Ready To Map Remote Corner

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30287, 13 November 1963, Page 7

Ready To Map Remote Corner

[By GRAHAM BILLING] SCOTT BASE. Placing New Zealand's northern Antarctic field party in the extreme north-wes-tern corner of the Ross Dependency to complete New Zealand’s last major mapping and geological survey in the Antarctic was a long operation.

The aircraft were required to work a distance as far as from McMurdo Sound to the South Pole itself and oversoihe of the roughest country in the Dependency. Almost a week went by before the task was completed and the six-man party with four sledges and 36 husky dogs placed in the field.

The party, led by J. H. Miller, with M. Ford, A. Sturm, S. Carryer, F. Graveson and M. Sheehan, was the biggest group put into the field at once by the New Zealand Antarctic research programme. On Sunday, Octotier 19, all the equipment was loaded into a Hercules aircraft at McMurdo Sound, and flown to the Cape Hallett air-strip where they made the staging camp. Two operation Deep Freeze Dakotas, 221 and 407, piloted by Lieutenant-Com-mander J. R. Edixon and Lieutenant J. Ogden, both experienced Antarctic fliers, arrived next day. Both aircraft had to make two flights to place the party in the field. One was to make two trips to the put-in point near the Pennell Glacier in Oates Land 300 -miles distant and the other was to first dump 40001 b of man rations and dog pemmican at a depot near the head of the Rennick Glacier. On Monday and Tuesday it blew. On late Tuesday evening the first attempt to start flying was made. With trouble in her port engine 407 turned back. For half an hour 221 bucked winds and thick weather over the pass, then gave it up.

On Wednesday night 221 took off but turned back over the Polar Plateau as thick weather closed in again. The field party men fed their dogs in a clear evening at Moubray Bay and huddled waiting round the kerosine stove in a sledge-mounted caravan at the strip. The temperature was about 42 degrees of frost. Measured Runway

Ten miles up the bay seaward there were leads of open water to the sea ice. Every day a crew from Hallett Station drilled holes in the runway ice to measure its thickness—69 inches going to slush in the bottom foot at the seaward end; An early breakout threatened the whole operation. The field men hurried through last letters and sledged to to the station for beer and steaks. They were short of water because the sea ice snow was too salty to be melted for drinking. On Thursday night the aircraft got away. Edixon flew Miller and Ford to their depot point and landed 7300 ft up on icy snow with sastrugi—wind carved show ripples up to two feet high. The tough old Dakota took tremendous beating but staggered back into the air again. Up there, the temperature was 80 degrees of frost. Ogden flew to Oates Land and dropped three men with a dog team, sledge, polar tent and rations. He took off just as a fog bank swirled in over the camp. Seventy degrees of frost. On Friday morning at the Hallet strip the cold job of refuelling from dumped drums of aviation fuel began again. The electric pump broke down. New Zealanders and American rushed to fill the yawning wing tanks using hand pumps. The last take-off was shortly after noon. Over Football Pass and up the Tucker Glacier was all clear. The saw-tooth peaks of the 15,000 ft Mount Minto

Massif stood up to the north, clean in the sun. Over the Rennick Glacier there was a clear view to the Antarctic Ocean and the dark grey line of “water sky” far north telling of open sea. Studied Terrain

Ford and Miller stood up on the flight deck of their aircraft studying the 25,000 square miles of Antarctica they would sledge over in the next three months, striving to remember ridge lines, icesheds of minor glaciers, the proportions of isolated nunataks or rock outcrops standing out of the ice. From the air it looked so easy to the west among the rolling snow fields of the Plateau edge and so terrifyingly rough to the east, deep among the ramparts of the Admiralty Range; In the body of each aircraft a dozen sledge dogs lay tied to the floor. Their harsh, musky smell filled the whole aircraft and their steamy breath fogged the windows with ice. Miller and Ford studied their maps, the sketches drawn up- from reconnaissance photography, from data of previous Russian, American and Australian expedi-

tions which had worked round the fringes of this last, big unmapped corner of the Ross dependency. Over the landing area is overcast. There is whiteout—no shadows on the snow. The altimeter is 30ft out when the aircraft hits the snow, gives a giant bound and settles to run down in to the camp—the single orange polar tent flowout of the whiteout, the black dots of spanned out dogs. Rushed Unloading Already it is almost too late to leave. The drift snow is thickening. There are minutes to spare as we anchor the dog spans, race the dogs from the aircraft and chain them, heave out the laden sledges, the ration boxes, ice axes, skis, bed rolls, tents. It is too late to go. The sky is so thick there is nothing to see from the pilot’s seat except white. But if the aircraft wait their engines will cool. They may never leave. Th eaircraft rushes into the fog. The jet bottles blast and we rocket along snow, hit a bump, drive up free again. The tension, the racket, the lurch into flight, last only seconds. The air is clear above the fog.