Antarctica Off the Beaten Path Tips by tiabunna

Several years ago, France and Italy agreed to develop a joint polar station at "Dome C", 1100km inland from the French antarctic station at Dumont d'Urville and some 3600 metres above sea level. The high points of the antarctic plateau are identified as Dome A, Dome B, Dome C, etc. This is only the third permanent inland Antarctic station and the first on one of the "Domes". It has been fully operational since only 2005. (The other two inland stations are the US Amundsen-Scott station at the South Pole and the Russian Vostok station at the Pole of Inaccessability, the most distant place from the coast.)

Concordia is at a particularly remote and featureless site, with only snow visible in all directions. But it has some valuable scientific merits which justified its selection. These include totally pristine air for climatological studies, ice depth suitable for deep ice cores, good atmospheric stability making it very suitable for astronomy, and a site suitable for seismology. It is also extremely cold, with an average annual temperature of about -53C. To find out more, the website link is given below.

Although it is improbable that you'll get there as a tourist, if you're at Dumont d'Urville at the right time, you can see the giant tractor trains starting on the 1100km run inland. They do this several times during the summer, taking about 10 days in (with fuel, food and supplies) and 8 days out (with all the wastes). We were lucky enough to see the convoy forming up and departing.

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Website: www.concordiastation.org/
Other Contact: Start from Dumont d'Urville

Dog teams had a long and glorious history in the Antarctic, probably the peak of their achievements being Amundsen's "first to the pole" trip ahead of Scott. Their marvellous swansong was a trans-Antarctica trip (Steger/Etienne) in 1989/90.

Australia's Mawson station was one of the last bastions of the dogs, which were excellent for short trips on the sea ice because they could sense problems and had low ground pressure. They also provided good companionship for the wintering expeditions and, for a day's running, excellent exercise. Sadly, all dogs had to be removed from Antarctica because of one of the more extreme requirements of the 1991 Antarctic Treaty on Environmental Protection (the 'Madrid Protocol') which in Annexe 4 says Dogs shall not be introduced onto land or ice shelves and dogs currently in those areas shall be removed by April 1, 1994.

These photos from 1966 show a dog team out for a day trip on the sea ice near Mawson, and one of the dogs on the dog lines (they lived in the open).

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Because tourist visits are by ship, it's unlikely that most tourists will venture into, or even see, the inland plateau areas of Antarctica. Although most of Antarctica is covered by featureless ice with depths in places exceeding 3000 metres, that might suggest there's little to see. That's not necessarily so!

As with the coastal areas, depending on the angle of the sun, there can be marvellous colours. There also are various mountain ranges, adding features to the landscape.

These photos were taken in 1966 in the Masson Ranges, not far inland from Australia's Mawson station. One also shows "Antarctica 3", the third in a series of Volkswagen sedans - and probably Antarctica's first useable motor cars (the only previous car had been with Shackleton's first expedition): this was about as far as it travelled.

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I was fortunate to be included as part of the group for the major field trip of our year at Mawson, a surveying expedition to the Prince Charles Mountains, slightly over 200 miles inland to the south (Australia was still non-metric in those days). There were seven of us in the group and we travelled using caravan trains. These were pulled by D4 bulldozers, three for the first 50 miles where we depoted one ‘dozer, then two from there onwards. We also had some small scout vehicles on sledges.

There was no air support, nor were there backup vehicles at Mawson, should we have had troubles. But we did have a radio, with communications (hand keyed morse only) by twice daily calls back to Mawson. We were away for four months, so for that period ‘the world’ consisted of just the seven of us.

Our main task was to map the northern Prince Charles Mountains: until then only one field party had previously been to the area and, although it had been aerially photographed, nobody had ever before set foot on most peaks which showed on the map as dotted lines with the entry ‘position doubtful’. Apart from assisting with the survey, my own task was taking weather observations. These days, with helicopters, GPS equipment and satellites, what we did can be accomplished in no time! But at Midwinter (21 June this year) the Mawson 1966 expedition holds its five yearly reunion, so (to my surprise, the time has flown) all this was 40 years ago!

We really only stopped long enough to take one formal photo, on Christmas Eve of 1966, when we dressed up in our 'best'. This is it, about 5,000 feet high on the antarctic plateau ice, and about 180 miles from Mawson: it would take us over another month to get back.

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This photo shows the Spring Trip camped, shortly after arriving at the Prince Charles Mountains (PCM) in November 1966. The photo was taken at about midnight. There are several points of interest. The first is the ‘sastrugi’, which is the name given to the wind-carved surface of the snow on the surface of the underlying ice, and the tracks our tractors and sledges have carved through it. The second is that, at this point, we were a little over 5,000 feet above sea level – but there is about 5,000 feet of ice below us! Just before we stopped, we encountered several crevasses (see 'warnings' tip).

The mountain tops in this photo are about 7,000 feet high. On the right is ‘Mount Lacey’ where I spent many chilly days helping with the survey.

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The main photo shows one of our tractor trains leaving the Prince Charles Mountains (PCM) to return north to Mawson. It was taken mid-December 1966. The large box type sledge caravan was the main living quarters: it served as the kitchen, mess, recreation room, met office, radio shack, and surveyor's office, as well as being the sleeping quarters for three of us. The rounded second caravan was the sleeping quarters for the other four expeditioners.

In the second photo, taken while we were heading on our way south, the other boxy caravan was the maintenance workshop. The main mountain in the background to this photo is named 'Depot Peak'.

Travel was at about walking speed, in fact when there was a reasonable certainty there were no crevasses, walking alongside was very pleasant. Because of the low speed, plus the need for refuelling stops and meals, on our better days travelling we covered only about 30-35km.

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Our travels on the 1966 Spring Trip were frequently delayed by poor weather, particularly on our return leg. Often we would travel for one day, spend three or four days pinned down by blizzards, another one or two days digging everything out of the accumulated snow, then repeat the process!

It is very hard to gain a reasonable impression of a blizzard with a camera, the snow usually is travelling so quickly that it blurs and the overall photographic impression looks more like fog! This is a fairly light blizzard, there remains some visibility. In a heavy blizzard, visibility can be reduced below arm's length. To get a feel for the conditions here, please try to imagine that blowing snow is going past at, probably, 50 mph/80kmh and that the air temperature would have been about -10F / -20C.

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In the first of these two photos taken in the Prince Charles Mountains during the 1966 spring trip, I am seen launching a weather balloon which I then followed with the theodolite on the tripod, to measure the upper winds in the area. The second was taken on top of Mount Lacey, a few miles from our base camp, while we were doing survey measurements to mountains further south. The large box gadget is a Tellurometer (something like half a radar set, which would measure the distance to another similar instrument). Note the icicles on the operator’s beard.

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