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too sad when one of the flight crewmen came over to inform him they were approaching the target area. The Navy pilot – his nametag said Daniels – wanted to know if somebody was going to come up front to watch the downhill run , as the pilots all called it. Grimes deferred to Mike Ruger, the head mountaineer, but Ruger was busy doing something with his gear and responded, “You go on up, Hilly. I want to get this thing straightened out before we land.”
    “Right,” Grimes replied. Ruger wasn’t as much interested in scoping out the terrain from the air simply because he’d been out here along the Mulock Glacier a number of times. He knew right where they were. But somebody always went up front on the flight deck to get a bearing on the area, and it was usually one of the mountaineers. Grimes felt comfortable with Mike Ruger. This guy was the best there was on the continent. German born, but raised and educated in the USA. They didn’t get any better than Ruger. Everybody liked and trusted him, as solitary as he was.
    Feeling closed in, Grimes thought to himself, what the hell , then unbuckled the harness and worked his way through the piles of skids toward the flight deck.
    The ride seemed to smooth out as the LC-130 descended down toward the glacier. The co-pilot, a pleasant young lieutenant with a Boston accent – Grimes couldn’t read his nametag – positioned Grimes in the trainee seat in between and slightly behind the pilot and co-pilot. From here, Grimes had a panoramic view of the whole world outside the aircraft.
    The view was sensational, and it always seemed to temporarily alleviate the fears Grimes felt about flying. His thoughts focused on the spectacle. Antarctica is an incredible journey. It has two basic topographies—one is perennial ice and snow, the other rock. About ninety nine percent of the continent is covered by a permanent ice sheet. The average thickness is estimated to be one mile. Ninety percent of the Earth’s total ice is locked up in Antarctica, as well as about seventy percent of the world’s fresh water. Yet it is the driest place on Earth. The coldness is so intense that it allows no moisture in the air, and even the dew that forms in the air cannot exist as droplets of water but rather as miniature ice crystals known as diamond dust. The snow, when it is present, is so powdery dry that is squeaks like Styrofoam when walked on.
    Grimes reflected about the climatology, the scientific wheels always clicking in his mind. The coastline along the eastern end of Antarctica is subjected to the most violent storms on the face of the planet. The ice is so abounding that it creates huge frigid air masses rising above the continent that blend with the prevailing warmer westerly air masses, creating the most intense storm belt on the planet. The permanent low pressure system is known as the Antarctic Trough, and the storms rage so violently that few living things can survive, least of all man. Occasionally, the storms make their way inland. When they rage over the face of the glaciers, the winds test the survival of even the fittest.
    Grimes understood how difficult it was to conceptualize the fact that if all the ice in Antarctica were to suddenly melt, it would raise the level of the world’s oceans about two hundred feet. An intimidating thought when trying to understand the power of Mother Nature. The Ice. It was what everybody called it without ever having to be told. As far as the human eye could see, everything was coated by it, and as he peered through the checkered Plexiglas window panels of the LC-130, it left him with the impression that the whole world was one crystalline mass.
    The plane began to bank, and it interrupted his sobering thoughts. The pilot, who up to this time hadn’t said a word to Grimes, cast him a brief acknowledging smile, then went right back to the task at hand. As the aircraft came out of its bank between two magnificent spires, the Mulock Glacier