Blazing Ice (25 page)

The PistenBully continued along the 1995 path into the basin. We entered an open snowfield at its bottom, a parade ground big enough to hold the Million Mom March. And we found no crevasses there. The Plateau rim now completely embraced our horizon. It lay seven miles away. And the headwall held the steepest slopes we'd face. My evening report to McMurdo contained this message: “Have prospected a course to
L-10 … on your map
. Have found crevasses. Not insurmountable.”

Under clear skies the next morning, January 4, the fleet advanced four miles, where it stopped and we made coffee.

The prospecting team departed at that point, retracing its path over the shoulder into the Parade Ground. Following up on our hunch, we located a looping crevasse-free detour out of the basin, around the point of the shoulder, and back down to the waiting fleet. With events unfolding rapidly in our favor, we didn't dwell long over coffee. The heavy fleet advanced along the detour. By midday it arrived at the Parade Grounds and made camp for lunch. The prospecting team set out again to scout a route to the top.

RADARSAT imagery had shown us thousands of crevasses in the basin ahead. Now that we were here, we could see they were not all hidden. Their
open blue-ice maws ringed the entire headwall. Yet with uncommon luck, we flagged a crevasse-free path the first four miles to a level bench, halfway up to the rim. From there, we dodged side-slopes and open crevasses, and then we quickly found the last three miles to the top.

From the suddenly expansive panorama, the frigid, white world lay below us. A frozen cascade, as big as Niagara Falls, draped over the plateau's rim. Down in the valley, the Leverett Glacier flowed placidly around Mt. Beazley. Three years to get to this place, and now we
were
the horizon.

Enjoying lungs-full of cold Plateau air, we planted four green flags and called that point SPT-18.

“I wonder if the tractors can make these grades?” I mused to John Penney, Allen, and Jim. “On our way back down with the radar, let's offset our trail by a hundred feet. If we're lucky we'll prove a corridor that we can move in.”

By 1800 hours, we rejoined the fleet waiting in the Parade Grounds below. The others were rested, ready, and eager. The clear, calm weather was a gift we wouldn't waste. I called it: “Break camp. We're going to the top tonight.”

Stretch and his D8 bulldozer pulled out first with the camp modules, a 100,000-pound sled load. He made the summit to SPT-18, scratching his way up the steeper slopes but never losing all traction.

Russ and the
Elephant Man
followed, towing a support sled and the one tank which now held only 292 gallons.

Judy and tractor #283 pulled an empty tank sled, a spreader bar sled and a trail drag. She followed Russ up the slopes with ease.

Then I in
Fritzy
and Brad in
Quadzilla
started up. With our heavier loads, we both lost traction several times and wallowed in. John Penney patrolled between us on a snowmobile, helping rig our tow straps. Brad and I took turns towing each other to the top.

By 2130 hours, January 4, 2005, we claimed our foothold on the Polar Plateau.

We had hurled ourselves to the summit. Now we sat down to a late dinner in camp at SPT-18. The weather was still clear, but it was noticeably twenty
degrees colder than the Parade Grounds below. We'd been sixty days on the trail. In the last seventy miles, we climbed from 400 feet above sea level at the Leverett base to 7,200 feet at its top.

Jim described the sight that played to the triumph now gripping each one of us: “Standing well back from the edge and watching a tractor top-out, I saw the roof of the tractor first, just below the rim. Maybe ten seconds later the whole tractor appeared. It really
was
a ponderous and stately event.”

Before dinner, I sent a simple message to McMurdo:

We have completed our assessment of the Leverett Glacier headwall region. In fact, we have ascended the Leverett headwall and are now camped squarely on the Polar Plateau. We request a phone conference tomorrow morning, January 05, regarding onward traverse.

“Report from the Field #8” to my bosses in McMurdo, with copies to Dave and George, followed after dinner:

We are prepared to go farther south, and feel the only southern goal left for us this season is South Pole itself. The crew is unanimous in will to do this. We have sufficient fuel to make the remaining 298 miles to Pole, but not to complete the return. I prefer to take on fuel at South Pole Station to guarantee our return to McMurdo this season, rather than accept deep field refueling on the Ross Ice Shelf. I'd also like to deliver the D8 to Pole as cargo in satisfaction of one of the Proof-of-Concept requirements. Fuel in exchange for the prize of a D8 may be persuasive.

