Chapter 3
Beardmore Glacier Camp
Trans-Antarctic Mountain Range
Susan Engen lay in her down sleeping bag inside the green domed tent and looked at her watch. It was confirmed, morning. The first night in the field was always restless; it would take her some time to grow accustomed to the new environment. The twenty-four hours of glaring sun didn’t help. She knew she was overtired as well; the adrenaline of finally being able to get to work kept her going well into the night. She almost felt bad about keeping Jake out so late, but he bore it well and didn’t complain. She’d try to make it up to him today.
She looked around the tent to survey where she had left her clothes and boots. Once she unzipped the bag, she did not want to let what warmth she had accumulated through the night dissipate while looking for her frozen socks. When she had all her moves pretty well laid out, she tore out of the bag and pulled everything on as quickly as she could, before beating a hasty track toward the hut in the hope that there would be coffee.
She found Jake inside, mug steadily in hand, studying a map of the complex of mountains in their immediate vicinity. She poured a cup for herself and joined him. He was looking longingly at the peaks surrounding them.
“Want to have some fun?” she asked him.
“Doctor,” he answered, in a scandalized tone, “we hardly know each other.”
“Very funny. I was planning on doing some high altitude work right…” she said, looking and pointing at the map, “here. If you want, we can go for the top after that. As far as I know, no one has ever climbed it.”
He looked up at her to see if she was joking.
“Serious?” he asked, still uncertain if she was pulling his leg.
“Absolutely. Don’t get too worked up, though. It looks like an easy hike.”
She thought that might make a difference to him. A first ascent, however, was a first ascent, and there was no way he was going to miss the chance.
“I’m in,” he answered. “You sure you can spare the time?”
“Until the equipment shows up, all I’ve got is time,” she told him.
“Any news?” he asked.
“They said it was just a mistake. Sent the wrong stuff,” she said, frowning.
“Hmm,” he said, as if questioning the reply.
“What?” she asked him.
“The labels on the boxes were addressed to our camp. I just figured they sent some other projects’ stuff early.”
“They may have,” she told him, “but they said that it wasn’t supposed to come at all. They could still have it screwed up. That wouldn’t be any big surprise.”
“True,” he agreed.
“When we get back I’ll take a closer look at what’s there,” she said, ready to forget about it. “For now, I just want to see if this coffee is going to kick in. Then let’s get going.”
They crossed 12,000 feet after a short break, where they stopped for a rest and some quick refreshment that amounted to nothing more than some water and cheese and crackers. Above them was the summit, another hour of climbing or so, and as Susan had predicted, it was easy going, requiring no technical skills. Neither of them cared too much at that point. Just getting the chance to be there and take away a first was enough for them.
Susan looked out over the glaciers as they climbed. She could see well over the Polar Plateau onto the seemingly endless ice cap. The geologist in her had dreamed of this moment for so long; it was hard to take it all in. And, as if it weren’t enough to look at the sight that so few had ever seen, still she saw more.
What she saw when she looked out over the plateau were the savannas of the ancient Gondwanaland super-continent, drifting about for millions of years before cataclysmic collisions with other land masses caused a lifting of tectonic plates, driving the deeply-buried formations thousands of feet into the air to where they stood. She saw this piece, a new continent all its own, spinning off to the bottom of the world, where it would become buried under miles of ice. Never mind that it all happened at the breakneck speed of seventy millimeters per year. In her mind, she could see it happening in seconds, in real time.
As they approached the peak, Jake, who was in the lead, stopped and looked back at her. She understood the question in his movements.
“Go ahead,” she called ahead.
“Sure?” he asked, just to be sure.
“Yes, go,” she repeated.
He turned and walked the remaining steps to the peak. Once established there, he took off his pack and got his camera ready before Susan arrived. It seemed only fair that if he got to be first on top, at least her arrival should be recorded for posterity.
“Nice,” he said approvingly at the broad smile that came out just in time for the shutter. It would be one of those heroic-looking snapshots that become treasures.
“Here,” she said, reaching for the camera. “Let me do you now.”
“Again with these shameless advances,” he said, feigning disapproval as he pulled on his anorak.
She could see a pattern emerging and decided right then that she had better either be more guarded with her choice of words or start honing her game and give back as good as she got. Watching her words was not something that was likely to happen, and Jake was as yet unaware that he was taking up a challenge to which he might not be equal. It was clear, at least, that working with this particular guide would not be lacking for amusement. She decided to let it go for now, and nail him later.
