Antarctica (21 page)

Antarctica is a continent of extremes and winter is the most extreme way to experience it. In the heroic age there was no choice; in order to be there in the summer when the sun was briefly present and you could sledge and race and seek out new territories, you had to spend at least one and more often two winters dug in against the black night, squeezed in uncomfortable proximity with a band of increasingly irritating comrades in a small smoky hut, while the elements outside rattled your teeth and froze your heart.

In 1915 one early explorer, stuck on a ship that was making its slow and weary way through the pack ice, wrote this prescient entry in his diary:

 

I do so wish sometimes that I could just pop home for an hour or two as easily in the flesh as in the spirit. No doubt the explorers of 2015, if there is anything left to explore, will . . . carry their pocket wireless telephones . . . and . . . of course there will be an aerial daily excursion to both poles then.
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He wasn't so very far off. In the summers these days there is a plane from McMurdo to the Pole most days; you can come here just for part of the season, when the sun has returned, when the temperatures are cold but bearable and a steady stream of planes is bringing in resupplies and options.

But if you are really hard-core, if you are ready to see the continent at its harshest, and get a taste of the isolation that the early explorers experienced, you need to spend a winter here. In winters, there are no planes and no chances to pop back home. Even today, it is easier to leave the International Space Station in an emergency than it is to leave the South Pole after the last plane has gone, after the continent has dropped its dark curtain and you are frozen into the silence. I have never spent a winter in Antarctica, and probably never will. But I am still gripped by the idea of it, a fascination that was only quickened by the many winterers that I met there.

‘The winter is a totally different animal from the summer. It's like comparing apples and . . . pick-up trucks.' Larry Rickard was a carpenter from New Jersey, who I ran into in the galley the day after my arrival. He was eating ‘midrats'—midnight rations—which were supposed to be just for night workers but which anyone could join if, like me, they were hungry and couldn't sleep, and asked the cook nicely. It was 5 November, the US had just re-elected George W. Bush, and the galley staff had served up a themed menu of ‘pork barrel roast, mashed hopes potatoes, big business gravy and squashed dreams'. On the wall was a red bell labelled ‘whining alarm' with a sign underneath saying ‘no sympathy for the picky'. One side of the galley had nothing but huge picture windows framing the ceremonial pole and its flags just a few metres away, and, although it was midnight, the summer sun was streaming in.

Larry had already spent two winters on the ice, one at Mactown and one at Pole, and he was about to embark on his third. He was wiry and full of coiled energy. He had tight black curls and words tumbled out of him almost more quickly than he could frame them. If he were a cartoon character, he'd be a fast-talking, wisecracking black Labrador.

It was Larry who told me that the slang for people at the South Pole was ‘Polies', and that they got special clothing—hefty Carhartt overalls and extra thick green parkas, which were a badge of honour as you passed through McMurdo and turned your nose up at the red parka brigade. But he also had his poetic moments, as when he struggled to explain what the winter here was truly like. ‘If I were to describe it with just one word, it would be: surrender. It's not giving up, it's giving in. Relinquishing all power to do something else, realising that whatever happens you just can't leave. It's very powerful. That's what makes it addictive to me.'

He knew the base inside out and, since the following day was his day off, he offered to show me round. First stop was the new station. This was being built as a replacement for the previous one, which had been constructed in the 1970s and was now both too small for the current scale of science, and too susceptible to drifting snow. I was already staying in a berthing wing of the new building, and the galley was also now in operation. But we explored the new medical facility (labelled, by tradition, ‘Club Med') containing a dentist's chair and operating room and other stark reminders that in the winters here you were medically on your own. We poked our heads around the doors that would eventually lead to science labs, gymnasiums, weight rooms, and more berths, but were now just sites of hammerings and sawings and scrapings.

