On the morning of 27 June 1911, three men set out from Cape Evans, on the balmy west coast of Ross Island, to cross to the east coast via its southern shore. Wilson, their leader, wanted to acquire some Emperor penguin embryos, and the only known Emperor rookery was just off Cape Crozier. Based on the chicks he had seen in September the last time he was in Antarctica, Wilson estimated that the eggs would be laid in early July, so he timed the trip to meet them at the right stage of development and to coincide with the full moon, to have the best visibility in a world of 24-hour night.
Wilson had discussed this mission with his assistant, Cherry-Garrard, when the latter was applying to join the Expedition. Once in Antarctica, they agreed the obvious choice for a third was Bowers, who had amply proven his energy, enthusiasm, strength, resourcefulness, and resistance to cold.
L-R Bowers, Wilson, and Cherry-Garrard
To reach Cape Crozier at the full moon in early July meant leaving Cape Evans at the new moon, and so shortly after the solstice that most of the day was nearly black, lit only by the stars shining hard in the sky, and occasionally the aurora. The first part of the journey was over very familiar territory, so the greatest difficulty was learning how to camp when one could hardly see anything and it was too cold to take one's mitts off or touch any metal. So far, so surmountable.
The tune changed as soon as they left the sea ice and got onto the permanent ice of the Barrier (or Ross Ice Shelf, as it is now known). They left the tempering effect of the open ocean behind, and were under the influence of the frigid interior. The air temperature plunged, and worse, for men hauling everything necessary for life on two 9ft sledges, they soon entered a zone of soft snow.
Runners slide over snow by melting the surface with friction – the glide is, in fact, slipping over a thin film of liquid water. At such low temperatures, friction is not sufficient to melt anything, so the grains of snow act more like sand. A hard, wind-polished surface would be like sandpaper, but in the deep soft snow it was like dragging a dead weight through the Sahara, albeit a Sahara where a day of -50°F felt like a warm spell.
They couldn't drag both sledges at once, so they had to take one forward, then retrace their steps and drag the other. For every mile of forward progress, they actually covered three. In the dead calm, they could use a naked candle to follow their outward steps back to fetch the second sledge. Eight hours of dragging seldom got them more than two miles from where they started, and ended with the slow process of pitching camp. After getting the tent up, the day's cook would burn his fingers on freezing tin matchboxes in a quest for a match free of frost, before he could get the Primus stove going. Eventually the travellers would get some hot liquid in them –
Directly we started to drink then the effect was wonderful: it was, said Wilson, like putting a hot-water bottle against your heart. The beats became very rapid and strong and you felt the warmth travelling outwards and downwards. [250]
– and then, after checking their feet for frostbites, it was time to thaw their way into their frozen sleeping bags for a miserable attempt at sleep.
For me it was a very bad night: a succession of shivering fits which I was quite unable to stop, and which took possession of my body for many minutes at a time until I thought my back would break, such was the strain placed upon it. They talk of chattering teeth: but when your body chatters you may call yourself cold. [241] We knew we did sleep, for we heard one another snore, and also we used to have dreams and nightmares; but we had little consciousness of it, and we were now beginning to drop off when we halted on the march. [245]
It was important for every field party to take regular meteorological observations, to contribute to an understanding of the region's weather. At regular intervals through the day, Bowers would take an air temperature reading, and while they were sleeping, a minimum thermometer was placed under the sledge to measure the temperature in a sheltered place. On 6 July, this got down to -75°F; the following afternoon, Bowers' thermometer registered -77.5°F. The day lives in my memory as that on which I found out that records are not worth making. [247-8]
The clear cold of the first part of their journey had given way to a fog, which diffused the little moonlight they got and obscured the terrain until they were practically right on top of it. As they were rounding the heel of Mt Terror this meant crevasses, and not being able to tell where they were until one fell through, which was a nerve-wracking business on top of the sleep deprivation and physical hardship.
