Burton Island (AGB 1) - Naval Cruise Book

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77 7 'T Yiwnn 'm'- First glimpse of the Continent! The land below the nacelle of the Herc is in the vicinity of Cape Adare near Hallett Station, which was the first summer station to be reopened in Deep Freeze '66, The 2,200-mile flight from New Zealand would be even more hazardous if it were not for the weather reports received from Hallett. On September 6, an LC-47 landed on sea ice with nine mem- bers of ASA who put the station back in operation and laid out an ice runway. The latter could be used, in an emergency, for about one month lNovemberl by the wheeled aircraft of the Air Force. ln Deep Freeze '66, the first plane from New Zealand landed at McMurdo on October T. The PSR lpoint of safe returnl had been passed a little beyond the halfway point, where the picket ships Gary and Calcaterra alternated on ocean stations throughout the season. Even veterans of the Antarctic become excited when they first see land.

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, .-.HA . .,.-....., .,.':'::1..', ' -:'1::::L7:'::Lg3 .. -.- -.-,.- -.. -.. - - .-,-,. ' rrrr H -as ----y F i Z l s e s 5 i '1 Bronze bust of the late Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd outside the chapel of Our Lady of the Snows at McMurdo. He was the first man, to fly over the South Pole, in 1929, and the first Officer-in-Charge of the U.S. Antarctic Re- search Program, at the beginning of Deep Freeze in 1956. Admiral Byrd's own words are inscribed on the base of the memorial: I am hopeful that Antarctica in its sym- bolic robe of white will shine forth asa continent of peace as nations working together there in the cause of science set an example of international cooperation. At the foot of the 15,000-foot Mount Markham is a gap where Scott, with Shackleton as a member of his party, reached a new Hfarthest southi' in 1902. - I Within an hour, or Qas Shackleton wrotej after a month of hard sledging, 'cthere burst upon our view an open road to the South, for there stretched before us a great glacier running almost south and north between two mountain rangesf, This is the Beardmore Glacier, so vast that it has several Hmouthsf' and at one of them are the great granite pillars he spoke of. It seems to be flowing softly onto the shelf ice, although its tremendous pres- sure creates waves for miles on the surface of the Barrier. Lt Frontz says on the intercom, H1'll tell you what itis like . . . you 've seen your wife pour batter out of a cake bowl .... '7 On board is a man with the lean look of a British ambassa- dor. He turns out to be L. M. Forbes, editor of the Polar Record in Cambridge, England, one of a number of publications Admiral Bakutis studied in order to prepare himself for the ice. Although he has not been in the Antarctic before, Mr. Forbes has known many of the explorers who opened up the Continent. Sir Charles Wright, for instance, who has just left here after a visit as a scien- tific consultant, accompanied Scott as far as the top of the Beard- more Glacier in 1911 and found his body near Minna Bluff in 1912. He has retired three times since 1947, but the continuity of his knowledge of the Antarctic makes him invaluable. The work Sir Charles does in upper atmosphere physics has a direct bearing on the fate of 319 whose radio is in contact with Little Ieana, a summer weather station on the Barrier. He wrote recently, H. . . the ionosphere must be regularly monitored in the Antarctic to help maintain communications. When the normal complement of electrons is augmented by a burst from a solar flare, the D layer absorbs short-wave radio signals. Often the effect is severe enough to black out all radio communication and therefore also to ground all aircraft. Mr. Forbes clambers up, walks aft on the tops of the oil drums, and drops to the deck near a door that slopes outward. Mindful of skin being stripped off by cold metal, he avoids the handles and leans against the door. HThose lines on the side of the glassier, he says, Hare where the ice is breaking away from the mountains. The smaller mountains are covered almost to the top with ice, as if inundated. Some of it is blue, like the wa- ter in the Bahamas. Mr. Forbes says this color is due to the absence of snow. Scott wrote in his diary: HAH this soft snow is an aftermath of our prolonged storm. Hereabouts Shackleton found hard blue ice. It seems an extraordinary difference in for- tune, and at every step S.'s luck becomes more evident? The Hluckyn Shackleton had falls, bruises, cut shins . . . the worst surface possible, sharp-edged blue ice full of chasms and crevasses, rising to hills and descending into gullies, in fact, a surface that could not be equalled in any polar work for difficulty in travelling. In the Age of the Goon, until five years ago, the LC-47s used to labor up the Glacier, barely gaining altitude as fast as the ice rose toward the plateau, but the Here is flying effortlessly at 26,000 feet. 40 W

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HThose slits or slotted areas are crevasses . . . the more ob7 vious ones,', Mr. Forbes explains. They look like the darts made by a seamstress. There is not much snow on the range that gO6S off to the southeast, and in the distance is a large mOL1Ht3i11 that resembles a castle. As the plane approaches the plateau, the mountains are more and more covered, until they are mere nun- afaks or peaks protruding from the snow. Finally the UPS Cease altogether. Here the ice is 8,000 feet thick. 42 is