Descending Trident Ridge toward the Crean Glacier. Photo: Peter Potterfield

As we worked down and across the Fortuna, I began to play with some contingency plans. The weather was just getting worse in every way rather than better. It was back to rain, which I didn't like. I was no longer nostalgic for walking to school, I was nervous about anything going wrong. If somebody tweaked a knee and stopped the team, we would begin the hypothermia domino effect until we were all blue-lipped and useless. True, we could rebuild camp, and true, each person had one last set of fleece pants and sweater that were quasi-dry in a plastic bag in the pack, but also true that those would be the final cards we could play in the dry game. Building camp in such conditions means camp will be wet to start. Pulling out the dry stuff means it will only be dry for a few more minutes. So, if we were going to go that way, I wanted the timing to be right. These South Georgia storms aren't known for being user-friendly. They don't stop on schedule and they don't warn before intensifying. I knew our ship would come into Fortuna Bay to check on us that evening. I started thinking we might use them for a bit more than a check. I also decided to get down to Fortuna Bay by the surest route I could, rather than the steep and spooky gully that the Boss had led Worsley and Crean down in 1916. With five teams hauling sleds I couldn't afford to be wrong about which pass or which gully we committed to.

We came out from under the ragged clouds and I began to see my way down to the bay. The wind seemed to be full-on chasing us now, with gusts strong enough to knock down the light folks. I looked back to Peter Potterfield, anchor man for my rope, locked in mortal combat with his misbehaving sled, but somehow making it all work anyway. Each rope was now dealing with the inevitable glitches that come from descending on skis and snowshoes with loaded sleds and gushy snow. And they were dealing by pushing on. When I next saw Tuck, he had grown a second sled. Jim Williams had added someone's load to his pack. We didn't need to talk about it; the solution to our problem was to get down NOW. Toward that end, I got weaving through the crevasse terrain that finally revealed itself and I began calling "Grigoriy Mikheev, this is the Crossing Team, come in please."