A huge silver cylinder housing a spiral staircase provided both the passage between floors and one of the main exits to the outside world. Everyone on station called it the beer can because that's what it looked like. The rest of the station was designed in wings like capital letter Es lying on their sides. Most of these were yet to be constructed, though the steel structures were in place for some. And the exterior of the building was still an incongruous yellow, though it would eventually be a cool steel-grey. The doors were the massive insulated kind that you find in industrial freezers. But in this case, the freezer was on the outside.

As we stepped out, there was the familiar dazzling sun-snow combination, the same gasp at the intensity of the cold. Temperatures were hovering around -58°F. Thanks to its thick mantle of ice, the South Pole lies 9,350 feet above sea level, and the coldness of the air gives it an effective altitude more like 11,500 feet. From the moment you step off the plane everyone you meet warns you to take it easy, drink plenty of water, avoid caffeine and alcohol, not to move too fast or carry too much until you're acclimatised. For most of the first few days you walk sluggishly, as if in a dream, gasping if you try to take the stairs too quickly. You have a persistent nagging headache and an unpleasant tingling in your feet from the side effects of diamox, the pill pressed on all visitors to the Pole to ward off altitude sickness. And then, suddenly, your head clears and your breath returns and insanely cold temperatures begin to seem normal. Dashing between buildings at -58°F, you might neglect to put gloves or hat on. Acclimatisation, it turns out, is as much about attitude as altitude.

(You can, however, take this too far. Though the sun may be shining and you may feel like you're inured to the cold, there are certain things you just shouldn't do. Larry told me how late one summer he was sitting in the computer lab when one of his colleagues came in. Both sat silently for a while, then they caught each other's eye and Larry said: ‘How're you doing?' ‘Thon't puth a penthil in your mouth when you're out-thide,' came the reply. It turned out that the graphite in the pencil had frozen to his tongue.)

The famous South Pole Dome lay just a short walk away from the new station. It was a geodesic Buckminster Fuller segmented dome that had been built here in the 1970s by the US Navy. It must have seemed like a good idea—make something that was strong enough to withstand the weight of blowing snow that would land on it, and round enough to deflect the ferocious winter winds. Oh, and that was also utterly gorgeous, a shining seventies image of a moon base, just as the stark new station reflects modern images of how we might live in space. But the shape turned out to be far from ideal. It seemed to attract drifting snow rather than repel it. Every year, huge amounts of fuel and time went into shifting the drift that had accumulated around it in the winter. And even so, where the entryway was once on the surface, it now lay down a steep incline of snow, dubbed ‘heart attack hill' by those who struggled to climb back out. (Though little fresh snow falls at the Pole, plenty is carried in by the winds, gradually burying anything that humans have brought in. When I arrived in 1999, the ceremonial pole was chin-high, but now, five years later it barely came up to my knees. The new station was on stilts that could be jacked up to keep it ahead of the drifting, but eventually it, too, would succumb.)

And yet, there was something glorious about the Dome. It wasn't heated, but simply provided shelter for the more prosaic container-like buildings inside. So the roof was encrusted with enchanting stalactites of ice, and the networks of steel arches housing the gym, fuel bladders and storage facilities were crystal caves of wonder. The buildings, though blocky, were cosy and idiosyncratic, decorated over the years with odd mementos from around the world. On the door of the bar, a sign filched from somewhere in Australia declared that this was ‘the last pub for 250 kilometres' and someone had scratched on an extra ‘1' to make the distance a more accurate 1,250 km. Although this past winter was the first in which the new station was officially occupied, Larry and many of his comrades chose to stay here instead. It might be less comfortable, but it had more soul.

Behind the Dome, Larry took me round a few half-cylindrical sheds to the bizarre sight of a Russian biplane pegged into the snow with guy ropes. Apparently, this Antonov-3 landed at the Pole on 8 January 2002. Since the leader of the expedition was Artur N. Chilingarov, Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma, the plane was accorded an official welcome and the right to be refuelled. (Official NSF policy is to give no support whatsoever to ‘private expeditions, US or foreign, in Antarctica'. In practice, this means that all private teams have to bring all their own life support with them, though they do at least get to visit the station store where they can mark their passports with a South Pole stamp and buy T-shirts that say things like: ‘Ski South Pole, 2 inches of powder, 2 miles of base', or, my personal favourite: ‘South Pole Station: Not all who wander are lost'.)