He stood with his back towards the polar plateau while she focused the camera. She snapped the shot, but continued to look past him into the distance, choosing to ignore his provocative remarks this time.
“What do you make of that?” she asked. He turned to look.
“Looks like a fog bank,” he said.
“Fog?” she asked, doubtingly.
“I know,” he said. “It’s not fog. Wind. There must be a storm out there.”
“That can’t be good,” Susan said. “How long do you think it will take to get here?”
“Well,” he said, doing the mental calculation, “assume it is moving around twenty miles per hour, and that’s a pretty good clip. How far is it to over there?”
Susan looked again. Her experience at mapping geology had made her fairly accurate when it came to judging distances. She guessed forty miles.
“Two hours then, for the ground blizzard. We’ll get hit here first.”
“Right,” she agreed. “We’ve been climbing for five.”
“Very good,” he said as if he were the professor and she the student. “And that leaves us?”
“Not enough time.”
They increased their pace from leisurely to rapidly, but not urgently. They were reasonably well prepared, and the mountain itself was not dangerous to descend. Time and temperature were the issues that would have to be dealt with. It had been a comfortable minus ten or so in the sun while they climbed. By the time they would be halfway down, they would be engulfed in clouds with wind chills approaching minus one hundred.
Climbing down was in many ways more difficult than going up. Muscles resisted gravity in static effort. While they were climbing up, the work was aerobic, blood was pumped through the body, and oxygen burned hotly. The resulting warmth pervaded every pore. The opposite took place while going down. Heat was drawn from their bodies. Muscles became stiff from the tension. Wind and cold only speeded up the process. They were fortunate; the climb had not been especially technical, and they walked as quickly as they could, trying to maintain a level of exertion. They were sure that they could return to camp before the wind and cold would win the battle against increasing fatigue, when their bodies would not be able to produce heat faster than the storm devoured it. There was no doubt that there was a point when the environment could win; there always was, but they were confident it would not be that day.
Soon after they had begun the descent, Mares’ Tails, cloud formations that were mere wisps of cirrus whose c
urved and feathered shapes denoted high winds aloft, began to streak across the sky, reaching out ahead of the tempest like the blowing snow streams on the ground. There was no longer any question about it being a low-level disturbance; they were in for a major storm from the birthplace of weather, the Polar Plateau.
There were several snow-covered pitches they had climbed earlier that needed to be crossed before they could get back on rock and shale. They had been easy to negotiate in the still air; boots kicked steps into the hard crust easily and firmly. It hadn’t been necessary to rope and belay on the climb up. It became clear on the first one of these, though, that going down was not going to be so easy. The wind was already at a solid forty miles per hour and it required some degree of effort to keep upright on hard ground. They would certainly be blown off their footing on the hard ice. Since they were expecting an easy climb, they did not bring an excess amount of hardware along. A couple of snow stakes were all that they had for anchors, which was fine, but Susan found herself wishing that they had an abundance of those. If that were the case, they could just set the anchor, lower the rope, and then, using a figure of eight, self-belay to the ends of the rope. Then they could just pull down the rope, leave the anchor, and set another one. It was a messy way to climb and bad form, but in those conditions, it could be excused. Besides, they could always go back and retrieve them later.
Because of the fact that they only had the two stakes, there was no choice but to belay each other over each snowfield. The person on top would pound in the stake, attach their body to it through slings and carabineers tied to their climbing harness; then they would let out the rope, while the other negotiated the distance. When the climber reached the end of the rope, they would place the other stake, secure to it in the same fashion as the climber above, and then take in the rope, while the other person made their way down. This process took them four times as long as it would have if it was not necessary, and it required one person to sit stationary in the weather. They began to cool off much faster than they had first anticipated. The warm glow underneath the parkas was rapidly replaced by the deepening cold, where confidence can quickly turn to doubt.
The ground blizzard on the glacier had reached the face of the mountain that they were still far up upon. The wind drove the snow up the rock face and over the ridge. The fine powder of the driven snow crusted on frozen goggles making visibility difficult. This is where it begins to get interesting, Susan mused. Vision reduced, fingers freezing, core temperature dropping, decision-making starts to become difficult. In high alpine climbing, there is what is known as “the dead zone,” where the time that a human can survive is limited. The altitude on this mountain was not that high, though the temperature and conditions at the bottom were roughly equivalent to the peak of Everest on a bad day, except for the altitude. By the time they reached the final ice field that required roping, Susan was beginning to become seriously concerned. She put her hands on either side of Jake’s head and turned his face toward her so she could observe closely for exposed and frozen flesh. She didn’t see any.
