INTO THE WHITE – Mawson to Enderby Land, 1974
by Dave Luders, OIC Mawson 1974
Summer operations in the Prince Charles Mountains (PCM) ended in 1973/74 and the base camp at Mt Cresswell was brought back to Mawson. It was the major task of the 1974 party to overhaul and refurbish the buildings and equipment and then set up the base camp for operations in Enderby Land, some 400 km to the west, to begin in the 1974/75 summer.
Mawson ’74 was an unusually strong party. Sixteen of the 26 men had wintered before, including the OIC, radio supertech, plant inspector, four of the five radio operators and two of the other three diesel mechanics. Against this were two handicaps. Early in the year we lost the carpenter, killed in an accident, and one of the three D5 tractors was in no condition for a long traverse. Although the party rallied around to prepare the buildings and equipment, the prime movers could only be D5s Mermaid and Jumbo, with the elderly D4 Cannonball which had done duty at Mt Cresswell and was to be taken to the new base camp. It was probable that we could not deliver enough fuel and a second traverse would be required. So it turned out.
We had only sketchy information about Enderby Land. A dogsledging traverse from there to Mawson led by Bob Knuckey in 1959 gave some information but otherwise there were only the maps compiled from aerial photographs. The 1959 traverse passed through scattered mountains some 60 – 100 km inland, where extensive crevassing could be expected so that the new route needed to be at least 40 km further south.
In January a reconnaissance flight by Pilatus Porter was flown over the proposed route. Passengers were myself and Doug Twigg. A flight like that can give little indication of surface conditions and only a general assessment of the topography, but we were mainly concerned with crevassing and to have a look at Knuckey Peaks, the most likely site for the base camp. We were also interested in McLeod Nunataks further west, which would have made a site more central to operations. There were scattered crevasse fields and we moved the proposed route a little. We had only enough fuel to circle Knuckey Peaks a couple of times but not enough to go on to McLeod Nunataks. Knuckey Peaks seemed to offer a blueice airstrip site adjoining a snow surface.
In autumn we ran a traverse to take fuel to Twintop to add to the depot already there, with the intention of taking it all further south to the vicinity of Venture Dome. The death at Mawson obliged us to abandon that second aim, so that Twintop was our depot. On the spring traverse, we continued south to a point about 10 km south of Venture Dome, 133 km from Mawson on the route to the PCM. There we turned west and travelled for 370 km, placing 243 canes at an average interval of 1.52 km. The total distance was 503 km (313 miles).
On 28 October, the seven of us left Mawson – myself, Jack Turner (plant inspector), Terry Weatherson (radio supertech), Mike Knox-Little (radio operator), Ron Gomez (diesel mechanic), Tony Ashford (meteorological observer) and Don Loades (plumber/rigger). All went quite well as far as Twintop which we reached in a little over a day. There, in good weather, we made up the trains and about three days after leaving Mawson, set off, pulling 65 tonnes on 22 sledges. A little over a day later, bad weather descended and our troubles began.
Even in good weather it would have been fairly hard going, heavily laden and climbing in soft snow as we were. But heavy drift snow thickened into a full blizzard so that we halted after covering only about seven km. That blizzard lasted three days and when we moved again in very poor weather it was to make little headway painfully achieved until another, four – day, blizzard came along. It took us about 15 days to travel from Twintop to the turnoff to Enderby Land, about ten times as long as it had taken to cover a similar distance from Mawson to Twintop. We were winching the trains and Cannonball was so weak that the D5s had frequently to shuttle her train. Often we would winch for a few hours without so much as glimpsing the outline of another train. Visibility was so bad that we found our way by brief glimpses of the previous season’s tracks on patches of hard surface and often passed close to canes without seeing them.
The turnoff is at almost 2000 metres’ altitude and we reached it under a hazy sun and light, high drift. I dubbed this point Turner’s Turnoff to recognize Jack Turner’s superb work in preparing for the traverse. I had had a signpost made up, unbeknownst to Jack, painted with the name and with fingerboards pointing to Mawson, Mt Cresswell and Enderby Land. It had already been set up when Jack emerged sleepy-eyed from the caravan. When I drew his attention to it he looked at it for a moment, grunted, and began to talk about the jobs to be done. I think he was secretly pleased, though.
