Seven Summits Part 22

With the colonels called off, the inspection was completed, and shortly after midday we took off. It was a clear day, and the snow peaks of the Andes extended north and south like backbone vertebrae of some mesozoic creature. Two hours south we approached the white cone of Osorno volcano, the Fuji of Chile. Kershaw flew directly toward it until the c.o.c.kpit window filled side to side with creva.s.ses and snow fields; he banked right, corrected, then dipped sharply left under the smoking summit, all the while wearing a mischievous grin. Over Patagonia the prevailing westerlies packed clouds against the peaks, smothering them from our view, and we climbed to 17,000 to insure we were well above the highest of them, Fitzroy. With no cabin pressurization we were all feeling giddy, and our Chilean friend Captain Frias was turning an odd shade of pale blue.

"We've got some oxygen up here for us to sniff," Kershaw yelled aft, "but I'm afraid you mountaineering types will just have to get some preacclimatization."

Captain Cold had the queasy countenance indicative of imminent nausea, when a half hour from Punta Arenas we entered a rare calm. The clouds disappeared, Kershaw brought the plane down to 10,000, and ahead we could see the fabled spires of the Torres de Paine.

"I've flown by here maybe twenty times," Kershaw said, "and never seen it this clear. Let's take a close peek."

With that same mischievous grin Kershaw banked the plane sharply. We were glued to the windows. We winged by 4,000-foot granite towers orange in the golden light of a low afternoon sun. Cameras clicked like the paparazzi's. Kershaw flew between two spires so that out every window of the plane all we could see was orange granite. The sharp tip of the great Central Tower pa.s.sed by; our own Chris Bonington had been the first to climb it, twenty years before, and only two parties since had ever done the same.

Kershaw banked sharply again, and we bounced in an updraft.

"Okay, Giles," Frank yelled forward, "we've had our show."

Kershaw looked aft and winked. "One more pa.s.s," he said, and the Tri-Turbo banked again while the rest of us gaped as the great sheets of granite sped by.

We corrected and resumed course toward Punta Arenas. The sharp peaks gave way to low hills carpeted with dense southern beech. Areas of open range marked the great sheep estancias of Patagonia, and to the west the afternoon sun glistened off deep-fingered fjords. Through the c.o.c.kpit we could see a stretch of water cutting the land east to west. this was the Straits of Magellan, and on its sh.o.r.e, the city of Punta Arenas.

When Bonington was here twenty years before, Punta Arenas had been a small town, but now an oil boom supported several hotels, a supermarket, a fleet of taxis, and at least one wh.o.r.ehouse. After landing and b.u.t.toning down the plane, we took a taxi in and chose one of the modern hotels near downtown.

Our original plan was to overnight here and next day cross the Drake Pa.s.sage to the Antarctic Peninsula, but now several things developed to cause at least an extra day layover. One of the plane's radios went down, and there was a delay with the C-130 scheduled to airdrop our fuel cache. Even if these things had been in order, a low pressure system now moving across the Drake sealed any chance of immediate departure.

The next day Bonington and I purchased perishables such as b.u.t.ter and cheese, then caught a taxi to the airport where the crew was busy fixing the radio. We loaded the supplies into the open fuselage, adding them to a long pile of gear that we then secured with cargo straps. The inside of the Tri-Turbo was all business. This cargo section took up two thirds of the plane, and the only pa.s.senger accommodation was a stateroom aft of the c.o.c.kpit with four seats on one side and a bolted-down couch on the other that looked like a refugee from a Volunteers of America thrift store. There were hydraulic lines and wires exposed everywhere so that the plane looked like a cross between an auto repair shop and a warehouse. I was reminded of the hotrods I used to build in high school, and I also remembered how often my jalopies used to break down. But an engine konk-out on the Golden State between L.A. and Santa Ana is a little different than one over the Drake between Cape Horn and Antarctica.

Kershaw was in the c.o.c.kpit at the radio controls while Mason, the engineer, was buried in the instrument rack adjusting the electronics.

"Try it now," Mason said.

"Still nothing."

"We'll get it right," Kershaw said to me. "If not, the Chilean air force here may have a spare. Besides, we're really not losing time anyway, since we can't leave until the weather report from the Peninsula is better."

"Because you need clear skies for the landing?"

"That's part of it. But more important, we don't have any de-icing equipment."

