Approaching the Shambles Glacier in 1969 near the rock outcrops at the foot of Mount Mangin (Photo: Bill Taylor)
Journey Report of Sledge Golf – May 16th, 1981
John Anderson (GA), Nigel Hadley (Mechanic)
As the preceeding events leading up to 16 May have been reported by Stephen Tait, I will start from the 16 May, and I will relate my thoughts and experiences of the day of the accident.
On the morning of the 16th, John and Steve got up early and sized up weather and travelling conditions. After a discussion they decided to make a move. Although conditions were far from perfect, I personally think that this was quite a reasonable move as we were running low on food and we had run out of paraffin. Bob’s physical condition wag good, but I think, like me, he wished to get back to base. Steve and John proceeded to dig the outside gear out, and Bob and I cleared out the inside. I had taken the carburettors off the skidoos and dried them out, so I went outside fitted them and warmed them up.
When we started to travel, John led off, me second, and Steve, with Rob on the pillion at the rear. The progress was good, and everyone felt warm and comfortable, including Bob and Myself, the two unprofessionals.
After having travelled for some time, stopping for a couple of course checks, we came into sight of a rock outcrop, this I did not recognize, but I knew that it must be the range between McCallum and Lincoln Nunatak. When we got closer we changed course and came across ground that was difficult to negotiate. By this time Steve was in the lead and it was decided to change Rob’s position and to allow him to travel with John, I brought up the rear. After successfully climbing the incline the ground levelled and the surface was excellent. All this time the visibility was improving literally minute by minute.
It was at this time that I realized that we were too close to the rock and obvious dangers, at the same time this must have occurred to Steve as he signalled his intention to turn down the slope. Steve turned but the slope was steeper than it had looked and after travelling about 100 yds( one hundred yards) the sledge overtook Steve and roiled his ‘doo over. I then looked ahead to see John and Rob start to move forward. As we had just stopped the tow rope to John’s sledge had about 5 to 10 feet of slack. Before this was taken up I saw the back of John’s skidoo drop very quickly and the front rise high into the air. The skidoo and the occupants then disappeared very rapidly, taking up the slack of the rope to the sledge. This it did very quickly and it pulled the sledge up to the crevasse and into it. This all happened very quickly with no resistance at all in the above movement i.e. the sledge appeared to afford no resistance at all.
I cut the engine of my skidoo, and unclipped my short trace and stood up and waved and shouted to Steve who by this time had unclipped his sledge and was beginning to move towards me. I started to walk towards the crevasse attached to my long lead but Steve stopped about 20 to 30 feet from my skidoo and told me to stop. This I did and I walked back to my skidoo and met Steve. I told him exactly what had happened, and he took my bog chisel and and probed ahead to the crevasse. When he reached the edge of the crevasse and realized the severity of the accident he told me to start setting up the radio which was on the overturned sledge. This I did using ropes between my skidoo, Steve’s skidoo and the overturned sledge. I recovered the radio and started to set it up using the “V” beam. I tried to contact Rothera, but without success.
I was then attracted by Steve. He informed that John was still alive, but that Bob was gone. He informed me that someone should go down and try to assist Bob and that someone should organise the winching from up at the top. I told Steve that I would go down but the work that I had done with Ropes, and Jumars was limited to practicing in the sledging store. On this retort he descended himself. To prepare we had turned my skidoo sideways to afford a better anchor. Before going down Steve told me to attempt to contact Rothera again. I returned to the radio and attempted for some time to contact Rothera. I also sent out a Mayday, in the hope that another Antarctic base would pick me up and then contact Rothera. After some time I gave up and started to return to my skidoo. As I got there Steve emerged from the crevasse, very weak and in a distressed state. He told me that John had informed him that Bob had gone and that John was severely injured and trapped in the crevasse. Steve also said that he thought that John had died just after he had left him. We decided to try again to free the using the Jockey winch, but the skidoo anchor started to slide away.
We then stopped and started to try to weigh up the situation again. I was certain that by this point everything that was humanly possible had been done, and I think that by now had we been able to remove the Skidoo it would only have been to rescue a body.
By this time light was fast failing so we reluctantly went down to the over-turned sledge, and we started to make camp. We contacted Rothera at 1930 local time and immediately informed them of the tragedy. We had a restless night and the next day two base members came out to the scene and got us back to base.
Nigel Hadley