The horror of the nineteen days it took us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier would have to be re-experienced to be appreciated; and any one would be a fool who went again: it is not possible to describe it. The weeks which followed were comparative bliss, not because our conditions were better – they were far worse – but because we were callous. I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the heroism of the dying – they little know – it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on. . . . [237]
Finally they were on the home stretch, a narrow lane between the rough terrain of the land and the great pressure waves where the Barrier presses up against Ross Island as it flows out to sea. This proved to be nearly impossible to keep to, in the poor light, but after much stumbling, and with a welcome rise in temperature to the mere -20s, they finally reached a moraine just short of the Knoll, within hiking distance of the Emperor colony huddled in the lee of the Barrier face below. They pitched their tent on an icy smooth snow slope 150 yards down from the ridge, and the following day set about building a igloo near the top, using the exposed volcanic stone found there, in a method Cherry had been practising at Cape Evans. July 16th, when they established the hut, was Wilson's wedding anniversary, and in the privacy of his diary at least, he named the igloo Oriana Hut, and the moraine Oriana Ridge, after his wife. The others proposed 'Terra Igloo', 'The House on the Hill,' and 'Bleak House.' In the South Polar Times, after their return, Bowers immortalised it in rhyme as 'The House That Cherry Built.' On official Antarctic maps, though, it's now labelled Wilson's Igloo and the moraine is Igloo Spur.
Our trip to Cape Crozier was a walk in the park – 35 minutes in a helicopter watching the amazing views roll by – and our greatest challenge was finding the landing site, but that was only a question of how close it was to the GPS waymark, rather than whether we could land at all. We were not exempt from the vagaries of Antarctic weather, however. When our flight got the green light, the weather at Cape Crozier was 30% cloud with 7-knot winds. Not your typical Cape Crozier weather, but great weather for helicopters. By the time we arrived, 35 minutes later, it was 70% cloud, a fog was rolling in, and winds were at 30 knots. I was warned our time here might be short. But we set off to see the igloo anyway.
The plan had been to build the body of the igloo in stone, then bank up the walls with gravel and snow to make them weatherproof. Unlike a stereotypical snow-block igloo, it was not a dome, but would be roofed using one of the sledges as a beam, with a canvas sheet spread over it, firmly anchored in the rocks. This has an Arctic precedent: in Francis McClintock's account of his search for the lost Franklin Expedition in the 1850s, he describes meeting an Inuit woman who lived in a stone igloo of very similar construction. Cherry's practice igloo at Cape Evans was an admirable structure, but the plan went awry at Cape Crozier, on account of a lack of gravel and all the snow in the vicinity being blown so hard as to be practically ice [261]. They improvised as best they could, chipping some slabs of ice out of the snowbank and leaning them against the exterior walls, but it was not as cosy a structure as they'd hoped, and they ended up stuffing spare socks into some of the larger gaps in the stones to keep out the wind. This wind, they discovered on their second day of building, was much stronger at the top of the ridge than where they had made camp on the snow. But the stone walls were more secure than the tent – which was left pitched outside the igloo's door for storage – and heralded a new 'Age of Stone' in which they could get on with their science.
It was more than just scientific interest that made a visit to the penguin colony imperative: on their grind to Cape Crozier, they had burned through nearly five of their six cans of oil. As well as the penguin embryos they came for, they needed to burn some blubber to keep warm in their igloo, so that they could use the last tin of oil for the return journey. So as soon as their building progress allowed, they scouted a perilous path down a snow drift over the cliffs and through the horrible pressure to reach the Emperor colony. Instead of the two thousand birds found by the Discovery, there were barely a hundred, and less than half of them apparently had eggs. Nevertheless, Wilson and Bowers secured five eggs and three birds' skins – the blubber comes off with the skin – and they legged it back to their camp while there was still a modicum of light to see by. Cherry broke both of the eggs he was carrying in a fall, but they made it back with the remaining three and the blubber, which got its revenge on Wilson by spluttering into his eye from the stove.