January 5 was Russ Magsig's birthday. We slept in, and I filed no report that day.

Several of us called home over the Iridium connection that morning. I managed one call to my family, who this time was visiting cousins in Christ-church, New Zealand. They'd dropped by the USAP offices, of all places, where the wonderful lady who worked there arranged the call. I knew the very room where they stood. It had a big map of Antarctica on the wall, and it thrilled me
to have them point to the top of the Leverett, at the very edge of the Plateau where Daddy was, and feel our excitement being here.

Later, while we waited for an answer on fuel, Jim Lever awakened me from a nap. “I've been elected to go over some figures with you.”

“What is this … a ‘me and the boys have been talking' thing?” I sleepily asked from my bunk.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “Me and the boys over in Boy's Town.” Boy's Town was the bunkroom opposite the galley from the one I slept in. We had Judy on our side.

“Okay … what do you got?” I sat up, yawning on the edge of my bunk.

“You've asked for nine thousand gallons at Pole,” Jim opened.

“That's right. It could be that much depending on how things go. We'll only know when we get there.”

“Well, we've put the pencil to it and figure we could do it for less. We leave one tractor here, we go in with four, leave the D8, and come back here with three. I calculate three thousand gallons would do it.”

“Any margin in that?” I asked, wary of engineer's sharp pencils.

“It works out right at three thousand gallons,” Jim reasserted.

No margin. Amundsen always planned for margin … surplus against the unexpected. Scott planned right at the margin, and then pushed past it. Scott blew it.

Jim's three thousand gallons gave no allowance for unknown terrain. Should our radar fail or another crevasse field block our way, either one forcing a turnaround before Pole, we wouldn't have the fuel for that. A one-way trip was out of the question. Wintering the fleet at South Pole diverted precious station resources it couldn't afford. The proof-of-concept was in the round trip, anyway.

To satisfy the boys I sent an additional note to George. New calculations suggested the
range
of our fuel requirement was between three thousand gallons and the nine thousand gallons I'd originally asked for. All caveats I'd previously outlined for support were still in force. But we were in a pretty good place, and we knew it. Whether we went on to Pole or back to McMurdo, the will to complete in three years rested solely with NSF now.

The requested phone conference with my bosses in McMurdo did take place, though their opening line left me at a loss:

“What would you like to talk about?”

I repeated last night's message: “We are unanimous in our will to go on. We are warm. We have plenty of food. All our equipment is in good working order. We do need supplemental fuel. With that support, we believe we can get all the way to Pole and back to McMurdo and complete the proof-of-concept mission this year. What is your pleasure?”

George sat in the conference room with my bosses. He explained that deep field refueling by a landed LC-130 was no longer an option for the traverse. The Air National Guard crews had changed in the last few days. Its new commander was not willing to land on the Ross Ice Shelf.

“Well how about at Pole?” I asked. “Can we take on supplemental fuel there, brought on a regularly scheduled mission?”

The phone conference concluded with uncertainty. From our perch on the Polar Plateau, we waited for a decision.

The next day I conferred with George by a separate phone call. He asked straightforwardly, “What would you do if you were in my seat?”

“George,” I spoke after a pause, for his was a big question, “I do not know what it is like to sit in the big chair in McMurdo, nor do I have access to all the information you do. But I've only one answer for you: If you cannot
fully support
us, then this is as far as we go. Less than full support won't get it.”

At the beginning of it all Erick Chiang had declared, “The National Science Foundation announces its full support for the development of the South Pole Traverse.”

The morning of January 7 we received Erick Chiang's decision. Dave Bresnahan, who was in Washington, D.C., at the time, relayed it:

We have … with all the input that has been received been able to balance the opportunities, risks, and impacts and have come to the conclusion that we should not push on but complete this phase of the year's efforts and have the traverse team return to McMurdo.

