Those of you who have been glued to the Polar Discovery website (bless you) already know of our Christmas-day hike to the 1911 stone igloo at Cape Crozier. It was great. We walked across the stupendous Crozier landscape, straight into a fog bank that draped us like a sheet. MacOps, the official radio folks at McMurdo, gave us the wrong gps coordinates for the igloo and led us out to the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, where we couldn’t see a thing. (We stopped before the crevasses started.)
We may have been lost, but we wasn’t bad lost. We knew right around where we was lost at. And we were armed to the teeth with technology. I whipped out the Iridium phone and called the paleoceanographer-staffed GPS Assistance Hotline that operates out of Santa Cruz, Calif., and we were on our way.
So, the funny part is that now we’re back in Christchurch, New Zealand. Chris picks up the weekend paper, and on the FREAKING FRONT PAGE, FOLKS, right under poor old Benazir Bhutto, is this headline:
Mind-googling rescue recalls ghosts of Antarctic heroes
No kidding. It’s totally cool to have the story picked up in The Weekend Press (“New Zealand Newspaper of the Year,” if the masthead is to be believed). On the other hand, it would have been nice if the reporter had actually talked – or even hazarded an e-mail – to anyone involved. Or perhaps just mention that the “quotes” he got from us were just text lifted from our websites.
No harm done, really, except perhaps for making us sound like a somewhat clueless “team of five modern-day penguin researchers” rather than a group of friends out for a Christmas-day ramble. And the cardinal sin: no links back to our sites. Bad reporter.
(Image: Viola)
surf.bird.scribble. 
For what it’s worth, I corresponded with Viola about it and let her know what the story was about. It’s a bit hard to get hold of you guys down south, as you’ll understand.
(Response: No harm done, really. For future reference, though, there’s a big difference between “he said” and “he wrote in a blog entry.” You’re far more likely to misread the story than mishear it. It would also be polite to acknowledge our blogs in your article, as I pointed out in a letter to the editor that you still don’t seem to have published. Bad editor.)
Welcome home, intrepid Antarctic explorer! Expedition III, which has been fascinating from the very beginning, truly rose to a crescendo and peaked with this adventure! The penguins were wonderful and I was absolutely glued to the screen, taking in every word you wrote, masterfully complemented by the Head Skua’s pictures–but I thought the whole Lost Mission piece brought out all of the dichotomies of your Antarctic expedition. Five scientists, in search of a 100 year old outpost. Alone and lost in a deadly white-out on the ice, saved only by a small piece of plastic technology and the ability to ‘think outside the box’! What a great end to the epic adventure! In the Army, there is a similiar legend, one that actually happened, of the Army Ranger unit that, pinned down by gunfire in Grenada, called in a saving air strike after making a long distance phone call to Fort Bragg. (You may have seen it told in “Heartbreak Ridge”, but it was really an Army unit–I’ve relayed that story to my own soldiers many times…) In any case, I just wanted to tell you how INCREDIBLY proud I am of you! The entire expedition was completely rivetting, both from a scientific aspect, (and getting that aspect across to the tattooed Jarhead is no mean feat in itself) but more importantly, from a human point of view–which was completely from your expert writing, complemented by Chris’ pictures. Awesome, awesome, AWESOME!!!!!!
And I love the bearded, resolute Polar explorer look. Next time you go, I will get you an appropriate Western hat, so you will have the whole Macready look down pat (Kurt Russell as the helicopter pilot in John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing” for the movie buffs out there) Classic!
Hey O,
Thanks for gluing yourself to the screen and coming up with all sorts of in-depth questions to keep us busy. Hoping to show you the rest of the pictures and trade survival stories soon. It’s funny, we found ourselves talking about “The Thing” more than once while we were camped out in the boonies. I’ll have to watch it again when I’m home. For now, I’m stranded in the briar patch of New Zealand for another week. See you soon – H
Sgt Rot Batty got it all right, this is a terrific image for the finale of your first Polar exploration.
As far as writing is concerned, your measured, gracious rap on the knuckles to the naughty reporter is a gem.
I was just off to deliver the rap myself but I wouldn’t have been able to come up with such style.
The Mummbler
We published the letter the day after you submitted it. It was run unedited, omitting my suggestion that we note in a post script that despite your assertions — still unchanged and unchallenged in your blog above — that I was actually corresponding with Viola at the time. Good reporters check and correct. Bad reporters, well….
(Response: Thanks for sending me the PDF of my letter to the editor in your newspaper. It actually had been slightly edited, but the gist was still there. I appreciate it. – H)