Geologists from Planet Earth

The Omega man: alone in the Antarctic - Chris Carson

• Julie Hollis

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Chris is a geologist whose passion for the planet was ignited by a trekking trip to K2. Prepare for an absorbing tale of Antarctic fieldwork, traveling by icebreaker (much better than flying), battling katabatic winds strong enough to launch 200kg (400 pound) fuel drums, and the glorious, rule-breaking, solitary climb of a remote Antarctic peak. Chris's story is a reminder that sometimes, getting lost is the best way to find yourself. 

Teaching resources (questions prompts) for 12-16 year olds can be found here: https://www.tes.com/resource-detail/resource-13276404

Julie:

What do you know about geology? What does a geologist do? And who are these people who are so interested in rocks? In this podcast, I ask geologists from around the world to tell the stories that mean the most to them. And, well, it turns out they're not who you might expect. The remarkable things they've done, the experiences they've had, and the passion that every one of them feels for the planet that we live on. But it's not about what I think. You decide for yourself. My name's Julie Hollis, and you're listening to Geologists from Planet Earth.

Chris:

My name is Chris, and I'm a geologist.

Julie:

Hi Chris, welcome. What are you going to tell us?

Chris:

Well, I've been a geologist for most of my career. I got into geology largely as a result of traveling to the Himalayas when I was in my 20s. There was a geologist on that trip. It was a trekking trip to the base camp of K2, the second highest mountain in the world. And he was pointing out all these fantastic geological features in the mountains around us. And I got captivated by this. And I also liked the idea of working outside, working in the natural environment. One of the things that's most enjoyable about geology is the opportunity to go to places that most people don't get the opportunity to get to. And I've been lucky enough to do field work in Central Australia, Northern Australia, Arctic Canada, New Caledonia. But most of all, I've been lucky enough to travel to Antarctica for nine field seasons. And on one of these trips, the summer of 1998-99, I was invited to participate in the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition to the Napier Mountains in East Antarctica to map this particular area.

Julie:

So you travelled down by ship. What was that like?

Chris:

This trip, it left from Fremantle in Perth, Western Australia. Myself and my two Western colleagues, an Australian and an American, joined the Japanese expedition in Fremantle. We boarded a ship called the Shiraze, which is the Japanese Antarctic research vessel. Quite a large ship. I think it's about 150 metres long. We travelled for about two and a half weeks. Nowadays, of course, most of the expeditions fly down. They can leave Hobart and they can be at in three hours, which I think it lessens the experience considerably. One of the things I enjoyed about going down by ship is you get the full moods of the Southern Ocean, one of the roughest oceans in the world. And I've been down many times with the Australians, and we've had trips where it's been like a mill pond, and we've had trips where it's just been the most violent, rough, storm-ridden trip you can imagine. Fortunately, when we went down with the Japanese, it was pretty good. We had a few blizzards as we got closer. Of course, we were on a big trip, and it was no problems. It was an icebreaker, of course. And, of course, as you get closer and closer to Antarctic, you start seeing icebergs. You start seeing ice flows. You start seeing penguins and seals sitting on the ice flows. And that becomes more and more prevalent as you get further and further south over the course of days and weeks. So you get this real sense that you're going somewhere. You get this real sense that you're going on a voyage to the end of the earth, that you can't capture it in a plane where you could be there in a few hours. It's just not the same. And then you get into the ice and the ice breaking, which is a whole new experience as well. The ship gutters and shakes through what could be up to a metre of sea ice or more. It's a fantastic experience to see the changes going from Fremantle in Western Australia to the Antarctic over the course of a couple of weeks. That's quite special.

Julie:

And then they fly you off?

Chris:

Yep. We had our field camp on an island called Toner Island, which is very small, a couple of kilometres across and maybe three or four kilometres long. And the ship got as close as it could or as close as it dared to because you've got to remember a lot of these waters around many of the places in Antarctica are very poorly charted, if at all. So the ship actually stayed quite well offshore. Not that that's any guarantee that you're not going to hit something, but nevertheless, that's what they did. And they flew us off. They had big military style helicopters that they took all of our equipment, all of our tents, all of the prefabricated huts, all the fuel for the helicopters, all the equipment that we would need for a full field season. Then the small helicopters that were part of our trip, they got flown ashore. And then the ship left and went round to the Japanese, permanent Japanese base, which was a week or two sail around further to the west called Kawa Station. And we were left alone from there, yeah. It was a small expedition, 13 of us in total. We set up camp there and we were there for a couple of months.

Julie:

And what's it like living in a remote field camp like that?

Chris:

The Napier Mountains is a very remote location. Even today, it's rarely visited. The area where they set up the camp was subject to extremely bad weather conditions. We had terrible, terrible winds. We used to get what are called katabatic winds, which is cold air which runs off the continental ice sheet and just impacted the camp with these very fast, cold winds that came off the plateau. There was this one episode where we had a really major blizzard. Indescribable. I've never experienced winds anywhere like it, elsewhere in Antarctica included. We had wind gusts up to 50 metres a second, which I think is 100 knots. Really strong. If you were standing up, you'd get blown down. You didn't have a choice in it. And there were rocks the size of my fist getting bounced along the surface of the ground, you know, from the gusts. And there were full fuel drums were blown clear of where they were being stored and blown out across the sea ice, never to be seen again. And we had two helicopters that we used to fly around all over the place to do field work. They were both anchored down to the ground. They were bolted down to the ground for this blizzard. And the blizzard was so strong and it was buffeting the aircraft. One of the aircraft's tail got bent because it was unable to fly. You need two helicopters to fly anywhere in Antarctica, one to look after the other. You can't go anywhere with just one helicopter. And that's the reason we got stuck on this particular island. And that's what led to me feeling this claustrophobia. I couldn't get away from everyone. Before this big blizzard and the helicopter damage, we were traveling all over the Napier Mountains, visiting various theological sites. But then when that happened, we were stuck on this island. So we managed not to get too much work done. So we spent a lot of time in the in the huts. So it was pretty close living. We were just in tents in one hut, one small prefabricated hut. So, you know, you get sick of the sight of the people around you, or not necessarily sick of the sight of them. You just, you want to have your own space. You want to, you know, spread your wings and do your own thing and not have to live cheek by tail with people 24-7, which is the case in those small remote field camps.

