Touching The Cloth
Until a field trip last summer, I'd never been north of Manchester, something I'd kept quiet on said field trip, as I was working on Arctic glaciers 500 miles from the North Pole on Svalbard. I wasn't scared. I was young and reasonably switched on, and a good shot for polar bears.

About two weeks in, I had to go on a trip to get samples from the side of a glacier. I'd been to the sample site a few days previously and it was safe, so the normally careful field guide let me solo it. I stuffed a radio in my pocket and took my ice axe with me, more as a stopgap against a hungry bear than to stop a fall and set off out of sight. Big Mistake.

Few minutes later, I'd arrived at the edge of the glacier, except the safe crossing point of the day before had melted completely, revealing a 1.5 m wide raging meltwater stream. No way could I wade it, it was jump or go home. As I stood on the bank a vision came to me. You know the cartoons where the character goes over a cliff edge and stays stationary until he realises he's falling? As the thought formed, that's exactly what happened. I launched myself for the other side as the overhang of ice underneath me gave way. I landed *just* on the other side, digging my axe in to stop me going in the drink. Phew.

So, eager to get out of there, I scrambled up the scree slope to get my samples. Rather than risk crossing back I decided to traverse parallel to the glacier until I got to a point safe to cross. I stayed high to avoid a repeat of the cornice incident, some 15 m above the stream. All was fine and dandy for a hundred metres or so, scree a bit loose but OK. And then everything changed. It was no longer scree, but a very fine layer of small pebbles over glassy water ice, with added teflon. The momentum of my last step carried me on to it. I put one step onto it and I was gone, sliding on my belly with increasing speed towards the meltstream. If I hit the bottom, I'd go straight in, lose grip quickly, and drown rapidly. My body would be cooled very quickly, and not even a thermal imager would spot me as I'd be carried back into the belly of the glacier. Basically my parents would be deprived of their 22-year old only son and wouldn't even have a body to bury.

Life slowed down. My heartrate shot up and I fought for my life. All the self-arrest methods beloved of mountaineering instructors would not work on this thick, glassy hard ice, and I had a crappy, blunt axe prolly used by Amundsen himself. I swung my axe as hard as I could in, like an ice climber, only for it to bounce off. Again and again and again. I knew I was going to die. It wasn't fair, but shit happens.

No fear, just fight until the end, even though it was futile.

I was fast reaching the bottom, and then something amazing happened. The fine bits of scree had built up under my feet, and as I reached the bottom of the ice slope, they gave me some purchase and slowed me down enough to avoid going in the stream.

I sat there, dusted myself off, and went back off again and finally found a safe place to cross. I thought I was home and dry, only I found myself in a maze of meltstreams, which I stepped or leapt one by one to rejoin the main group. Cue 3-4 more leaps for life.

Walking home, I reflected that it was a touch scary, but still more Touching the Cloth than Touching the Void. Just a matter-of-fact near-death experience. One I walked away from.

So when did I get really scared? that night was a party night on station, and my research supervisor got even more pissed than I and he started dry humping a huge stuffed polar bear stood in the station's hallway. Complete with sound effects, grinding hips and hard-on.

And then I shat meself prodigiously in pure terror.

Apologies for length, but I had to make up for the boss's mini trouserlump.
(mochyn, Wed 28 Feb 2007, 20:04, Reply)