“Do you see any on me?” She had to yell at the top of her voice to be heard.
“No,” Jake yelled back, shaking his head emphatically. “What about feet and hands?”
Susan’s feet were numb, but there was numb and numb. Her toes had been frost-nipped before and they hurt now just enough for her to know that they were still alive and would hurt a lot more when they thawed out. Fingers were starting to get bad, but the pain was reassuring. As long as they hurt, they were still all right.
“Okay.”
“Good,” Jake yelled, head bobbing up and down, giving a thumbs-up. Through the layers of hats and hoods, Susan could tell he was smiling underneath. The increasing seriousness of the situation had made his day. They had just had a first ascent of an Antarctic peak, but Susan knew that since it had been a day hike in the conditions they had climbed in, the potential glory that Jake should have been able to feel was qualified, at best. A first ascent, but with an asterisk by it; noting that a child could have done it. Now, he could feel like it was earned.
Susan loved this about climbing, about climbers, and missed it being in Ohio, of all places. Jake was like so many of her friends back in Colorado. They all seemed to want to take these moments with them into the rest of their lives. It was too bad it didn’t work that way. Defining moments were more often just moments that passed and didn’t define anything but that one moment, certainly not the future. There was no carry-over. Jake reminded her of them in seeming to think that if he could achieve an extraordinary accomplishment, he would remain in that extraordinary state. There was something quixotic and romantic about it: doomed quests that had to be pursued even when the outcome was certain.
Susan began to move over the ice field. The wind was up to a steady fifty by then, with gusts over seventy. It was slow going. The anchor was solid enough that they could have leaned on it and walked backwards, rappelling down the slope, but it wasn’t necessary and many climbers, of whom she was one, only liked to rappel when it was impossible to down climb. One trusted their life to too many things that were not under their control. She chose to walk.
Stepping down the steep slope, her knees were bent, like she was sitting in a chair. She used her ice axe as if it were a cane, and she, an old codger, merely crossing the street. It felt as awkward as it looked, certainly nothing heroic. She was near the end of the pitch when an unusually strong wind gust caught the backpack she was carrying and threw her balance off, which allowed the toe of one crampon to catch on the ice, tripping her over her own feet. She would distinctly remember after it was over, while she was still head-over-heels in the air before the impact, how stupid it must have looked. When she did hit, it was on her left shoulder. She screamed once and then rolled back to an upright position when the rope caught because Jake had her on a tight belay. She knew the second of impact that there definitely was damage. She hoped it was just tendons and not bone.
“All right?” Jake shouted from above, concern strong in his voice.
“I think so,” she called back, but the words were devoured by the roar of the wind.
As soon as she could get oriented in the whiteout conditions and figured out which way was up, she found her footing and traversed back across the slope so that Jake could have a straight descent in the fall line. She gingerly hammered in the stake and attached the belay, waving up the hill to him to start. Keeping the rope tight, but not pulling on it, was difficult with one good arm. The last thing she needed now was to yank him off his feet by taking in the rope too quickly.
Jake arrived without incident, and quickly coiled the rope. He tied it onto his pack so they wouldn’t have to waste any more time.
“Let me see,” Jake said, reaching to help her take off her pack.
“No,” she said. “Not here. Let’s just go.”
“Are you sure?” Jake asked. “It’s another hour till we get back to camp. Up to it?”
“Of course I’m up to it. Is there an alternative?” Susan asked.
“Just being polite,” he said, relieved that she wasn’t seriously hurt. The mixture of humor and bravado was designed to help her buck-up for the return trip. It worked.
“Get the hell going and shut up!” she told him. “I’ll follow you.”
Susan quickly became aware that she must have landed on her head, as well, since every step resonated from her frozen feet up through her shoulder, where it rang like a bell in her ears. By the time they got to where they unhooked their crampons, she was starting to have vertigo. She would remember little more of the last hour of the journey back to camp than a feeling like swimming. The whiteout conditions made walking feel like she was swimming in milk, in a space suit, against the current.
When they arrived back at the camp, the two unpacked and put the equipment away in their proper places before going in, despite the pain, because that was how it was done. The blizzard followed them through the door,
and then they were left standing in the hut. They began the process of peeling off their frozen wind pants and parkas.