“Things must improve,” said Bill [Wilson] next day, “I think we reached bed-rock last night.” We hadn't, by a long way. [272]
The igloo is at the opposite end of the moraine from the helicopter landing site, or at least where the GPS told us it was. There is nothing between the crest of Igloo Spur and the Transantarctic Mountains, hundreds of miles away, and the 30-knot wind flowed over our minor obstruction just like a river: barely any gusts, just a constant flow, solid as water, up and over the ridge and then out towards the sea. I tried to look out for lichen as I stumbled along, but it was hard to be careful of where I put my feet when I was struggling to keep my balance against the wind. There were patches of a beige crust – was this lichen or was it a mineral deposit? Someone shouted that they had found some – it turned out to be black, and crawled along the ground like dinosaur fern. Once spotted it was obvious, and easier to avoid.
A few good minutes' scramble got us to the igloo. On the way, I saw a small log of petrified wood, shining pale on the chocolate-brown rubble. This seemed very much out of place on a volcanic island, and I wondered briefly how it had got there, before an answer came: obviously it had blown here. A joke, perhaps, but not as much of one as you might think: the further out along the ridge we walked, the stronger the wind seemed to be. At last we reached the remains of Oriana Hut.
I should have been humbled, or at least struck with a sense of awe. But all I could think was: You guys were completely insane.
The day after Wilson, Cherry, and Bowers returned from the raid on the Emperors, there was a small blizzard, and the flapping of the canvas roof on the igloo caused them some concern, so they set about weighing it down with blocks of ice and making extra sure it was securely fastened all around. They pitched the tent right next to the door and put a lot of their gear into it, to make space for themselves in the igloo. Then, with the weather calm and their bellies full, they settled down to catch up on some precious and hitherto scanty sleep.
I do not know what time it was when I woke up. It was calm, with that absolute silence which can be so soothing or so terrible as circumstances dictate. Then there came a sob of wind, and all was still again. Ten minutes and it was blowing as though the world was having a fit of hysterics. The earth was torn in pieces: the indescribable fury and roar of it all cannot be imagined.
“Bill, Bill, the tent has gone,” was the next I remember – from Bowers shouting at us again and again through the door. …. Journey after journey Birdie and I fought our way across the few yards which had separated the tent from the igloo door.
… To get that gear in we fought against solid walls of black snow which flowed past us and tried to hurl us down the slope. Once started nothing could have stopped us. I saw Birdie [Bowers] knocked over once, but he clawed his way back just in time. Having passed everything we could find in to Bill, we got back into the igloo, and started to collect things together, including our very dishevelled minds.[275-6]
Not sure when they would be able to eat again, they cooked a meal, and nervously watched the igloo roof. The problem was not so much that it was in the wind, but that it was just out of it: the wind rushing up the southern slope of the moraine created suction just behind the crest, where the igloo was, and this was pulling the canvas up. The motion of the canvas shifted the ice blocks weighing it down until they were off. Then the incessant sucking up and flapping down started to stretch the material; as it stretched it got more play; as it played more the flapping became more violent. At last the fabric could no longer take the strain and exploded into ribbons, whose frantic lashing in the hurricane sounded like pistol shots.
They hurried into their sleeping bags and rolled over so that the flaps were underneath, and huddled while the storm raged overhead.
I can well believe that neither of my companions gave up hope for an instant. They must have been frightened, but they were never disturbed. As for me I never had any hope at all; and when the roof went I felt that this was the end. [280]
And then … they slept. The blizzard had brought a rise in temperature and the snow drifting over them made a good insulator, so they were more comfortable than they had been for a while, and of course there was nothing else they could do. There was so much to worry about that there was not the least use in worrying: and we were so very tired. [282] Occasionally Bowers would thump Wilson and Wilson would move a bit to prove he was alive. When they were awake they'd sing songs and hymns to pass the time – we sang hymns because they were easier to sing than La Bohême and it was a good thing to sing something.* Quieter moments might be spent cogitating over how to get back without a tent, but the situation looked pretty hopeless. When they were thirsty they would pinch a little drift from just outside their bag and eat it, and so staved off the worst, but without a tent, 52 excruciating miles from the nearest shelter at Hut Point, and months away from spring, it seemed only to be delaying the inevitable.
