John “Johnny Alpine” Schutt examines a possible meteorite

Every night, Johnny reads to us from the journals of Scott, Amundsen and Shackleton, mainly from a book “Race for the South Pole” by Roland Huntford. We hear what each of these parties did on the same calendar date we are in. I’ve heard everyone remark at some point during the field season that this is our favorite part of the day, I think for the reason that we can sit and chat cozily together, but also for the way these readings make us feel more a part of this special place. Hearing about the experiences of these early explorers invokes two seemingly contrasting feelings, that there are many similarities to what they went through and what we are going through, and that we are worlds apart. We step outside our Scott tents, very similar in design to what the exploring parties used, and we are in the very landscape they describe. We see a flat, white plateau plunging between high peaks onto the glaciers below, under clear, sunny skies, in temps of about 0 to -10 F, and with brisk winds from the south. We understand the difficulties of navigating on slick ice or ragged sastrugi, and we know what it is like to be bound to our tents when the winds pick up or the snows fall. We are eating fairly similar foods, as Manavi mentioned a few days ago – lots of fat, protein and sugar (they ate this in something called “pemmican”, a hash of high-energy ingredients, sometimes not so tasty), because this is what our bodies require to stay warm and full of energy in this environment.

Miller Range Pemmican: Saute muesli in butter until just barely brown. Add finely chopped beef jerky, bacon, nuts, chocolate bars. Add thawed berries, dash of chili powder. Stir in bacon grease, butter (about 1/4 to 1/3 total volume). Mold into bars, put outside in your skidoo, keep it there. Eat when cold and/or hungry.

But as challenging as the field can be for us sometimes, we really can’t begin to understand what it was like for them. Our traverses across the landscape are on skidoo, while theirs was on ski or on foot, on average about 15 miles per day. Inside our Scott tents we have down sleeping bags and propane stoves, while their reindeer fur bags filled with ice each night and had to be thawed, if possible, on the sledges the next day. Sometimes they crawled into ice-filled bags at night, and had to warm their chilled toes on their neighbor’s chest. While our diet is similar to theirs in basic terms, we have at our fingertips a variety of the world’s best foods. We are probably eating three times as much as they did, and they were working much harder. It was definitely a race for them, not only to get there, but to then turn around and get back before running out of food and daylight.

We just read that one hundred and one years ago today, Scott found a snow cairn and flag of Amundsen’s, revealing that the Norwegian party had beat them to the South Pole. They were crushed. And the struggles of their return journey were just beginning. We feel humbled to have a small understanding of how these explorers earned their experience here. We also feel privileged to be here, in this remote and beautiful place, made accessible to us by airplanes and all the logistical support of the US Antarctic Program. And we are so glad to be able to sit at the feet of Johnny Schutt to learn about all things Antarctic. He has spent much of his life in the Antarctic or the Arctic, one of a special breed of modern explorer. There are few who have seen as much of this continent (or the peaks of many of the others), or spent as much time with their boots on the ground here as Johnny. He is a premier mountaineer and a geologist, with extensive knowledge of meteorites, perhaps because he has found more of them than anyone on Earth by many thousands. Johnny is truly unique. He works hard, through his readings and stories and time spent with us in the field, to infuse all of us with the forbidden nature, awe and wonder of this place. I think he succeeds every season.

-posted by Jani?   (edited by rph)