an outer sleeping bag an oversized "Everest" model, and
an inner bag a "20-Below" model.
Beneath the double sleeping bags is an air mattress
covered by a ¾-inch [19-mm] sheet of foam plastic.
We never were cold in bed.

While asleep, perspiration released condenses in the foam pad,
freezing the pad inseparably to the air mattress.
Mattresses with foam pads frozen to them
were carried lashed to the sledge inflated,
to save inflating the air mattresses at each campsite.
Only a pump may be used to inflate an air mattress,
because a mattress blown up by mouth
would fill with ice condensed from the breath.

Kitchen

Each tent has a pressure cooker and two billies.
One billy is kept clean for melting snow and heating water.
The other billy is used to:
• cook porridge [rolled oats]
• cook dehydrated potato,
• soak dried apricots, or
• prepare jelly or milk pudding as a luxury item.

Dehydrated stew cooks in the pressure cooker,
or sometimes a second course of breakfast,
such as doughboys of egg and potato powder
fried in fat from tinned American bacon.

Each person has:
• two polyethylene bowls,
• an enamel mug,
• two spoons,
• a sheath knife, and
• a small glass-lined thermos [vacuum] flask.
Each man keeps his own flask,
as Gerald drinks only cocoa, Bournvita or fruit crystals,
and Frank drinks tea or coffee.

The top of the kitchen box holds a clutter of items:
• alarm clock,
• Primus, billies, cutlery and tin opener, and
• clamp to hold a hot billy without burning the fingers.
During bad weather, with the tent door closed,
a lit candle on the kitchen box provides illumination.

All activities are carried out from the sack where possible,
reclining on an elbow, or sitting.
Either position becomes more comfortable with practice.

In a typical cooking scene,
one bloke may be “winding” [mixing] food powder,
or perhaps collecting lumps of snow to melt for water.
The other bod may be tending the Primus,
which is sometimes fickle while being lit.
We blamed the "Metafuel" [methanol] primer,
of which about a teaspoonful is burned under the Primus fuel jet,
to preheat the jet and vaporize the fuel.

Water

Each person has a ¾-pint [420-millilitre] thermos [vacuum] flask.
Though very useful, the flasks are small relative to our need for fluid
during long, strenuous working days in the dry Antarctic air.

It is easier to overlook being thirsty than hungry.
It took ten days in the field to discover how much fluid
we had to drink to combat fatigue from dehydration.
After that discovery, each night and morning before field days
we guzzled a double brew [hot drink] of about two pints [1.1 liters],
as well as filling the flasks.

Of course, after drinking that much fluid in the evening meal,
it was necessary to get dressed to go outside afterwards.
[A few years later, during the six-day Arab-Israeli war,
Israeli commanders forced their soldiers
to drink two liters of water at a time,
on pain of being shot in the foot if they didn't.]

To make water, slabs of snow are dug with the shovel,
and chopped with a sheath knife into small cubes ,
which stack between the tent walls at the door until needed.
It takes as many as ten billies-full of snow to melt into a billy of water.

After tea, we prepare a billy-full of water for breakfast,
and fill the vacuum flasks with hot water.
A billy of hot water left out in the tent overnight
grows only a thin crust of ice by morning.
The flasks of hot water speed porridge-making in the morning.

Food

Food is plentiful – at least certain kinds of food –
and for most of us, most of the time, it’s wonderful!
Some find the cuisine monotonous,
while others find certain food items unpalatable or even inedible.

Breakfast is porridge
and a serving of egg reconstituted from powder,
along with American tinned bacon,
none the worse for being mostly fat.
As bacon was in short supply during packing,
we partly substituted dehydrated meat.
The resulting concoction is so similar to the evening meal,
it's easier just to warm up some of last night's stew for breakfast.
After breakfast, the "brew battle" begins,
cocoa or Bournvita for Gerald,
or tea or coffee for Frank,
as much we can consume.

Lunch is three Tararua biscuits
about the size of matchboxes [perhaps 50×30×10 mm],
slathered with Argentinean tinned butter.
To allow more biscuits on field days for energy,
we have only two biscuits on days at camp.
Tararua Tramping Club volunteers
ome-made the delicious, shortbread-tasting Tararua biscuits,
using a secret recipe of flour, sugar and shortening.

The Argentinean tinned butter, and the pemmican,
are surplus from the 1957-58 Trans-Antarctic Expedition
of Ed Hillary and Vivian Fuchs.
Opening a tin of butter produces a slight hiss,
and a rancid waft,
but it tastes pretty good for five-year-old butter.
Lavish use of the bright-yellow butter
provides most of the energy that we get from biscuits and butter.