Thus impiously I set out to die, making up my mind that I was not going to try and keep warm, that it might not take too long, and thinking I would try and get some morphia from the medical case if it got very bad. Yes! comfortable, warm reader. Men do not fear death, they fear the pain of dying. [281]
On top of everything, it was Wilson's 39th birthday.
I suppose the most surprising thing is that there is anything left of the igloo at all. Some of the rocks came down when the roof blew open, but the many, many blizzards since then have worked hard to dismantle the rest. And yet, in the shelter of the walls, protected by the drift that accumulates there, there are still some of the Crozier party's possessions.
Standing here, especially in a 30-knot wind, one cannot but think this is a pretty stupid place to build a shelter. Cherry acknowledges this in his book, but reminds us that they had to build more or less where the rocks were, and the rocks were where the wind kept the snow from accumulating. They had brought a snow knife to cut snow blocks, Inuit-fashion, but there was no such snow to be had; it was all ice. And I had an additional insight, thanks to my midnight hike up Arrival Heights:
Fig.1: The observer stands at the edge of the ridge, and therefore in the path of the wind travelling up the face thereof
Fig.2: The observer stands slightly back from the edge and the rising wind flows over her head, leaving her in a relative calm
The igloo is built just off the crest of the ridge, exactly like where I was standing when I felt no wind on Arrival Heights. They would have been very familiar with that ridgeline and had almost certainly observed the same phenomenon, so if they had to pick a spot on a desolate windswept hill, that was, in the circumstances, one of the better ones to pick. There was a short blizzard their first night back from the Emperors, but aside from the drift blowing through the gaps in the rocks it didn't concern them much; they just had the bad timing to meet a monstrous storm shortly after. I have never heard or felt or seen a wind like this, Cherry wrote, even after having experienced the ferociously windy second winter at Cape Evans, where they feared the hut might blow down, I wondered why it did not carry away the earth. [283] They had anticipated the wind in the construction of the hut, and the pyramid tent had amply proven its ability to stand up to blizzards in its years of Antarctic service; it was the suction that threw them a curve ball. When the roof blew into ribbons, it was still firmly anchored in the walls, and even 108 years later, it's still there.
The storm first hit on Friday, 21 July; by Monday it was beginning to abate enough that they could speak to each other without too much difficulty. They hadn't eaten for two days, but the first thing they did was go look for the tent. When that proved fruitless, they returned and cooked a meal with the tent floorcloth stretched between their heads. The cooker was full of penguin feathers, burnt blubber, and dirt, but the smell of it was better than anything on earth.
When the midday twilight returned, they had another search for the tent. I followed Bill down the slope. We could find nothing. But, as we searched, we heard a shout somewhere below and to the right. They slid down the snow slope and fetched up where Bowers had discovered the tent, which must have closed like an umbrella when sucked off its moorings, and, with so much less surface area, dropped out of the sky only a few hundred yards away. Our lives had been taken away and given back to us.
We were so thankful we said nothing.
If the tent went again we were going with it. We made our way back up the slope with it, carrying it solemnly and reverently, precious as though it were something not quite of the earth. And we dug it in as tent was never dug in before ... [284-5]
I have read Cherry's account of the Winter Journey several times, 'blind' as it were – in my head, Cape Crozier was a chaotic jumble of ice and rock with no shape I could deduce from the writing. Unlike the landmarks of McMurdo Sound, and even the Beardmore to some extent, there were no historical photos of the theatre for this action; a few closeups of the igloo appear at the end of Mark Gatiss' 2007 docudrama, but they give no context in respect to the landscape. This was why it was vitally important I stand there myself. The moment I realised that ambition, I knew it was more valuable than I could ever have pitched in a grant proposal. The tiered foothills of Mt Terror to the east, the back of the Knoll, the strip of blue sea visible from the igloo, the 'porcelain teacup' of the hollow between here and there, and most profoundly, how the igloo hangs off the edge of nowhere on this exposed finger of land. In the midst of a blizzard, with howling drift on all sides as well as above and below, it would be a tiny mote of solidity suspended in the vast blank nothing.