"I thought this plane was made to fly in the Arctic."

"It is. But up there conditions are dry-cold, so icing's not a problem. Actually, it's the same in the Antarctic, but not over the Drake. There it's wet-cold, the worst."

Kershaw must have noticed my furrowed brow.

"But don't worry," he said. "This plane is superb, and it would take a h.e.l.l of a lot of ice to force it down."

He gave the bulkhead a good whap, and following his hand I noticed a greening I.D. plaque that read: "Douglas DC-3, built March 1942."

Seven years older than me, I thought, and I'm not feeling so hot myself.

Back at the hotel, Frank reported the C-130 was ready to parachute our fuel drums into Rothera. The radio was fixed, and Giles confirmed the weather was improving, so with luck we might get away the following day.

The morning weather report indicated a high center moving across the Drake, so we quickly checked out of the hotel. Crossing the airport tarmac to the plane, we had to lean into the ubiquitous Patagonian wind, but apparently it was no indication of conditions over the Drake; Kershaw told us it was a "go."

"Before we take off, though, I'd better give you instructions on using the life raft," he said. We all gathered aft as he muscled the raft into position.

"It inflates automatically when you pull this cord. It has a canopy, a few survival rations and whatnot, but there is one problem. It only holds eight, and there are eleven of us on the flight. So if we should go down, just remember to stay calm, and follow me out the door."

Kershaw started the engines and we buckled into our seats, such as they were. We taxied into position for takeoff.

"I bet the weather comes in and forces us to land at Marsh, the Chilean base on the northern end of the Peninsula," Frank said. "We probably won't even get to Rothera."

"d.a.m.n it, Pancho," d.i.c.k said, "there you go again, being pessimistic."

"Something will go wrong, you just watch. This whole thing has been so incredibly complicated, it's just about taken the fun out of it."

Frank spoke quickly, with a curtness that revealed not only exhaustion from all the work he put into this project to get to this moment, but also a tension how that the moment had arrived. d.i.c.k leaned back in his seat, staring out the window as the tarmac sped by and we lifted off. Although he didn't indicate it, d.i.c.k was nervous too. It was Kershaw's life raft joke that had done it, that had made him fully realize what a dangerous adventure this really was.

Through breaks in clouds we glimpsed the glaciers on the islands of Tierra del Fuego. The clouds thinned and below we spotted the final land's end, Cape Horn. Beyond was open ocean, and even from 10,000 feet we could see the pitched graybeards whitecap under the howl of the Furious Fifties. Kershaw, wearing his pear-shaped aviator sungla.s.ses, took the plane to 15,000 to fly above the building clouds, and once leveled-out turned aft to give us a thumbs-up.

Kershaw was deceptively at ease. I would learn later (in talking to him) that while he had made this flight too many times to be nervous, he was also too smart to be complacent. He had developed his easy-going style because he knew that was the best way to inspire calm in both crew and pa.s.sengers. He knew the worst thing on a plane is a captain with a furrowed brow nervously shuffling charts, twisting dials, tapping gauges.

"Rick Mason," Kershaw yelled aft. "Would you please turn on the windshield de-icing. It's starting to get a bit frosty."

We watched Mason search under the pilot's seat until he produced one of those small sc.r.a.pers that are made to clear ice from automobile windows. Then, b.u.t.toning his parka and putting on his big fur-lined Alaskan mittens, Mason opened the window next to Kershaw, and while Kershaw held him by the belt he wormed out into the freezing air and sc.r.a.ped the front windshield clear.

"Thanks Rick," Kershaw said when Mason was back in. "That'll do for now. You can turn off de-icing."

"Sixty-two south," Kershaw yelled aft. "If the weather was clear you would see the end of the Antarctic Peninsula."

A glance out the window, however, revealed only clouds. Worse, I noticed a white coating building on the leading edge of the black wing.

"Don't worry," Rick Mason said. "It'll take several inches before there's danger. Even that won't bring us down."

"What will?"

"If the engines ice up."

"How can you tell when that's going to happen?"

"You can't. It just happens."

Mason smiled, his Camel cigarette hanging loosely from the corner of his mouth. As the plane bucked in the turbulence he braced against a bulkhead while pouring hydraulic fluid into a funnel stuck into an opened line, his head c.o.c.ked back so his cigarette ash wouldn't fall into the funnel.

