Call of the White by Aston Felicity

Author:Aston, Felicity
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd
Published: 2011-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The Great Storm

The inside of an Ilyushin is reassuringly Russian, with deep carpeted seats, tiny myopic portholes and veins of industrial wiring running along the inside walls. The Russian loadmaster, with a comically bushy moustache and grey rings round his sagging eyes, watched us all fiercely from his perch beside a backdrop of twitching dials. Strapped into our seats, we were arranged before him in rows as if this was the opening act of a play and he was the only actor. The plane lurched forward and trundled down the taxiway. The roar and vibration of the engines enveloped us, making communication impossible. As the noise crescendoed, the plane lurched again and took off at such an angle that those of us inside were tilted backward like astronauts being shot into space. I got a glimpse of brown fields through our nearest window as the plane banked and then the ground was gone – we wouldn’t see earth or greenery again for weeks.

About six hours later I woke the team just before we were due to land to make sure they were all prepared for stepping out into –20ºC. It sounds paradoxical, but as well as needing warm down jackets and fleecy neck-gaiters for the cold, they also needed suncream and sunglasses for protection from the sun. The air temperature in Antarctica may be well below freezing but the sun is extremely strong and there is little natural ozone protection from harmful UV rays, so it is incredibly easy to get severely sunburned and snow-blind. The plane landed in a thunder of engines and as the crew prised open the door, we waited for our first glimpse of Antarctica.

Rather than a blast of cold air, it was the sunshine that hit me first. I squinted behind my sunglasses, trying to filter out the glare as I stepped onto the hard ice of the runway. Behind the plane and stretching in a long curve away to our left were the Ellsworth Mountains, a wall of angular peaks smothered with heavy drapes of snow. In places ice oozed imperceptibly slowly from high plateaux, so that it appeared suspended in mid flow; the flawless white fractured with crevasses that revealed a watery blue beneath. The steeper faces were ice free and the rocks reflected the sun so that they seemed to have a golden sheen. Beneath the mountains was a large area of bare ice so old and compressed that it was a striking powder blue. Kept clear of snow by the wind whistling down the mountainsides, it was this strip of ice that was used as a runway. The fierce sun made the ice look wet and highlighted the hundreds of fist-sized dimples that textured its surface. Beyond the ice, almost a kilometre away, was a small camp. At its centre, beneath a tall metal mast, was a small, square Portakabin strapped to the ice with wire rope. This was the communications box and the hub of ALE’s operation on the ice.

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