Blazing Ice (29 page)

I put Judy in the
Elephant Man
this year deliberately. She'd be running the
Elephant Man
back from our farthest south. If that happened to be South Pole, she'd be hauling back one or more passengers. Because of the calming effect Judy had on us, we were nicer to each other. Her presence in that outsized cab would dampen the grumbling that could infect the group when some rode as idle passengers.

To hedge my bets, one morning two weeks ago at our breakfast table back in McMurdo I called the meeting to order: “We will have only one cynic this year.”

It was pretty easy to read everyone's face: What the hell is he rattling on about now?

“Any cynicism shown by anyone else will not be allowed,” I spoke sternly. “Captain Feleppa?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Captain Feleppa, you are our designated cynic.”

Greg's eyes widened. Before he could say, “but, but, but …” I continued. “This is an important job. We can't every one of us be cynics. But every group needs one good one, so long as he's on our side. We didn't have any good cynics last year. A good cynic is invaluable. He's the one that catches us in the middle of some harebrained idea we're about to go off on and reminds us: ‘What makes you think you can get that part you need in time?' You'll do this job for all of us.”

Greg fought to keep the corners of his mouth from curling. How I kept a straight face, I'll never know.

“From time to time, I'll call on our designated cynic for his input. Do we all understand?” The group returned bewildered nods all around. “Okay. The team cynic is Captain Feleppa.”

After we broke up, Greg approached me rising from the table. “Boss, I don't think I can do this job very well. I'm more of a positive, straight-ahead guy,” he said, seriously concerned.

“You mean you can't do that job, marine?”

“No sir, I don't mean that. I just think somebody else could do a better job for you.”

The galley was completely empty now, but for him and me. “Greg, look. I had a bunch of real sourpusses last year when we came back. Any of us, including me, might make a mistake or get confused. We lost all humor about it. I don't want that to happen this year. It's better to laugh. By officially designating you as cynic, you who are nothing if not positive and straight ahead, then I've officially said nobody else can have that role. Now, can you do that job for me or not?”

Greg looked at me sideways. “I'll try,” he said. “It'll take practice.”

“Don't worry about that. You've already done most of it by innocently sitting there. When I need the cynic, you'll know it. It'll be when somebody else tries to take your job away from you. I'll need you to step up and reclaim it.”

That conversation was two weeks old, but I thought about those things once I was alone in my cab: Judy and Greg, and keeping the crew's spirits in good shape.

We pulled into the Shear Zone camp at GAW with enough visibility to see its perimeter flags and set up camp.

I'd been here a month ago with CRREL's Steve Arcone to inspect the crossing. Back in McMurdo, we combed over the printed radar record and then compared it to last year's. Several crevasses had widened, their walls separating from our fill plugs. Unusual sagging in the surface layers appeared above our fill plugs. But overall, I judged the crossing safe for this year.

We could still work the crossing in this weather, and we had three hours left in our day. Keeping our momentum outbound felt right. So I assigned tasks to different folks, then Brad and I took
Fritzy
across the Shear Zone first.

We stopped at a two-inch-by-four-inch board standing upright and showing only two feet above the snow. Carved into both sides of this signpost was its name: HFS 3+8. It marked eight flags past the third milepost due east from
GAW. At HFS 3+8, our route turned hard right then headed south to the Pole. When we made that turn we
knew
we were looking south.

I turned
Fritzy
around, then Brad and I stepped out onto the snow to do a job we'd done before. While I unfolded the crane, Brad grabbed a light cargo chain and walked over to the signpost. I positioned the crane hook a few inches above it. Brad wrapped the chain around the board and looped it over the hook. I raised the boom, tensioning the chain. When the icy grip of snow released it, the eight-foot-long board popped straight up. Then I lowered the crane, and Brad re-stood the post in its same hole, this time showing six feet.

Folding the crane back up, I nodded to Brad, “That ought to be good for another two years.”

We climbed back in
Fritzy
, moved up the line towards GAW, and stopped at HFS. The old milepost now showed four feet above the snow. Ten feet showed when we'd first planted it three years ago. After we bolted an extension to it, it stood ten foot tall again. I said, to myself as much as to Brad, “And
that
might be good for five years. Who knows when we'll come back this way again?”