"Got a leak somewhere," he said, shrugging his shoulders as the plane lurched violently.

"Taking her to sixteen," Giles bellowed.

The plane climbed into blue sky, and at least for the time being the icing stopped. We were now beyond the point of return: too far from Punta Arenas to go back, committed to Rothera and to the a.s.sumption it would be clear enough to land.

"Rothera reports broken clouds," Kershaw said when he made radio contact. "So we should be able to find a hole to get down."

The view below, however, was solid cloud. Kershaw had the aeronautical chart spread on his lap, transferring to it the coordinates from the inertial navigation.

"Mount Frances should be abeam. It's over 10,000 feet, so I was hoping we could see it."

We peered through the windows, straining to discern any glacial ice camouflaged in the white and gray clouds.

"I think I see the edge of a peak," Bonington said. "There."

It was difficult to tell with certainty. Then a small hole opened, and we saw an unmistakable mix of rock and ice. Forty-five minutes later Kershaw nosed the plane through another hole. Flying low over a berg-choked bay, Kershaw lined up on a saddle along a steep icy ridge rising out of the water. It was hard to figure what he was doing. Then we flew through the saddle only a hundred feet off the ice, and suddenly we were over a long bench of smooth snow. It was the Rothera landing zone, a down-sloping stretch of creva.s.se-free ice marked with fuel drums painted black. In a second we touched down smoothly and taxied toward a group of tents pitched on the edge of the landing zone. That would be the Chileans' camp. Nearby were two Twin Otters painted international orange and marked "British Antarctic Survey." We knew the British base was less than a quarter mile away, and it looked like several of their people, as well as a group of Chileans, were out to greet us.

Mason opened the plane's door, and Frank jumped out onto the Frozen Continent holding his clinched fists skyward as though he had the theme music from Rocky Rocky playing in his head. Then d.i.c.k hopped out. playing in his head. Then d.i.c.k hopped out.

"Welcome to Antarctica," Frank yelled to d.i.c.k as he grabbed him in a tight hug.

"I told you not to worry," d.i.c.k said. "We're on a roll, Pancho, and our luck's going to hold all the way to the top of Vinson."

The Chileans and British walked over to say h.e.l.lo.

"Howdy you all. Name's Ba.s.s. d.i.c.k Ba.s.s. Glad to meet you."

The Brits invited us to visit their camp, and loading in a snow cat we made the short drive. Rothera Base consisted of five buildings, including a two-story central structure that housed most of the base's thirty or so summertime inhabitants. After a hearty meal we returned to the airstrip and the Chileans' camp, which was nothing more than a dozen small nylon tents pitched alongside the landing zone. We pitched our own tents nearby, and when we awoke the Chileans were nice enough not only to host us to coffee and breakfast, but also to fire up their French Alouette helicopter and collect the fuel drums that lay scattered in the area where they had descended by parachute from the C-130 drop. Mason oversaw the refueling, using a small gas engine pump to empty each drum. The plane was loaded to capacity, and Kershaw told us the upcoming takeoff, with the plane at maximum weight and the strip coated with wet snow, would probably be the most critical moment during our entire expedition.

But nearly as critical was Kershaw's estimate of weather conditions at Vinson. If we took off and flew to Vinson only to find the mountain socked in-and then have to return to Rothera-there would not be enough fuel to make another attempt. And if we returned to Rothera to find this base also socked in so that we couldn't land, we would be in even bigger trouble as our on-board fuel supply would then be near empty.

The nearest base to Vinson was the American Siple Station, and when we had first arrived Kershaw radioed there and was told the weather was cloudy and uncertain. There was no question but that we wait for better conditions. Now the next morning Siple reported improving but still questionable conditions. Two hours later they reported good weather.

"What say we pack up and get out of here," Kershaw said in his unruffled manner.

His equanimity was impressive, especially considering his responsibility. He had to judge the weather correctly, he had to make a tricky takeoff, a tricky landing. He had to look after the plane once we were at Vinson, too, and make sure it didn't get damaged if a wind storm were to come up. Besides all this, there were other pressures on him as well. Just by agreeing to fly for our expedition he had burned bridges with the Americans as well as the British, since both were so vehemently opposed to private expeditions in the Antarctic. They would probably refuse Kershaw any future employment as a result of his a.s.sociation. But Kershaw didn't care; he was hopeful, anyway, that if the Chileans did indeed want to charter the Tri-Turbo next season for their Antarctic work, he would fly for them. Then, too, he had already worked a deal with the plane's owner to fly it in the Arctic during its summer sojourn there. For Kershaw, that possibility sounded like a dream come true, flying the Arctic during the northern summer and the Antarctic during the southern summer. But all this a.s.sumed he got the airplane back in one piece.

