WHITE NIGHTS
A journey to the end of the Earth is an eye-opener, writes Annabel Langbein.
It’s the airport boarding process that’s the giveaway. We do the ID check, the luggage weigh-ins, get the boarding pass and go through security x-rays. Business as usual. But a glance around this particular lounge reveals that everyone is kitted out in extreme weather clothing as if they are about to enter a force nine blizzard. Including me. I have spent a good 20 minutes getting into this kit, and back at the hotel there were some strange looks as I clomped around the breakfast bar in my huge boots and salopettes, especially given that the outside temperature in Christchurch is already hovering at 28C.
As I step into the RNZAF Hercules C130, I’m feeling hot and sweaty and more than a tad nervous. My sister has just texted me to wish me luck and remind me not to fall down any crevasses. She knows how accident-prone I am. Ahead of me is an eight-hour flight to the coldest place on Earth.
We’re all jammed like sardines in nylon webbing seats that line the plane’s side walls and central cargo pallets. There are no windows to look out. To navigate your way to the back, and the loo, requires the footwork of a ballerina, picking carefully (nigh impossible in these boots) between people’s legs and feet. The loo is not actually a loo. It’s a bucket. There’s no seat, and just a shower curtain on a wire to pull around for some privacy. I make a quick mental note to avoid drinking anything before the return flight.
The incredible scientists on board this flight are bound for a summer of scientific projects and experiments on the ice. Myself, and fellow invited guest paralympian Liam Malone, are lucky enough to be on board to see the work being supported by Antarctica New Zealand down on the ice.
I manage to sneak up the front and gaze out the window of the cockpit to where the teacup-blue sky and deep navy ocean intersect on the farthest horizon in a low slow curve of blue on blue. It feels like we are travelling to the end of the Earth.
As we fly ever further south, the conversation between the three pilots, two navigators and two engineers is all about whether we will actually keep going. There has been some fog down at McMurdo, and if there is one thing pilots and planes don’t like on the ice it’s fog.
There is a point of no return on this trip, a specific moment of commitment, which is determined by having sufficient fuel to return the plane safely to home base. Once you've reached this point there is no going back. In the meantime, there are weather reports and satellite reports constantly being relayed, as the senior pilot maps out potential weather systems. It’s impressive and reassuring.
As we reach somewhere around 75 degrees south, big chunks of sea ice can be seen amongst the white spume of the waves below. I’m sent back to join the rest of the passengers so the crew can privately make their final decision about whether we go on, or boomerang home. They decide on the former.
I’m invited back up front again for the landing and the view is spectacular. Mt Erebus rises up to the left, sporting a plume of smoke from its crater. As far as the eye can see, everything is white. Finally, a faint shadow in the white comes into view; this is our runway out in the middle of the ice. Ours is one of the last wheeled planes that will be able to land here this year — in a few weeks the ice will be too soft for wheels and the ski Hercules (LC-130) will fly.
Antarctica contains 90 per cent of the world’s ice and 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water. It is estimated that the sea level could rise 60m if it all melted.
In the world’s climate engine, Antarctica is an important cog. The ocean and atmosphere spin around the vast continent and are transported around the planet. In our fastchanging world, the biology of this icy pole provides early warning signals of climate change.
Everything about Antarctica New Zealand is vested in the idea of zero harm and stewardship of the environment. Every item of waste comes back to home base, pee included. There are strict protocols around all operational and scientific expeditions to ensure staff safety and environmental care.
The first thing we do when we land is Antarctic Field Training (AFT). Our trainer tells me that when they arrived back in August and went out to do AFT it was minus 40C and mostly dark (right now, just before Christmas, it’s 24-hour daylight). Everyone put up their tents and spent the night out in the white wilderness. The weather, ever the fickle mistress in Antarctica, started to pack up and at 2am the call was made to get everyone back to camp before full blizzard conditions set in. As I sit under a clear blue sky in a positively balmy minus 17C, it’s hard to imagine being that cold and having to roll up sleeping bags and tents in the pitch black of a growing storm and get safely back to base. It was lucky the call was made, as the following five days were full blizzard conditions. To give you an idea of a blizzard here, visibility in a snowstorm can get down to less than a metre. When the wind blows up, they call that a “Con 1” (Condition 1). When
there’s a Con 1 you simply don’t go outside, it’s too dangerous.
Most of the people down here over the summer are scientists working in climate change. They cover all areas of scientific research from glaciology to geology to atmospheric research. Next season research will continue on the new Ross Sea Marine Protected Area. Their investigations require them to head out on field trips, often for weeks at a time, so they need to be prepared for every eventuality of the weather.
One day, we take a helicopter trip over to the McMurdo Dry Valleys. This region is one of the driest in the world. Scientists are studying the unique plants and animals that live in this desert — an environment so harsh that the largest plants are moss, and the largest year-round animal is the springtail, a tiny insect that’s only a few millimetres long.
From here, we chopper around the ice shelf to Shackleton’s hut and then on to Scott’s Cape Evans hut, passing spectacular icebergs lodged in the sea ice, and groups of emperor penguins and Weddell seals lounging around holes they’ve cut in the ice.
In the desolate spaces of these early explorers’ huts there are moments of intimacy and humanity — a pair of socks with the names sewn on, smiling faces in old photographs and long-forgotten trinkets of lives once led. There is also a sense of the courage, heroism and friendship of the men who lived here. Some of their scientific experiments are sitting on tables where they were left more than 100 years ago. The endeavours of these men in this harshest of environments seem extraordinary.
Out here on the ice it is the sound I notice most. Or rather the lack of it. A deep, fierce silence reigns in these vast, empty, white spaces, and without the stimulation of colour, let alone the machinations of human endeavour to stimulate the mind, my thoughts turn inwards. I wonder how those early explorers survived in the face of dismal cold, fierce gales and crucifying hardship.
Millions and millions of years ago, when temperatures around the world were higher than today, Antarctica was a continent of rich forests, without snow and ice. Fossils of both plant and animal life, including dinosaurs, can be found here. I meet a scientist who has just found fossilised remains of Nothofagus (beech species) way up in the dry valleys. Another scientist has been studying the bacteria that can survive in the world’s coldest place. He talks to me about a theory whereby life on Earth may have originated with the arrival of bacteria carried by a meteor billions of years ago.
Returning to New Zealand and the comforts of daily life we so take for granted, I feel changed. Being in Antarctica made me all the more aware of the fragility and vulnerability of the environment and how easily these systems can become unstable. The slightest change in conditions can have a monumental impact on an entire ecosystem and indeed, the planet. For so many millennia, the Earth has maintained an environment where humans can prosper.
The vast Antarctic continent remains the last bastion of the untouched world, a place where we can learn about the past and hopefully develop skills to protect the future of our planet. But Antarctica is a fragile place, and is increasingly vulnerable. The world could and may become a hostile environment. It has happened before.
I come home with a resolve to use less, waste less and tread more lightly.