Brad dryly added, “I think we'll be back here in January.”

I enjoyed working with Brad. He once flattered me when I was driving the tunnel at Pole by asking my advice on a blasting problem he faced in McMurdo. Brad was a more accomplished blaster than me. He'd worked on the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota, an entire mountain sculpture. I, on the other hand, merely extended my mining skills to blasting problems in Antarctica. However, I became very good at blasting snow and ice. More than once Brad and I approached each other as colleagues. Today we worked as partners.

We were raising the signpost at Crevasse 20—Snap—when we gave way to Stretch in the MT pulling the flatbed sled and
Snow White
toward HFS. Behind him Russ and
Quadzilla
, with John V. riding in the cab, pulled a spreader bar sled across.

This spreader bar was a triangular frame made of six-inch iron pipe. Its apex, or point, hitched directly to the rear of a tractor. Four-foot-long skis at its rear corners supported its eighteen-foot-wide span. Hitch points welded above each ski held a sled train apiece. Since the whole assembly, sled trains and all, was too wide for our twenty-foot crossing, Russ brought the spreader bar sled across first.

Brad and I had worked back to the Miracle Mile signpost when Russ and Stretch passed us going back to GAW, this time with just their tractors. We'd worked our way to Personal Space when they passed us again, each pulling two steel tank sleds headed toward HFS. Given the traffic, it felt like we were working in a railroad switching yard.

Near Crevasse 6, where we'd once stuck a bulldozer, Judy, Tom, and Greg passed us going the other way too. They were reflagging the strain grid. They should've passed us long ago, but here they were, still working in the first mile of the crossing. Tom did not look happy.

“John,” he said, “These flags are snapping in two, or even splitting when we try to push the bamboo into the snow. They're toothpicks! We have to poke holes with a shovel handle before we can plant them.”

Our sturdy ten-footers sailed somewhere on the Pacific Ocean. Jeff Scan-niello would come out to the Shear Zone in a few days to resurvey the grid. The grid flags were getting low enough in the snow that they'd be buried in another year. I'd told Tom to plant the new flags with the banners plenty high.

“Tom, Greg, Judy … these are all we've got to work with. Maybe when we get back to McMurdo in January or February our good flags will be on station. Meanwhile, we need to do this here for Scanniello. Do your best.” It could've been worse. Roald Amundsen forgot shovels. But he faced his shortcoming with a self-deprecating humor I found unattainable in our circumstances.

Back at camp we put an end to a good day, while the weather turned nasty with blowing snow.

That evening, I phoned in our first daily report to an after-hours answering machine in McMurdo. Tomorrow morning Rebecca Hooper would transcribe the report and distribute it through the e-mail system. Personality entered the process in the outgoing voice messages she directed our way. Rebecca was a bright, pretty young lady, eager to act as our official point-of-contact with the world. From time to time she would leave a cheerful message for me, or a flirtatious message for one of our bachelors. A new message from Becky always made the rounds in camp.

I didn't expect any messages this first day on the trail, so I was surprised to get one from Rick: “John, your flags arrived today on a C-17. Your instructions?”

Dave must have stamped his feet and made something move!

“Judy,” I hailed from our comms desk. “How far did you guys get with your flagging today?”

“About halfway. We'll finish it up tomorrow,” she answered.

“I've got a new job for you three. Take the
Elephant Man
back to Mc-Murdo. Return those flags we got from Air Field. Return the Science flags, too. Our ten-footers arrived today. Load them all up on the
Elephant
's deck and bring them back here. Rick will be expecting you. Bring back anything else of ours that may have arrived.”

“You want that tomorrow?”

“Yes I do. Fuel up in McMurdo before you come back, please.”

Stretch woke ahead of me and had already started into his huge bowl of oatmeal. Outside our galley window, the weather had turned to blizzard. The flags would have to wait. Quietly, I whispered into each bunkroom: “Sleep in. We're not going anywhere.”