"Yes, I do feel a little pressure," Kershaw admitted when I asked him. "If I screw up a decision, or make a bad landing, that would be my last chance. I mean, aside from cracking up the plane and losing my future job, or even getting stranded and starving to death, or simply getting killed, what really worries me is cracking up and then having to get rescued. That would be the worst thing. You know, the ignominy of it."

It's probably accurate to say the rest of us would have gladly chosen ignominy over death, but whatever his motivation we were all glad to have Kershaw behind the plane's controls. I had been curious to learn more of his background, and while in Punta Arenas I had gotten him to tell me some of his personal history, and how he came to spend so much time in the Antarctic.

"I was born on a rubber and tea plantation in southwestern India," he had said. "It was very remote, and my friends were the servant's kids. Our house was on top of a hill, and about a mile away from a thick jungle, and we could wander there all we wanted as long as we were back for dinner. There were no roads, no fences, no signs telling you where you could and couldn't go. Only the stillness of the jungle, and I loved it.

"One day that stillness was broken by a clattering that steadily grew louder until suddenly appeared a helicopter, there to spray the rubber trees. This was really innovative of my father, as no one else had ever tried it. The chopper pilot took me for a ride, and then and there I decided that what I wanted to do was fly.

"The helicopter came back every year, and stayed for two weeks. Our plantation was one of the best run in the region, but despite that I knew things weren't going right. I was born in 1949, two years after part.i.tion, and I could sense, in the whispered talk around the house, the coming end. Finally it happened, our plantation was expropriated. I was the fifth generation of our family in India, and still we chose to move to England.

"I hated it in England. Everything seemed gray and lifeless compared to India. But I had an uncle who worked at a flying club, and at fourteen I got my first instruction. Eventually I got my license, then my instructor's rating, and one day I answered an ad to fly for the British Antarctic Survey. I'll never forget that first season on the ice. All of a sudden I was in a place that gave me that same sense of freedom I knew as a kid. In the Antarctic there was no one telling me anything, no control towers, no traffic, no restrictions. It was incredible, like I had found once more that jungle of my childhood."

Kershaw taxied the DC-3 up the gently inclined snow slope to its very end so he would have maximum takeoff distance. We were all silent. He turned the plane, and for a moment it sat poised like a black and yellow wasp looking down the glacier. Then Kershaw pushed forward on the throttles and the turbos screamed. For a hundred yards the plane lumbered in heavy snow, slowly gaining speed. Halfway down the runway the plane still seemed stuck in the wet snow. We bounced heavily. What had Kershaw chosen as the abort mark? The end of the runway was a fifty-foot ice cliff that dropped into the ocean. We bounced again, went airborne, dropped back to the snow. Kershaw pulled back once more, and the old DC-3 gently lifted off.

"Aah-eah-eaahhh," d.i.c.k yelled, and Kershaw looked aft with a thumbs-up.

We climbed above King George VI Sound, the smooth sea ice veined with leads and channels. Ahead through the c.o.c.kpit window we saw a small range of jagged peaks. The weather cleared, and under a cloudless sky we approached the great ice cap of the Antarctic proper. There was flat ice as far as we could see, and we could see several hundred miles.

"Whenever I fly this route," Kershaw told me as I leaned over his shoulder, gazing through the c.o.c.kpit window, "I think of Lincoln Ellsworth, when he made the first transantarctic flight, more or less over this same terrain. Only then he had no idea what was here. These mountains below, he named them: Faith, Hope, Charity, No one had ever seen them. He had some bad weather, and had to land three times to wait for it to clear. You see, he had no idea what mountains might be in the area. Even if he could have gone to 30,000 feet he wouldn't have been sure there didn't exist some peak higher than Everest. Think about that. I mean really think about it. It was only fifty years ago, and as he flew along he wondered if he would discover a mountain higher than Everest.

"And there they are," Kershaw said, pointing ahead. "Just like he first saw them. The Ellsworth Mountains."