From there on, we had to navigate and mark the route. The lead tractor (Mermaid, Jack or myself driving) placed the canes. D5 Jumbo (Terry or Don driving), with the longest and heaviest train, ploughed on, stopping only to add drum markers as empty drums became available. Cannonball (Mike, Ron or Tony driving) measured the distances between canes and attached the numbered metal tags to them. Notes were collated and written up nightly and the dead reckoning plotted as opportunity offered, such as during blizzards. In Mermaid, we also took magnetic bearings from time to time, even though the magnetic variation was around 60 degrees because the south magnetic pole was about east-south-east of us. This precaution was so that later parties finding a cane in bad visibility could then set their course.
Our course was set mostly by astrocompass, sighting on the sun or, when that was obscured, by back-sighting in driving mirrors on the following trains. That sounds easy by usually it was not. The mirrors were flakey and jiggling, the trains appeared and disappeared in drift or gloom or behind ridges. These ridges came as a surprise because the surface seemed quite flat. When visibility improved we began to recognise features in this flattened terrain. Heading west from the turnoff we were travelling across the slight fall of the icesheet and it became apparent that we were gently falling. Although the surface seemed flat we were crossing slight undulations, spurs running out from the plateau on our left, to the south. These were the ridges that sometimes hid the trains and we were not on the plateau proper but on an escarpment below it.
Although the weather was better we had a new difficulty. Fairly low drift was coming from the south-east, over our left shoulder, and ice began to build up in the tractors. It clogged the winches and iced around the engines, even on the blades of the fans. The worst was the clogging on the undersides, mostly around the clutch linkages, impeding steering. This could be cleared only by lying under the tractor and chipping away with an ice axe, not a comfortable occupation with ice falling on one’s face. On one occasion I jabbed at ice between the engine and the belly plate only to crack an eggshell of ice and release a gush of freezing water almost onto my face.
Nevertheless we made good time for about 80 km from the turnoff, to 60ºE (the boundary between Mac Robertson Land and Kemp Land). There, Mermaid broke through the snow bridge of a two-metre crevasse.and came to rest straddling it, held by the winch cable and the tracks. Fortunately, about 300 metres away the slot was split into two and Jumbo could be driven across the two one-metre slots and after digging a ramp in front of Mermaid, pull her free. Meanwhile in the sunny weather and light wind, multiple sun sights could be taken to fix our position, thus tying our dead reckoning to a fixed point.
That crevasse was quite a surprise. We had expected crevasses to run east-west and be visible but this one ran north-south across our path and was obscured by glare from sastrugi. It was in fact the first of a series of straight, parallel, evenly spaced slots, apparently the result of splitting along a low spur. There were secondary and tertiary slots 40 cm and 10 cm wide hidden by snow, that at first startled us when feet broke through.
Although the weather was pleasant we were all very tired after three gruelling weeks, so we took a break, broke out the grog, had a party and took stock. We had lost so much time and used so much fuel on the way up to Turner’s Turnoff that we had to abandon all thought of reaching McLeod Nunataks. Kunckey Peaks, for better or for worse, had to be our objective. We knew where we were and it was less than 500 metres from our dead reckoning position, so we could be confident about our navigation methods. Besides, we could now see identifiable mountain peaks to the north. In the clear weather we could see, across a shallow valley, that the plateau extended north across our line of travel. The obvious thing to do was to try to gain that high ground.
Diverting north, we skirted the crevassed spur then crossed the valley, over somewhat confused undulations, for a couple of days until we came to a higher that usual ridge that ended in a crevassed knob. After a spell of bad visibility we decided that this was that northern extension of the plateau and we turned very sharp left (actually to east of south) to climb across its eastern slope on a good hard surface to reach the plateau proper. This was near 59ºE, about 60 km into Kemp Land.
On the plateau the weather and surface were good and we made good time, occasionally diverting around small crevassed areas. This was the travelling we were supposed to have and we ran for about 80 km, direct for Knuckey Peaks. We were now a month out of Mawson and had grown used to temperatures around -30ºC and altitude around 2000 metres. A pair of crevassed domes signalled that we were now dropping down the western face of the plateau extension and we diverted sharply southwards around them, then 20 or so km further on again diverted around a crevasse field. A day later, almost south of the Dismal Mountains, we reported that we might arrive at Knuckey Peaks on 30 November. It was not to be.