On most field days,
lunch includes a 5¼-oz [150-g] bar of chocolate,
Nestlé’s Vitality dark chocolate,
generously donated the Nestlé company.
With chortles we read the package label at each opening:
"The very name suggests the goodness and vitality
that every melting mouthful brings ...".
We learned to warm the chocolate inside our clothing,
otherwise Antarctic-cold chocolate hardly melts in the mouth,
and even tastes waxy.
The Nestlé company also donated some instant coffee.
Tararua biscuits and Nestlé’s Vitality chocolate
were the highlights of our rations.

The evening meal is inevitably a dehydrated stew,
almost always with pemmican.
Pemmican comes in paper-wrapped blocks,
one block per two-man meal.
The package label reads:
“Bovril man pemmican.
A highly sustaining food
consisting of Beef Protein and Beef Fat
with added Yeast Extract.
A concentrate for use in cold regions.
Net weight 7/10 pound [320 g].
Bovril Limited. London E.C.I. England”.
It is remarkable that Bovril could make such a serving
of almost pure beef fat as palatable as it is.
Someone said that pemmican is 90% fat, which is credible,
and might help explain the occasional indigestibility of pemmican.

Fortunately, the Alliance Meat Company
donated to the expedition some freeze-dried meat,
which tastes almost as good as the real thing.
Freeze-dried meat makes a welcome change from pemmican,
and is a salvation for those who find pemmican indigestible.

Mealtime

For tea, pemmican stew cooks in the pressure cooker,
festering with a mixture of dehydrated vegetables,
which include cabbage, onion, beetroot, and peas.
Initially, we served potato prepared from powder separately,
but soon found it easier just to toss the potato powder into the stew.

From the sleeping bag,
food is eaten either sitting up, or lying propped on an elbow.
The prone position risks "lower lip drip" (Gerald's term).
We made plastic bibs but hardly ever used them in the field.

We eat the mushy food with a spoon.
Sheath knives are used for eating occasional luxury dried steaks.
The steaks are tasty but rather leathery.
Apparently, we did not soak them for long enough.

Cleaning up awaits completion of the meal,
otherwise the food can freeze before consumption.
So we dine amid a clutter of open food bags and soiled cookware.

Copious brews with meals are beneficial and pleasurable,
but necessitate a trip outside afterwards.
When leaving the tent, it is customary to intone with mock solemnity:
"I may be some time."
Lawrence Oates, member of Robert Scott's party,
uttered those words in 1912,
as he deliberately left the tent to his death in a blizzard,
to avoid his illness delaying his companions,
who all perished shortly afterwards nonetheless,
while returning from the South Pole.

Dressing to go outside takes a few minutes.
Having dressed, one must roll up the polyethylene window,
before crawling through the sleeve door.
Once outside, the polyethylene window must be readjusted,
to minimise loss of heat from the tent.
Despite gloves, the fingers quickly numb
during the business at hand,
and any other chores assigned, such as harvesting slabs of snow.

Perhaps you may hear a chuckle from the other tent,
and the urge strikes to visit.
You are welcomed in,
given a corner of an air mattress to sit on,
a cup of coffee thrust into your frozen hands
and a cigarette between your lips.

The source of the chuckles is given you for your approval
a collection of pinups.
Any pinup is yours,
provided you are willing to fight another claimant for her.
You make your choice and receive praise or scorn for your taste,
and exchange a few bull stories.

Eventually it is time to return to your own tent.
Before reentering, don't overlook the original reason for leaving.
As you reenter, roll up the plastic window,
and awkwardly brush the snow off each foot.
Perhaps your companion has fallen asleep,
so as quietly as possible
you roll down the plastic window,
and tie the door sleeves closed,
and wriggle from your outdoors clothing and mukluks,
and thankfully creep into your sleeping bags.

Into the field

Breakfast complete, it is time to dress to leave the tent for the day.
Dressing takes a good deal of grunting,
mostly seated or kneeling on the sleeping bag over the air mattress.
The mattress sinks to the snow under the posterior or the knees,
which get damned cold on the snow!

First we pull on shirts and pants.
Donning footwear is the most elaborate part of dressing:
• two pairs of socks,
• two pairs of felt inner boots,
• three pairs of plastic mesh inner soles placed in the mukluks, finally
• the canvas mukluks.

The next stage is to squeeze into the anorak.
Getting the head through the anorak neck hole takes some pushing,
which at first is rather a claustrophobic struggle,
as is removing the anorak.
[Perhaps that is part of the test.]
Finally, we slip on sunglasses, gloves and a balaclava before emerging.

Today is a field day and a survey station is to be occupied.
Preparations are almost complete:
• snow supply replenished, and
• survey gear sorted into packs.
Upon return, the first chore will be to empty the packs
on the air mattresses in the tent, and sort the contents,
before taking refuge in the tent.