When I called a “sleep in,” I usually gave a new time for up-and-at-'em. Normally, we tried to get rolling by 0730. This morning, I sat down at the breakfast table and stared off into space, thinking of things we could do. Then I made a pot of coffee for me and those who would be trickling out of their bunks soon.

“Stretch, hasn't this happened to us every year?” I whispered. “Our first day out of town, we get stuck with a blizzard at the Shear Zone?”

“I believe you're right,” he played back his memories. “Mm-hmm. Every year.”

The blizzard didn't let up the entire day. Later in the morning Tom gave an hour-long class on mountaineering knots. In the afternoon I lectured on our route across the Ross Ice Shelf. Three of our group had never been on the Shelf. The others needed the reminder. Using the big map on the galley wall and detailed maps stored on our laptop, we reviewed the terrain features and crevasse areas ahead. I announced four planned stops where our mechanics could schedule maintenance. On those days others would search for crevasses, or tend to chores we'd save for the occasion. When I finished the briefing, Greg's prospecting team lingered.

“John V., when we get our good flags back here, we want to re-flag the next hundred miles to SOUTH. That's as far as we got at the end of Year One. Those flags were getting wind-whipped and threadbare when we last saw them. This year there's not much left but the poles.

“Greg, you and Tom run the radar all the way. Even though we've been over this ground before, it'll be good practice. And Tom, you're going to see flat stratigraphy for a long time, but you'll have a complete radar perspective of the whole Shelf.”

Realizing I'd stepped on Greg, I corrected myself. “You are captain of the prospecting team. Switch your team's roles around as you wish. But I'm interested in everybody learning each other's job. Okay?”

“Copy that, Boss,” Greg said.

“My name's
John
,” I reminded him.

“Now another word about flags,” I continued. “We run our flag lines straight. It means everything when visibility is low. If you can spot two flags ahead of you, you can line on those two to find the next one. If your flag line is crooked, you don't know where to look, and you'll get off the proven road. On this next hundred miles, put a new flag twenty feet down the line from the old one. Put it exactly in line with all the ones you'll be looking back at. You can do that by eyeball. Do
not
put a new one right next to an old one. Can you tell me why?”

Greg spoke up, “Because two flags planted close together mark your old campsites.”

Good. Greg's studied the route notes
.

I planted the camp flags myself, usually a red flag right next to a green one. That's where I took our GPS position for the daily reports. Even though the banners might get completely worn off the bamboo, two sticks standing next to each other marked a ghost town. We may have peed there, and I didn't want that snow getting into our snow melter.

That ended the briefing. With the blizzard still rocking our quarters atop its sled, each of us worked out our own solution for the day's remains. I went to my bunk and took up H. G. Wells's
A Short History of the World.
I wanted background on the Middle East business. Wells gave me a Victorian's eye view.

In workable morning weather, Judy, Tom, and Greg departed for Mc-Murdo. Brad and I completed re-flagging the strain grid using some of the better Science flags we held back. Then the five of us who remained in camp finished shuttling sleds across the Shear Zone. By afternoon, the dregs of the storm blew out. A blue sky broke sunny and clear.

By 1700 hours we reassembled on the Ross Ice Shelf side of the Shear Zone, pointed south. I kicked back inside the galley with Stretch, thinking about starting the evening meal. Brad, Russ, and John V. puttered around outside, soaking up the sun on a fine afternoon in Antarctica.

The comms desk radio squawked: “South Pole Traverse …
Elephant Man
.”

Due west, out the window over the galley sink, a dark dot moved over the snow near GAW.

“Go ahead
Elephant
,” I answered.

“Can we come across?” Judy asked.

“You bet. How'd you do?”

“We have presents.”

A halfhour later the
Elephant
pulled up to its slot and plugged in. Beautiful bundles of ten-foot flags, all 1,500 of them, were securely lashed to the tractor's deck. Judy also brought electric heating pads for the tractors' oil sumps, a spare data link for our iridium phone, and a vacuum cleaner … not everything we had coming, but all good stuff. They'd made a long trip into town and back, and I thanked them.