Julie:

Especially in a place like that where you're just surrounded by this pristine wilderness, it probably highlights the contrast when you're stuck in this tiny little hut.

Chris:

Yes, there's a great dichotomy there. You know, you're cramped in tents or in this hut and you've got this vast wilderness around you. And that's what prompted me to, one day I got up And I was sick of all this close living. And I headed off without telling anybody. This is all strictly against all the rules. And I headed off to the south part of the island, which is about a walk of about five kilometers, or maybe not even that, three or four kilometers. And across the bay, across the sea ice, there was beautiful sea ice conditions, easy to walk across. And there was a mountain on the other side on the coastline. It was called Priestly Peak. I think it was about 900 meters high. It was this fantastic isolated peak. It was about a kilometer or two walk across the sea ice, maybe a bit further than that. And I set off to climb this thing solo without telling anybody. And we weren't allowed to go on the sea ice. The Japanese leaders of the trip didn't want anybody going on the sea ice. So I just headed off and just did it on my own back. And I didn't want anybody to come with me. I specifically wanted to just experience that vast emptiness by myself. So I headed across the sea ice. It's very easy to figure out whether the sea ice is strong enough to support you. And I'd been to Antarctica a few times before, so I felt pretty assured that the sea ice was strong and robust and wasn't going to break up anytime soon. I walked across this stretch of sea ice. I could feel the imaginary eyes of all the people at camp on my back as I walked away. And it was a dead still day. It was a beautiful, sunny, dead still day. It was one of those days that if you stop walking and the noise of your footsteps disappeared, you could hear the blood pumping in your head. It was one of those sorts of days. There was no noise. Of course, in Antarctica, there's no trees, there's no traffic, there's none of the sort of background noises that you take for granted or just ignore in normal day-to-day life anywhere else in the world. But in Antarctica, I've encountered this a few times, there would be this absolute silence. And I walked across the sea ice. The sea ice was sort of, you know, just crunching along and I'd get to the other side and there's this nice big sort of snow slope and a rock ramp that led up to the top of this peak. And I spent about three or four hours climbing and I got to the top of this peak and you could see to the south this vast ice sheet disappearing off into the distance with all these nunnatechs sticking up. through the sea ice nanotechs that observe mountains that have been largely submerged by continental ice sheet. And you can see off into the distance all these nanotechs disappearing into the distance. Absolutely awe-inspiring sight, these ancient mountains. To experience it by myself, I just sat there for about an hour just looking off into the distance. And this is an area where there haven't been many people this part of the world. And the sense of isolation, I could have been the only person on the whole planet that was that sort of feeling. And I remember when I was a kid, I remember watching this movie, this Felton Heston movie called The Omega Man. And he was the last person left alive on the planet. And that's what it felt like. I felt like the Omega Man.

Julie:

That's awesome.

Chris:

Sitting on this rock, it could have been on another planet. In fact, that's how I often describe Antarctica. It's the closest thing you can get to going to another planet without leaving this one. And that was the feeling. It was this overwhelming feeling. And I wasn't scared. I wasn't frightened. I knew my own abilities. I knew that I was safe. And I knew that everything was fine. I wasn't sort of hanging to a cliff face or anything. I was on this very stable platform of rock. And I just sat there for an hour and just drunk that in, drunk that feeling of peer isolation in a way that not many people get the opportunity to experience. And after a while, I came back down and walked back across the south and made my way back to the camp. And I suspected people must have known that I'd snuck off to do something that wasn't quite permitted. I was away for about 15 hours, I think. Oh, wow. I was away a long time. I was away a long time. It was a big day out. But our Japanese hosts were very kind. They just quietly turned a blind eye to the misbehaviors of the Western scientists. But my Australian colleague was very annoyed that I'd went off and climbed this mountain without him.

Julie:

Because he wanted to do it too.

Chris:

Yeah, he wanted to do it too, but I wanted to do it by myself. But it's just that sense of isolation. And look, honestly, there's not many opportunities to be able to do that on the planet. And that's one of the perks of the job, to go to places that people wouldn't otherwise get the opportunity to visit. I consider myself very lucky and very privileged to have had the opportunity to have done that in Antarctica. It's very special.

Julie:

Chris is a geologist specialising in metamorphic petrology and structural geology. After some years as a university researcher, he joined Geoscience Science Australia, the Australian National Geological Survey organisation in 2006, where he worked dating rocks, and later he managed the Antarctic Geoscience Program, where he also worked in marine geoscience. In 2017, he joined Geoscience Australia's Onshore Energy Program, working to understand the geology of sedimentary basins in northern Australia. My name's Julie Hollis, and you've been listening to Geologists from Planet Earth.