November 20, 1996

With all the preparations for sea ice work, I had missed my birthday as an event to be celebrated. The sealheads had offered to host a bash at their camp at Big Razorback and laid in a store of steaks and lobster tails for the occasion. Buck Tilley had to teach a sea ice training course, much like the one I had done earlier in the season. So, Steve Dunbar, did me the favour of taking me out to the seal camp. I was planning to also get some more recording done and to cook up a feast in honour of my 40th year. Steve, a colleague of Buck's and a member of the Search and Rescue team, also had to inspect a series of working sea ice cracks near Cape Evans--on a flagged route that sees a fair amount of traffic. The weather has been unseasonably warm and spring has come to Antarctica. For those science groups working out on the sea ice, the end of the season is fast approaching and it is a race against time and ice breakup.

As we rounded the south end of Big Razorback, "spider" cracks had developed; a network of radiating fissures measuring anywhere from 1/2 and inch to 8 inches wide. This is a treacherous prospect on a snow machine, so we approached the site with caution. The ice is still 6 feet thick in most places.

My roommate Jim Barker was on hand working with Don Siniff, Tom Gelatt, Dan Monson, Rob Jensen and Mike Cameron. They were gathered at the far end of the island, tagging seals and placing more transmitters on males. Steve and I left them to their work and sailed across the ice to inspect cracks. At Inaccessible Island, we encountered Buck Tilley and his sea ice class--they had wrapped up for the day and were going to hike to the summit. Unlike the name suggests, this island in the Dellbridge group can be reached from the ice. When the sea ice breaks up, there is no landfall, as its slopes plummet precipitously into Erebus Bay. Like Big Razorback the island is an igneous mass of sharp and rounded lava formations, with sulfuric yellow blotches and strata cutting contours in random fashion around its coast.

Steve and I worked our way over to the Barne Glacier, near Robert F. Scott's hut and surveyed a long crack which had opened to a width of about 12 inches. A Weddell seal had hauled out below the tip of the glacier. A light snow began to fall and our snow machine had been sputtering; the sky across McMurdo Sound was getting darker, amplifying the intensity of the glacier's blue crevasses. We headed back to the seal camp and Steve made for McMurdo.

I have never been much on birthday celebrations--memories of crying through most early years' rituals: mortified and embarrassed by the attention, much to my mother's chagrin. Being exceptionally introverted as a child has changed and I am more willing to give in and enjoy. This was to be a hell of a party. As the sun swung around Big Razorback a cadre of emperor penguins wandered into the neighbourhood. The sealheads and a couple of friends from McMurdo lolled about the ice photographing and watching these amazing creatures. Dan and I got steaks broiling on a makeshift grill we had rigged in the ice. We took turns turning the meat, and chasing off skuas who almost made off with the banquet on several occasions. These gull-like birds have a sixth sense for food, a bad attitude and a tenacity that is formidable. Juan Laden tells the story of a friend who had the last piece of a sandwich whisked right out of his mouth as he attempted to pull up his coat zipper!

I mention Juan because he secured some of the necessary ingredients for the party and also added tremendous humour and good cheer to the evening. The method of procuring, by hook or by crook, needed items for research and entertainment is a special skill of Juan's; a source of pride, indeed. He affectionately refers to this talent as "skuating." The following is as close to an etymology as I can figure:

SKUATE [v. tr., to recycle, to salvage, to extend the useful life of (thanks to Tracy Hamilton). Rare or uncommon usage, to pilfer. Based on the voracious foraging habits of the skua.]

The evening wore well into the next day; I slept comfortable on the floor with a thinsulate mattress and sleeping bag and camp pillow and an ant's eye view of the many bottles we emptied. I was awakened a few hours later by the sight of Tom, hovering over my in bright blue long underwear, a flannel shirt, baseball hat and sunglasses, "Scotch?"