Packs for surveying weigh about 35 pounds [16 kg], comprising:
• extra clothing,
• personal items,
• food,
• climbing equipment, and
• surveying or geological equipment.

Extra clothing includes:
• down jacket,
• leather gloves and
• light woolen gloves.
A down jacket provides warmth for long hours at a survey station.
Leather gloves are used to build rock cairns to mark survey stations.
Surveyors carry woolen gloves, light enough to operate the theodolite.

Personal items include:
• camera and other photographic items,
• sun glasses, and
• sun cream.

For lunch, we enjoy:
• three Tararua biscuits slathered with bright yellow Argentinean butter,
• a 5¼-oz [150-g] bar of chocolate (usually), and
• a thermos flask of beverage.
Weather and convenience determine lunchtime, not the clock.

Climbing equipment depends on the destination, such as:
• ice axe,
• skis in case of a long snow approach,
• crampons,
• climbing rope, and
• waist loop and karabiner.
A piton hammer and pitons were carried on the sledge,
but perhaps never taken on a climb.

A snow shovel serves for building a snow cairn,
and also for cutting 'bucket' steps in snow.
Wearing mukluks with crampons necessitates bucket steps,
otherwise the feet roll in the small steps that an ice axe would cut.

For surveying,
one man carries the theodolite instrument weighing 20 pounds [9 kg],
another carries the theodolite legs weighing 15 pounds [7 kg].
The legs are slightly lighter but a more awkward load.
The tripod carried across the backpack
is apt to catch on rocks when rock climbing,
which can put the climber off-balance.

Carrying an expensive surveying instrument
perhaps tends to make one climb more cautiously,
as if any such reminder were necessary in this country!
The £400 cost of the theodolite equals six months of Frank’s salary.
An far graver concern is the inability to survey
if the theodolite were damaged.

Other field gear includes:
• theodolite camera and accessories,
• aneroid barometer,
• thermometer,
• compass (for magnetic declination),
• binoculars (to help identify landmark and plan the route),
• field books, and
• oblique aerial photographs supplied by the US Navy.

Gerald carries plastic bags for collecting soil samples and lichens.
Geologists have their own equipment,
and usually collect a substantial weight of rocks.

Elementary physics of man-hauling

Manhauling is strenuous.
The energy required to man-haul a sledge depends on:
• Sledge weight,
• Snow gradient,
• Hauling speed, and
• Friction between the sledge runners and the snow.

Experience teaches that starting a sledge takes a stronger pull than keeping it running.
This section tentatively estimates:
• the force required to start a 300 kg wood sledge on a level snow surface, and
• the force and power required to keep the sledge moving on level snow
at the maximum sustained man-hauling speed of some 3 km/hr.

Friction between wood and dry snow:
Static friction coefficient of ski lacquer on dry snow is:
• 0.1 at 0°C,
• 0.4 at -10°C, and
• 0.4 at -32°C.
Kinetic friction coefficient of waxed hickory on dry snow at a speed of 0.1 m•sec^-1 is:
• 0.04 at 0°C,
• 0.09 at -3°C,
• 0.18 at -10°C, and
• 0.4 at -40°C.
Ref: CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 49th Edition (1968-69).

Interpolating to a prevailing polar plateau temperature of -20°C,
the static and kinetic coefficients of friction
are approximately 0.4 and 0.25 respectively.
That indicates that it takes only 0.25/0.4 – or about 60% –
of the starting force to keep a sledge running.

Force to start or move the sledge = sledge weight × coefficient of friction.
Force to start 300 kg sledge at -20°C = 300 × 0.4 = 120 kg, and
Force to move 300 kg sledge at -20°C = 300 × 0.25 = 75 kg.

The combined weight of the two men hauling the sledge
may not have been little more than 120 kg.
So, to start the sledge on flat snow,
each man would have to exert a force approaching his own weight.

If each man exerts a starting force equal to his weight,
he must be leaning out at angle of about tan^-1(100%) or 45°,
and the coefficient of friction between his feet and the snow must be at least 1.0.

If each man exerts a moving force equal to 60% of his weight,
he must be leaning out at angle of about tan^-1(60%) or 30°.

Power produced ed by each man:
• force exerted by weight of ½×75 kg = ½×75×g Newtons = 369 N
• velocity = 3 km/hr = 0.83 m•sec^-1
• power = force × velocity = 369 × 0.83 = 308 joules/sec
= 308 watts = 0.4 horsepower (1 HP = 746 W = 746 J•sec^-1).

Apparently, two men pulling a sledge on level snow produced almost a horsepower.
Compare that with human power generation in physiology or bicycle literature.
(Note that the 3 km/hr maximum sledging speed
was faster than the speed at which the friction tests reported above were made.)