However, when the occupants spilled out of the plane, the visitors turned out to include a group of tourists who had hitched a ride. That might not have been a particular problem except that, when the tours had been completed, T-shirts bought, photos taken and the team reloaded on the plane . . . the engine wouldn't start. The government delegation was eventually flown back to New Zealand via McMurdo on a US Hercules, and presented with an $80,000 bill for their stay at the Pole, the fuel that was uselessly pumped into the biplane, and the plane ticket back to civilisation.
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The number of private visitors who make it to the Pole is steadily increasing, and the NSF's policy not to share resources is more and more rigorously enforced. This seems unusually uncooperative for a base in the dead centre of the most cooperative continent on Earth. But the National Science Foundation has no control over the preparedness, or otherwise, of the adventurers who come here. On 17 December 1997 six people—two Norwegians, an Austrian and three Americans—attempted a sky dive from a Twin Otter plane over the Pole. Three—the two Norwegians and one American—were skilled and well prepared and their jump passed without trouble. The three remaining people made many mistakes, which culminated in the worst one of all: they failed to open their parachutes in time. It was NSF staff who had to go out there with the body bags and pull their frozen corpses from the ice. (The station was shocked, of course. But with the black humour that seems to be an integral part of polar personalities, somebody later commemorated the event by half burying two boots upside down so they were sticking up in the snow.)

If someone takes pity on certain visitors and sneaks them in, they can get some highly unofficial privileges—though it is still likely to come at a price. On my first trip I found myself sitting in the galley next to four Frenchmen who had skied unsupported from the coast to the Pole, a gruelling journey of more than 900 miles. Between mouthfuls they told me cheerfully how they had also skied to the North Pole and climbed Everest and achieved a host of other feats of endurance that left me dizzy. I felt honoured to meet them, but when they had finished their meal they ‘paid' for it by heading off into the kitchen and helping with the washing-up. And then they left the station buildings and went back to their freezing tents.

It seems harsh, but then all resources are scarce here. My initial orientation warned me that water was precious at the Pole because it had to be melted using fuel flown in from the coast. Showers should be no more than two minutes and were permitted only twice a week. If you noticed that somebody consistently ran over their allotted time, when you passed them in the corridor you growled ‘shower thief!' And good behaviour, or winning a tournament or a fancy-dress party, could gain you the right to a five-minute shower, officially inscribed on a certificate by the base manager.

Of course, they could simply have installed two-minute cutoffs for the showers but there was an ethos of trust here that I supposed was necessary when you squeezed a small number of people into a remote place and expected them to get along. There was also, perhaps necessarily, a general goofiness in the air here that belied the official solemnity. On the way back to the station as we passed the ceremonial pole, Larry suddenly stopped, took the camera hanging around my neck, thrust it into my gloved hands and said: ‘Take a picture!' Then he sped over to the pole, and sprung into a handstand while I obediently snapped. He ran back, laughing at my puzzlement, pressed the review button and turned the camera upside down. There on the screen was a figure, clad in a green down parka and bunny boots, apparently clinging to the mirrored globe as he dangled precariously downwards from the pole at the bottom of the world.

 

South Pole winter, February-March

 

The last plane leaves around the middle of February. In a way, the timing is arbitrary. The temperatures are high enough that you could still fly later than that if you wanted to. The sun is still shining, and from one day to the next the conditions are more or less the same. But the choice is made by the logistics guys, the date is set in everyone's calendar, and it's a momentous one. When you wake up that morning, you know that there is still a chance to get on the last available plane out of town. And later, after it has gone, you know that you are now effectively trapped until October.