Ahead I could make out the jagged interruption on the horizon, the long line of great peaks rising like islands in a frozen sea. Among them was Vinson.

Kershaw gazed ahead with a placid smile that gave his face a confident composure. He was back in his childhood jungle.

13.

VINSON: TWO TO GO.

"That must be the summit of Vinson there. That peak in the middle of the ma.s.sif."

"I think the route goes up the plateau, then follows that right-hand ridge of the actual summit pyramid."

"Looks like a piece of cake."

Kershaw piloted the Tri-Turbo above a col between Vinson and its neighboring peak, Shinn, then banked right while we scrambled to the other side of the plane to view the western escarpment. This vantage was dominated by Mount Tyree-at 16,290 feet the second highest peak in Antarctica. Tyree was only 570 feet shorter than Vinson, at least according to the rough field survey done in the early 1960's, and it was a good thing it wasn't the highest. If Vinson was a moderate slope with few if any technical climbing difficulties, Tyree was something else again, steep and rocky on all sides. Bonington and I had discussed the possibility of attempting to climb it after we knocked off Vinson.

"It's quite impressive, isn't it?" Bonington said with studied understatement. Then, casting aside British reserve he exclaimed, "That West Face has got to be one of the greatest unclimbed faces in the world."

As he lost alt.i.tude Kershaw doubled back toward Vinson. Now our attention changed from mountaineering challenges to the more immediate problem of getting the plane down in one piece. We knew the primary factor Kershaw had to consider in choosing a landing was wind. Not just ground wind, but he had to think about the wind the plane would be exposed to while parked. He knew that if he picked a landing too far from the protection of the mountain's lee the aircraft would be exposed to the full force of the fierce Antarctic winds that blow across the icecap. On the other hand, if he parked too close the plane might be buffeted by gusts coming from unpredictable directions. This latter concern was a very real hazard, as Kershaw knew from the experience of friends of his in the British Antarctic Survey. Two years before, this other group had landed a Twin Otter at a field camp and tied the wings to anchors, with the plane's nose facing into the wind. Then they went in the hut for a rest, and while they were asleep the wind suddenly changed direction, hitting the plane broadside. When they came out they found the plane's wings still tied in place to the anchors, but the fuselage twisted upside down.

In addition to wind Kershaw had to consider the sand dune-shaped formations on the flat ice cap called sastrugi. Standing sometimes two or more feet, these wind-tortured formations can trip a plane's skis when it's landing, sending the aircraft's nose augering into the hard snow. The trick is to determine from the air the direction of the prevailing wind and then land with the lay of the sastrugi.

Kershaw eyed a section of the icecap a few miles from the base of the west side of Vinson. He circled his candidate landing zone, banking the plane while Mason opened the fuselage door and tossed a smoke grenade. On the ice the red smoke rose lazily.

"Negligible ground wind," Mason said. He lit another Camel then returned forward, got final instructions from Kershaw, and turned back to us.

"Fasten your seat belts. We're bringing this bucket of bolts down."

Faces that moments before were exuberantly glued to the windows were now intently somber, and I thought once again how the nearest human habitation, the nearest source of support, was 180 miles away across a flat, trackless ice desert. If the plane were to crack up on landing, that would be a h.e.l.luva long way to ski.

Kershaw made his line-up and came in. Out the window the shadow-lined sastrugi, well defined by the low Antarctic sun, came up to meet us. The plane gently settled, then hit hard. I felt an adrenaline surge as Kershaw applied full throttle and the screaming turbos lifted us up and we went round for another pa.s.s.

"Just testing the surface," Kershaw yelled to us above the turbos.

We again made the same line-up. The peaks of the mountain range-Shinn, Epperly, Tyree, Gardner-rose in a great wall filling the plane's windows. We slowly came back down, gently losing alt.i.tude, then made contact. We glided smoothly for a few seconds, then came a heavy whump! as we clipped a sastrugi formation. We rose, came down, bounced hard, rose and came down again. Another bounce, and we had full contact. I stayed tensed, ready to tuck into a survival roll in case the skis tripped. We bounced again, then slowed and came to a stop.

"Aah-eah-eaahhh," d.i.c.k called.

We all cheered, and Kershaw turned with a wide grin and another thumbs-up.

Mason, with the Camel still hanging from his lips, opened the plane door and the cold air rudely swept in.