Deep Freeze: The United States, the International Geophysical Year, and the Origins of Antarctica's Age of Science

5: Marie Byrd Land: Crevasse Junction, Privation Station

As winter began in April 1956 for the 166 souls left in Antarctica, Admiral Dufek returned to Washington to prepare for “our biggest year, our roughest mission.” Operation Deep Freeze II would involve twelve ships and 3,400 men, almost twice as many of each as the year before. Attention went first to the intimidating inland sites. For Byrd Station to rise above the ice plain of Marie Byrd Land during the short season of sunlight, the entire camp would have to be hauled overland nearly 650 miles, crevasses or no. Yet to be found was a route safe for a train pulled by thirty-five-ton tractors. Yet to be accomplished was all of the transport, construction, and hookup of the station even as the scientists were arriving. Not everyNed made a pair of leather moccasins tonight out of a do-it-yourself kit. That’s what Byrd Station is by the way— a do-it-yourself kit with only half the pieces which never seem to fit each other. —Vernon Anderson, 19571 M A R I E B Y R D L A N D Crevasse Junction, Privation Station C H A P T E R F I V E 131 132 M A R I E B Y R D L A N D thing would get there. Byrd residents would end up doing a lot of doing without.2 With the exception of Richard Byrd’s winter alone at Advance Base, 100 miles out on the Ross Ice Shelf, no one had ever lived for any length of time in the interior of the polar continent. The logistics line was simply too long and fragile, the perils too great. So Navy officers, sobered by Bursey’s misjudgments and the scope, risks, and circumscribed time frame of their task, could beg forbearance for suggesting that Byrd Station be built somewhere along the trail already marked. But since gaining knowledge of the distant vastness was precisely the attraction, IGY planners, just as understandably, decried any such degradation of the scientific effort and insisted on latitude 80° South, longitude 120° West as a vital link in a north-south global chain of stations. This locus of intense auroras and purported “pressure surges” cried for investigation , and over-snow traverse parties, Byrd leader George Toney wrote, needed a “staging point in the heart of the ice cap” for their seismic, magnetic, gravity, and glaciological studies. Of course, foreign policy interests also championed the original “American sector” site—to bolster the U.S. basis for a claim there should circumstances warrant making one. In fact, the Navy had no wish to fail in this highly visible, politically charged mission. The doubts and caveats seemed designed to diminish expectations so that any degree of success could be deemed a victory. Byrd expedition veteran and IGY representative E. E. Goodale did offer some hope to Odishaw, along with pessimism, when he wrote in November 1956 that by early aerial reconnaissance, chances for a safe trail looked “very doubtful.” But, he believed, Dufek would “do his damndest to get the station in as planned.”3 Dufek did. To start with, he made good on his promise to train-leader Vic Young to get help in finding a way through the deadly crevasses. He assigned Cmdr. Paul Frazier, one of his most trusted officers, to head the effort. To make up time and improve the odds, he turned to experts from theArmy Transportation Corps, who had developed crevasse techniques on the Greenland ice cap. One was a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant, Philip M. Smith. After earning his master’s degree in geology from Ohio State University, he maneuvered to fulfill his military requirement in Greenland, where the Army was constructing ice runways, “cities” in ice caverns, and the DEW Line—all aimed at thwarting SovietattackacrosstheNorthPole.Amountaineerandspelunker,Smithquickly specialized in working through crevasse systems. One snowstormy summer day in 1956 he received a message from the admiral, which had gone up the Navy’s chain of command, over to the Army’s, and down the analogous long line to Smith in his remote Weasel. Dufek had heard of his expertise and wanted 133 M A R I E B Y R D L A N D him to work in Antarctica along with two Army majors, Merle (“Skip”) Dawson and Palle Mogensen—neither of whom had crevasse experience—and three Army enlisted men...