Travels in Antarctica: youth laughs at age, but age waits for youth

 By Frosty Wooldridge

          “The numerous bergs in the vicinity were also hastening the general disintegration of the ice.  With their deep draft, the bergs seemed to be affected by erratic tidal currents.  Periodically, one would cease to travel peacefully along with the rest of the pack and would suddenly veer off on its own, grinding through the ice and effortlessly shouldering aside anything in its path, leaving a wake of broken and upended floes.  And there was no predicting what course these drunken juggernauts would take.”

                                                                       Lansing, Endurance, 1914

          On a Wednesday, at 1:30 P.M., staff announced a ‘Condition 1’ alert and we were sent to our rooms—no more work.  It was as if I was a kid again and it was a snow day.  I came back to my room to read Will Steger’s “CROSSING ANTARCTICA.” It was a heck of a book about crossing 3,700 miles of the continent by dog sleds.  After reading ‘ENDURANCE’, I was again dumbfounded as to why those men would put themselves in so much deadly misery.  I could relate because I, too, knew what kind of cold they had to deal with.

          Jack walked into the room.

          “God, I hate this,” he said.

          “What happened today?” I asked, looking up from my book.

          “I can’t believe how filthy stinking rotten some of those construction workers leave the toilets on the ice runway,” he said.  “I’m just about at the end of my rope.”

          “You might check with the supervisor,” I said.  “They’ve got a night shift in the Crary Lab.  You could work the shift for five hours and play pool the last four hours.”

          “Or go to sleep,” he said. “I could handle a five hour shift.”

          “What the hell,” I said.  “Go for it.”

          I wanted Jack to stay because I knew he’d gain great experiences from Antarctica.  More importantly, when a person commits to something, I think it’s his or her responsibility to see it through.  We had signed contracts to work in Antarctica and it had cost a fortune to fly us from the states, outfit us and set us up in living quarters at the bottom of the world.  Jack needed to keep his part of the bargain.

          He seemed to ‘lighten’ with the idea of the night shift.  He was a spoiled rich kid from Yale who never had to ‘work’ his way through anything.   For the first time in his life, he had to ‘do’ something he didn’t like to do to ‘get’ something he wanted.   I wasn’t having any fun at work each day, either, but I carried a different attitude into my situation.  My adventure, very similar to the guy who slopped the decks on Robert Falcon Scott’s boat, the Terra Nova–nearly a hundred years ago– probably didn’t have much fun, either.  But he experienced everything the ‘famous’ guy got to encounter.   He had to ‘hang on’ during the bad times so he could ‘realize’ the ‘good’ times.

While bicycling the length of South America, I suffered for six weeks with a deadly bacterium in my stomach.   Horrible bowel problems and pain stalked me daily as I pedaled through the Atacoma Desert of Chile.   Did I quit?  No!  Was it worth it?  Yes!  Adventure is not always comfortable, but it is STILL adventure.

Jack laid back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.  I settled back into my book.  For the afternoon, I was given a brief reprieve from the rigors of my housekeeping job—a break from boredom and repetitive work.

I looked out the window of my room at the blowing whiteout and

glanced at my watch.  It was already five.  By that date in late November, the sun circled overhead 24 hours per day.  Time was passing.  I watched my own life-clock tick slowly past.  I was a traveler and my time on earth was in the last third.  These adventures would soon end because my span was running out of time.   Had I done it all?  No, not even close.  I could only try my best to reach my goals.  A tight budget created daunting challenges for a ‘little’ guy.  It’s why my counterpart a century ago was wringing his own mop on the poop deck instead of looking through the sextant.  Nonetheless, he was still there living his dreams.  I, too, was living my dreams, even as my clock had ticked off the years. 

Youth laughs at age, but age waits for youth.  No matter how much I packed it in, one day I’d pack out.  It happened so quickly.  Those eternal snows swirled outside and I watched them intently, knowing that one day I’d be a snowflake again or piece of dirt or the eye of an eagle.  For that matter, I might be a mouse or fly!   The eternal cycle continues, unabated, moment to moment, century after century, millennia upon millennia.

          The next day, Mary, a tall, anemic redhead from Texas who happened to be my supervisor asked, “Would you like to go to Sea Ice School?”

          “How’d I get so lucky?”  I said.

          “Four others turned it down,” she said.

          “No kidding,” I said.  “You gotta’ jump at life.  Not wait for it to come to you.  I’m going.”        

          Next morning, I stuffed my polar gear into a bag along with my camera and attended Sea Ice School.  It was a special survival course in the Antarctic that showed students how to stay alive while being trapped on the ice or in the mountains with a storm raging across the crystal desert.  Storms in Antarctica raged two to seven days in length with winds howling at a deadly pitch.  At McMurdo Station, snow plastered against the windows;  five-foot drifts formed in a few hours, and visibility diminished to ten feet.  The wind whistled through the doors and slipped through the cracks in the doors and piled up inside the buildings.  Temperatures burned our faces with frostbite.

          After a briefing at the Search and Rescue Hut, ten people and I piled into a two-section track machine like the ones they use as snowcats at ski resorts.    The driver, Buck, bearded with a craggy face only a vulture mother could love, was an adventure man who had braved five seasons on the ice.  He drove us down to the ice pack, and out over McMurdo Sound, headed north toward the Ross Sea.   Red flags on bamboo poles marked our snowy highway.  