My companions must have been a little confused by my behaviour. I hardly took any photos of the igloo. It was interesting, for sure, but the state it's in now would not help me much, to draw it how it was then. I took a lot of photos of the surroundings, but on two sides it was blowing mist so that didn't take very long. Mostly what I did was sit with my back against a sill of rock near the igloo and just stare and stare and stare. I wanted to memorize everything – not just where things were, but the wind, the silvery gleam on the snow, the feeling of being utterly at the extremity of all things. It's one thing to read Cherry's memories, and boggle at the experience; it's quite another to stand where they were made, and be able to measure your own experience against theirs. Standing there in the light, I could see it dark. Their blizzard would have been blowing twice as hard as the wind that could have knocked me over. Riding behind Cherry's eyes, memory viewed through the lens of grief and nostalgia, his companions fill the frame, so one does not get a proper sense of how extremely tiny they all were in this vast howling nothing. And, of course, they had only themselves to get them home, not a waiting helicopter.
We had another meal, and we wanted it; and as the good hoosh ran down into our feet and hands, and up into our cheeks and ears and brains, we discussed what we would do next. Birdie was all for another go at the Emperor penguins. Dear Birdie, he would never admit that he was beaten – I don't know that he ever really was! … There could really be no common-sense doubt: we had to go back … [285] They packed what they could that night and got what sleep they could in their horrible icy bags. The next morning it looked like it was going to start blizzing again; they loaded the camp onto one of the sledges and stashed in a corner of the igloo what they didn't want or need to take back, along with the other sledge, and set off into a rising wind. After only a mile or so the weather forced them to camp, and Birdie tied a line from the apex of the tent around the outside of his bag where he slept: if the tent went he was going too. [287]
The journey back was still cold, but only hauling one sledge, they made much better time. The men were exhausted, however, and their equipment suffering from their ordeals, so it didn't afford as much comfort or protection as it had on the way out. But they were on their way home, and justifiably confident of getting there.
It was the helicopter that called time on my visit to Cape Crozier. The anemometer had clocked 38 knots at one point and nothing looked likely to improve. In the interest of fuel efficiency, the machine was a nimble fibreglass damselfly, not built to withstand this sort of onslaught, and our pilot was worried for his craft. So my coordinator came and told me it was time to go. The trek back was definitely windier than it had been when we arrived, and it felt longer, too, though that may have been because I had my head down, focusing on my footing, rather than looking at lichen and petrified wood. We piled onto the waiting machine and with no undue delay were back in the air. One last wide loop around Igloo Spur, then we rode the wind seaward, and the igloo on the edge of nowhere vanished in the mist behind.
It is extraordinary how often angels and fools do the same thing in this life, and I have never been able to settle which we were on this journey. [273]
I understand why they did what they did, and made the decisions they made in context, but I have not let go of that impression that they were completely insane. I've done pretty crazy things for an abstract goal, and while sleep-deprived, so on one hand I hesitate to judge. On the other, a tiny unrepresentative sample of the extremity they endured beggars belief that they didn't start the trek home the minute they'd got the eggs, if not a lot sooner. Surely they noticed that it was horrible?
But who is the more foolish here? They threw themselves into the worst Antarctica had to offer in pursuit of knowledge, which could only be acquired this way. They may not have known how bad it was going to be, but they knew it would be pretty bad, and went anyway, because they determined it to be worthwhile.
We, on the other hand, were only there because they had been there.
Correction: I was there because they had been there. The others would not have been there except for me.
So who is the bigger fool?
*All quotes in this post are from The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, with corresponding page numbers, except this one, which his from his introduction to Edward Wilson of the Antarctic, p.xiv