About 20 km short of the destination, in poor visibility, we encountered crevassing again. We camped. A full blizzard quickly developed and lasted for ten whole days. A 10-day blizzard becomes quite boring. One exhausts all the usual pastimes. I think it was then that I read the whole of James Joyce’s Ulysses, a long and dreary book. We could do nothing but time was pressing. We were behind time but Nella Dan was ahead of schedule. She was to fly men in and out of Mawson over the seaice and then sail west to Enderby Land and fly in the summer party to the camp that we should have ready. Could we do it? The timing was becoming very tight.
As the weather began to clear we caught glimpses of Knuckey Peaks below us and away to the northwest, so near and yet so far. When the blizzard ceased, most of the trains were completely buried. The tractors were only the cabs sticking up out of the snow – but there is nothing like ten days of enforced idleness and a clear view of the objective to spur men to action. Anyone who has dug out fully buried trains knows what a task it is, but we managed it in a day and took sun sights to fix out position. We turned sharply north to avoid the crevassed dome that had stopped us. In the good weather the terrain and Knuckey Peaks were clear and for about seven km we rattled down a fairly steep slope in 3rd gear, heading straight for an oddly-shaped nunatak, then turned left and ran for Knuckey Peaks, in no mood to be slowed by soft snow.
Our immediate approach to Knuckey Peaks was from the north-east and we were keen to get started, but Fate had a last ironic flourish for us. A sudden wind got up, lifting thickening drift snow. Driving the lead tractor, I became uneasy and stopped. We camped, at least able to celebrate an arrival of sorts while we waited out a blizzard of a mere two days. When that miniblizz stopped we saw how fortunate it was that I stopped when I did. Mermaid was quite close to a deep wind-scour around the peaks. Had I continued, Mermaid and I might have plunged over the lip and hung on the winch rope down a near-vertical blueice cliff.
By now we were frantic to set up the base camp. Nella Dan had left Mawson and soon would be off Enderby Land, wanting to fly men in. We soon saw that the blueice fanning out downwind of the peaks could not be used for an airstrip. Its uneven surface was in some places strewn with iced –in rocks and in other places there were small crevasses. Finding another site was not easy. There were crevasses under the snow in places and soft snow in others. The radio aerials could not be put in others. We settled on a place but were far from happy with it.
For four 16-hour days we worked to set up all but one of the buildings, lay out the airstrip and radio aerials and test the radios, position landings and stores and so on. We did manage to have hot showers, though. The fuel delivery was well below requirement and it was now urgent to have the D5s back at Mawson for a follow-up traverse. Meanwhile, Nella Dan was through the packice and approaching the coast.
Mike, Tony and Ron (and Cannonball) were to spend the summer at the base camp and we other four left them with a mass of jobs to do after we left on 20 December. The return trip was rapid. In overcast with light wind and new snow over three-quarters of the route to Turner’s Turnoff, the lightly loaded tractors could mostly race along. After less than five days we arrived at Mawson at 5 pm on Christmas Eve – and it was heaven. The summer party occupied the base camp on the following day.
|
Outward Journey |
At Knuckey Peaks |
Return Journey |
|
| Days of travelling |
23 |
– |
5 |
| Work days |
1 |
4 |
– |
| Days stationary |
25 |
|
|
|
49 |
4 |
5 |
A route guide showing, cane by cane, identification (flag colour, drum markers), true and magnetic bearings and distance was prepared for the second traverse party, along with accompanying route notes. That second traverse delivered more fuel in January and the experience of the summer party confirmed our misgivings about the Knuckey Peaks site. Much snow fell and wind, drift snow, whiteout and overcast restricted flying to one day in three. One helicopter was severely damaged during takeoff and was brought back on the return traverse. Operations were curtailed and that return traverse was crowded with summer party men impatient with the delays in establishing glaciological stations and taking geophysical readings along the route. Clearly, the base camp had to be moved and the 1975 party took it further on to Mt King, about 100 km to the north-west, where it remained for the subsequent years.
I must pay tribute to the traverse party who worked hard and well in difficult circumstances with hardly a cross word to be heard. Jack Turner and Terry Weatherson deserved particular recognition so that when I visited Tasmania this year (2018) it was a pleasure to learn that each has a mountain named for him, both of them in the Dismal Mountains that were closest to our route.
I have done a few things in my life but I think of this traverse as one of its high points. At the Midwinter Dinner at Canberra in 1976, one of the Mawson 1975 party remarked, ‘You did a good job laying out the track to Enderby Land, Dave.’ That meant more to me that any Polar Medal could.