I know this will be a big disappointment to the members of the team, but it should in no way diminish this season's achievement.

We all wish the members of the traverse team a speedy and safe journey back to McMurdo.

That morning we rigged for descent. After lunch, after a group photo at SPT-18—our new farthest south—after caching three hundred flags we no
longer needed, and after sixty days on the trail, we turned around. Eight heavy hearts, five heavy tractors and their trains, and one scout vehicle started back down, over the rim of the Polar Plateau, profoundly disappointed. But trotting down slope, our butts bouncing in our saddles like Plains Indians headed home from a raid, we had taken many scalps.

Bits of information suggested the USAP anticipated serious fuel shortages. We knew little more than that. From our camp in the Parade Grounds that evening, cynical utterances vented our disappointment:

“That was a million dollar decision,” declared one hand.

“That's just about exactly right,” I responded. “
If
NSF chooses to continue the project for another year, it'll cost right about one million dollars. But this was a three-year project. Who knows if NSF will pony up? Fathoming the mind of NSF is like contemplating infinity.”

“How does NSF propose to solve this problem they have created for themselves?”

“You got to pay to play. Pay now or pay more later. You lose face if you quit. Look at what they'd be throwing away! Three years!”

“If they really wanted to support us, they could have.”

“Apparently they couldn't support us.”

“Did they fail to anticipate we would succeed?”

“NSF is unaccustomed to success. We took them by surprise.”

They
. None of us were part of
them
. We were seasonal contractor workers. And for us, NSF was a distant, inscrutable institution directing the program. But these facts remained: we struggled to reach the Polar Plateau, and we took that ground. From our farthest south, we put the ball back in
their
court.
They
refused us.

We descended the Leverett in two days, enshrouded in pea-soup fog and wet, blowing snow.

On our arrival at the Leverett base, we built a snow berm and parked the D8 for the winter. Leaving the D8 at the bottom had been part of my published operations plan, albeit a small part of the plan. The D8 was a slow
moving fuel-hog. By stationing the D8 at the Leverett base, we'd conserve its return fuel for the rest of the fleet's use. And for the first time we'd test the unhampered speed and performance of the other tractors as we headed north.

We left the D8 on its berm with little fanfare. Not until two days later, and ninety miles farther north did I mention in the daily report that, according to plan, I
had
left it. It would be another day, and another fifty miles, before our McMurdo counterparts might reply. By that time, we wouldn't have enough fuel to retrieve the D8, even if so ordered. And leaving the $500,000 machine at the Leverett might give some leverage for winning a fourth year.

Our return to McMurdo slowed a day or two on account of blizzards, but we did post record days, picking up speed, heading for the barn. On January 15 we made sixty-six miles. The next day, eighty-two miles. And the next day, ninety-four miles. Running in high gear, and at 75 percent engine load, we flew across the Shelf on our road, unhampered by the slow D8.

On the morning of January 20 we pulled up to the Shear Zone. Allen O'Bannon and I radared the crossing and found it good to go. By 1100 hours, the main fleet rolled across. At 1430, we crossed the city limits into Williams Field. Along the way we passed a solitary laborer working in the air cargo yard. He'd witnessed our approach from the horizon.

As we drove by, he mounted a cargo pallet and waved two thumbs up, shouting, “Way to go!” Each of us acknowledged his salute as our fleet moved wearily into the Williams Field winter storage area.

We left our sleds there and drove our tractors towards McMurdo. In six more miles we drove onto dirt and stone. As we passed over the high road to town, my boss's boss drove past us in a pickup truck going the other way. He lifted his forearm a couple of inches off the steering wheel.

In town, we found the whole of the USAP caught up in a tempest of fuel woes.

Cargo and fuel flights to South Pole Station had been twenty flights ahead of schedule before we launched in November. Now they were forty flights behind. A protracted spate of foul weather in McMurdo had cancelled many missions. Even Pole's tractor, the one we'd hoped to drive to its new home, was still in McMurdo.