          We traveled 10 miles when a flock of Adelie Penguins walked across the ice before us.  Adelies distinguished themselves from Emperors by their smaller size, quicker movements and coloring.  They stood 28 inches tall and weighed 12 pounds.  They looked like a living tuxedo outfit– black and white in color.  They sported black beaks and backs with solid white bellies.  We jumped out and lay down on the ice with our cameras.  They waddled within twenty feet of us and dropped down on their bellies like ducks and ‘swam’ across the ice by using their back feet as propellers.  One charged toward me with his wings extended to his sides like he wanted to play, but as I clicked several pictures, he swerved and waddled the other way.  His buddy dropped down on his belly to ‘swim’ across the ice with his back feet looking like paddle wheels on an old Mississippi riverboat.  Within minutes, they moved along their path and we were on our way.

          “What do you think they are doing ten miles from open water?” I asked Buck.

          “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.  “More than likely, they’re just goofing off because their bellies are full and they don’t have anything else to do.”

          “Aren’t they vulnerable out here on the ice?” I asked.

          “Seals and killer whales can only catch them under water,” he said.  “They have no other enemies out of water.”

          Across the Sound stood Mt. Discovery, and further down the sound toward the Ross Sea was Mt. Erebus at 13,400 feet.  It was a smoking volcano.  Along the way, icebergs locked in the ice stood like spiny dinosaurs.  Around us, the pack ice showed long narrow cracks that ran for hundreds of yards across in all directions, like a puzzle.  As summer approached, the cracks grew bigger when the long days heated things up.  Warming up was a relative term because it was usually -20 degrees below zero F., or lower every day.

          As we drove along the Sound heading toward the Ross Sea, we were a tiny orange speck on the ice that stretched ten miles across.  We traveled through a fenced avenue of white giants.  Winds whipped up to 40 miles per hour as we followed bright green crayon colored flags on six-foot high bamboo poles.  That was our road across a vast desert of ice and snow.  It looked like we were traveling on the ice planet Hoth from the ‘Empire Strikes Back’.  I half expected a Tonton to prance across our path.  It was ice and snow as far as the eye could see, and up on the mountains, glaciers more than 100 feet above the ground and 1,000 feet below the surface, poured off the peaks into the Sound.  A huge saucer-like cloud hovered above Mt. Erebus like a spaceship. 

          We kept bouncing along until we saw an instructor hut–shoebox shaped at 18′x8′x7′ and on metal ski runners.  Upon jumping out of the vehicle, two us were blown to the ice.  The wind raged against the sides of the hut and track vehicle.  Visibility was less than 100 feet on the surface, but more than 50 miles in the sky above the blowing snow. 

          We climbed inside and learned how to operate a radio, erect a tent on snow, start a stove, use our survival bag, and how to prevent hypothermia.  Later, we set up the tent outside.  Buck made me a team leader, and I can tell you that pitching a tent on snow packed ice in a 45 mile per hour wind is like trying to ride your bicycle through a swimming pool.  It was nearly impossible in the freezing cold.  We crawled around the outside of the tent like cockroaches trying to keep from being blown away.  We drilled stakes down first and secured the tent to the stakes.  In order to tie the guidelines, we had to dig a “dead man hole.”  A dead manhole is a T in the snow dug down a foot into the ice.  We placed a hammer or pole in it and tied a rope to it and locked in the tent lines. 

All that work in 45-50 mile per hour winds!   After reviewing our survival skills, we learned how to find someone in a whiteout where we couldn’t see anything six feet away.  We had to tie a 300-foot rope to a vehicle or stake, or building and run out in circles with the rope until we swept the area like the second hand on a clock, and hopefully, find the person.  If we ever got lost, we had to stop, sit down and wait for help.  We might have to run in place or dig a hole in the snow and let the snow bury us for warmth.

          “If you move from your spot in a whiteout,” Buck warned, “you’ll die.”

          We climbed back into the truck and rode out toward the Ross Sea.  Before we arrived, a 400-pound Weddell seal snoozed on the ice.  We stopped and took pictures, but he ignored us.  We found it hard to imagine sleeping out there in 50 mile-per-hour winds and -80 F. chill index.  He was fat, warm and comfortable.   We kept moving over the ice at 10 miles-per-hour and reached Inaccessible Island.  We jumped out near an iceberg and climbed to the summit.  It was volcanic black rock–about a quarter mile long pile of broken asphalt much like when they tear it off the roadbed and store it in piles.  It was steep and we had to climb against violent winds. 

          At the top, we saw where the Ross Sea Ice Shelf reached the water and had broken free.  Icebergs the size of Denver floated on the freezing sea.  Yes, the size of Denver!  Mountains surrounded us and the Barn Glacier stood near us, reflecting the sun.  Buck told us that the island we stood on was part of an old volcano that had broken apart and two other islands, Little Razorback and Big Razorback were part of the caldron that once was the whole volcano.  It was more than two miles wide! 

          Standing at the peak, looking over the mountains, glaciers, icebergs, and glittering Ross Sea, I couldn’t help wondering why my four work companions had turned down a day like this.

          When life offers an opportunity, you have to ‘go for it’. 

          When you do, it will jump back at you with astonishing moments for your life.     

          We climbed down from the volcano in a fierce wind.  Back in the track vehicle, we encountered another whiteout.  We couldn’t see twenty feet in front of us, but that was no problem as we followed the green flags.

          “We’d sure be in trouble if we lost sight of those flags,” I said to Buck.

          He grunted, “Yeah, we could die out here at anytime.”