Upgrade:
Force = sledge weight × (frictional coefficient + slope of snow surface).
Suppose that the available power is the same as for hauling on the flat.
Then hauling on an upgrade must be slower than on the flat.
Slower hauling may increase kinetic friction.

Double hauling (with four men hauling a two-man sledge):
Double hauling conceivably may reduce kinetic friction by increasing velocity.
If so, double hauling may be energy-efficient on steeper slopes,
despite the energy penalty of four men tracking back for the second sledge.

When man-hauling, human strength limits progress,
as must have been obvious to Robert Scott's ill-fated party,
as they man-hauled to and from the South Pole in 1911-12.

However, for the rival Norwegian party under Roald Amunsden,
the endurance of the sledge dogs limited progress.
Each day, Amunsden and his party waited bored for some eighteen hours,
while the dogs recuperated sufficiently for the next day's run of a few hours.
Is it possible that Amunsden's faster dog teams
needed to pull less strongly than Scott's slower man-hauling team?

Crevasse rescue

The preceding narrative mentions some aspects of snow and ice craft.

This section addresses belay procedures to safeguard or rescue a person
from a crevasse in a glacier, or a schrund in a névé.
Belay procedures using pitons are not considered here.

A belay uses two or more people with ropes and other equipment,
to help prevent a belayed person from falling deep into a crevasse or schrund,
or alternatively, to safely extract a belayed person who has fallen.

First, some terminology.
A belayer belays (secures) a belayee.
Typically, the rear person is the belayer and the front one the belayee.
The belayee tends to be more exposed to a fall.

In case of than two people,
anyone who is not at either end of the group
is both a belayer for someone ahead, and a belayee of someone behind.

The belayee walks ahead, with a belay rope secured at the waist.
The rope runs from the belayee's waist back to the belayer.

The belayer passes the rope around his ice axe held in one hand.
The belayer's ice axe hand holds the ice axe where the head meets the shaft.
The thumb primarily grips the ice axe.
The rope passes behind the top of the ice axe shaft, suspended in the fingers.

From the ice axe, the rope passes in front of the belayer to his other hand.
The other hand grips folds of extra rope.
Folds of rope in the hand are to be distinguished from loops,
in the sense that rope folds do not pass behind the knuckles,
but the rope merely folds to and fro in the palm.
[In this discussion, the masculine includes the feminine.]

On hearing the belayee yell “Hold!”, the belayer immediately responds as follows:
1) Snaps the ice axe and the rope to the belayee back taut;
2) Drives the ice axe into the snow;
3) Drops to the knee adjacent to the ice axe;
4) Releases the rope from the fingers of the ice axe hand;
5) Wraps the portion of rope in front of his body around the other shin; and
6) Tightly grips the folds of rope in the non-ice-axe hand.

In this manner, the rope forms a serpentine
around both the belayer's ice axe and his shin on the opposite side.
The serpentine contains a sufficient friction angle
that a belayer usually can prevent a belayee from drawing out more rope,
even if the belayee is falling.
If the belayee does pull out more rope,
the folds of rope in the belayer's hand can withdraw one-by-one
without any loops snagging the belayer's hand.

Experience showed that an alert belayer can prevent a belayee
from falling into a crevasse any deeper than waist level.
A belayee with his upper body still above the crevasse lip,
and restrained by the rope, can scramble out of the crevasse.

Crevasse rescue becomes necessary
when someone falls into a crevasse or schrund
too deeply to climb out unaided,
as happened in the Lower Pearl Harbour Glacier on 22 January.

John Hayton was bringing up the rear of the sledging party,
so no one was belaying him.
When an unsuspected snow bridge collapsed under John,
he fell into a five-foot [1½-m] wide crevasse,
and swung from his sledge harness.

Gerald applied the two-rope rescue method
to extract John from the crevasse.
For that purpose, Gerald drove two ice axes into the snow
well back from the edge of the crevasse.
Around each ice axe Gerald wound a few loops of rope,
with sufficient free rope at the end to reach to John.

Gerald tied a loop at the end of each rope,
and dangled both loops down the crevasse to John.
John slipped each rope through his harness,
and inserted each foot into a loop.
Gerald took up the slack in the ropes at the ice axes,
and gripped the right rope behind its ice axe,
and instructed John to place his weight on his right foot in the loop.

With John's weight on the right loop,
Gerald kept gripping the rope around the right ice axe.
Then, Gerald raised John's left foot in the left loop
by pulling the left rope back a foot or so.
Next, Gerald gripped the left rope behind its ice axe,
and instructed John to transfer his weight to his raised left foot in the loop.

Alternately, Gerald raised the loops.
Step by step, John climbed out of the crevasse.
Thanks to Gerald's skill and presence of mind
and John's calmness
the procedure worked smoothly,
even though none of us had ever experienced
such an authentic demonstration of crevasse rescue.