Antarctica

MIAMI -- The explorers battled fat leeches and cliffs so steep and slippery, one false step could mean a plunge of thousands of feet.They navigated a raging, treacherous river. They even heard rumors of the Dugmas, a cult of females who load their fingernails with snake venom for attacks on outsiders.It sounds like an Indiana Jones-style adventure, but it was real.The expedition, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and conducted in November, took four Americans into the inner gorge of the Zangbo River, the world's deepest canyon, in a remote part of Tibet.

PALMER ARCHIPELAGO, Antarctica - Dorothy's right. This is definitely not Kansas anymore. Flung by the sea, I've sailed into the Land of Awes.To both starboard and port, mountainous islands rip skyward, jutting from water that defines navy blue. Only the sharpest, most jagged ridges expose daggers of anvil-black rock. Thick mantles of glacial ice smother the rest, concealing summits and slopes beneath mounds of glistening white.Inspiring as they seem, these ocean-piercing Everests are but the first fragments of the last land on earth.

SOUTH POLE, January 19, 2001 -- President Clinton today apologized to Antarctica.Speaking to an audience composed of the traveling press, Mr. Clinton said he repented of America's "sin" of neglecting this continent except when America paid a kind of improper attention to it. He regretted that during the Cold War, U.S. policy "subordinated the true interests of Antarctica to geopolitical calculations arising from the conflict with the former Soviet Union."Last...

Spring fever may hit hard this semester for Sam Case, a Western Maryland College professor who recently returned from sabbatical pursuing scientific research in frozen climates.Case, back at home in Westminster, is studying data he collected during a January trek to Antarctica, where he was a member of a research team studying human subjects in the extreme cold.In February, he traveled northwest to Alaska, where he ran 100 miles in the Iditasport ultramarathon and compiled data on the nutritional aspects of cold-weather athletics.

BYRD CAMP, Antarctica -- On the incandescent ice between the South Pole and the sea, Paul Mayewski is digging a hole the depth and dimensions of an open grave.First with a saw, then with a shovel, he frees blocks of snow hardened by eons of wind and heaves them to three men standing clear of the growing hollow.Nearby, three men cocooned in cold-weather gear assemble a towering steel drill.The seven men are the only living beings across thousands of square miles in this quadrant of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Washington -- The novelist who survived the Ice arrives on a day when the Baltimore-Washington area is paralyzed by the Slush.Schools in several districts are opening late. Morning rush hour is frenzied. Broadcast announcers break in breathlessly with weather updates. All because a light rain has fallen in the pre-dawn hours, adding a thin glaze to the ice and snow left over from a previous storm.But Elizabeth Arthur, who journeyed to the Ice -- Antarctica for the uninitiated -- to write her latest novel, is unfazed by this Mid-Atlantic madness.

Paul-Emile Victor, 87, the explorer considered the father of French polar expeditions, died of heart failure Tuesday on Motu-Tane, his private island and home since 1977 near Bora-Bora in French Polynesia. He made his reputation in the snow-blown climes of Greenland in the 1930s. Later, he explored Antarctica, where he became the guarantor of France's presence. During World War II, he worked with the U.S. Air Force as a paratrooper, perfecting a technique for saving troops on the "northern route" that assured the air bridge with the Soviet Union north of Alaska.

In his sweltering Baltimore home -- an un-air-conditioned former Pratt Library branch barely cooled by ceiling fans -- photographer Neelon Crawford sweats. And obsesses about The Ice.Since 1989, Mr. Crawford has made five trips to The Ice, as Antarctica is known, to capture on film the hardy research community that plumbs its glaciers, snow caves, icebergs and plunging crevasses. He photographs, mostly in black-and-white, abstract images of breathtaking natural beauty, the massive machinery of polar exploration, and the people who work there, insulated against the cold in poofy standard-issue parkas and bunny boots.

Auckland, New Zealand. -- This is about as far as an American can go to get away from it all. But it's not far enough. Across the street from the district courthouse here, there is a computer-driven electronic billboard flashing the latest developments in the trial of O.J. Simpson.Behind the scoreboard, a couple of local barristers have set up an ''O.J. Room,'' featuring giant-screen Cable News Network trial coverage so that they and their colleagues can sit and plot out alternative prosecution and defense strategies for the trial going on more than 10,000 miles away on the other side of the planet.

The two best things served up by TV today are on cable, and are far from mainstream choices. One is a brand-new three-hour nature documentary by Sir David Attenborough, whose programs about flora and fauna are as good as they get. Tonight he takes on his coolest subject yet: "Antarctica: Life in the Freezer." Earlier today, Cinemax kicks off a weeklong tribute to Harold Lloyd with a noon showing of one of most inventive full-length comedies.* "Day One" (8-9 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Remember the scene in "Network" in which Faye Dunaway handed out cameras to underground radicals to have them film life, and crime, from their perspective?

The Antarctic ice sheets are melting, the krill are disappearing, and tourists are tramping about on fragile penguin habitat. For the next two weeks, those problems and more will land in Baltimore as the city hosts hundreds of diplomats, scientists and others attending the 32nd Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting. That's the body that governs the use of Antarctica by the international community, protects its environment and promotes scientific research. Nearly 400 people, including diplomats from 47 countries, will confer at the Baltimore Convention Center.

Poles Apart: Why Penguins and Polar Bears Will Never Be Neighbors By Elaine Scott. Viking, $17.99. Ages 9-14 years. One might expect the histories of exploration and of animal populations here, but what Elaine Scott does so well is convey the basic differences between the Arctic and the Antarctic themselves. Why is the Arctic not a continent, when Antarctica is? Because the Arctic "is a frozen sea, surrounded by the frozen edges of many different lands. ... Antarctica ... is a continent -- a mass of land surrounded by icy seas."

Sources: "Exceptional astronomical seeing conditions above Dome C in Antarctica," Nature Magazine, Jon S. Lawrence, Michael C. B. Ashley, Andrei Tokovinin and Tony Travouillon; "Earth's best view of the stars - Antarctica's Dome C," The University of New South Wales, Faculty of Science; "An extremely cold extremely large telescope," Jon S. Lawrence, University of New South Wales, Australia; "2002-2003 campaign," and "Why Dome C?," Concordia, A new permanent continental station project. Research and Graphic by Cindy Jones-Hulfachor : South Florida Sun-Sentinel Panoramic view of Dome C, below, courtesy of Eric Aristidi, University of Nice, France

A Memorable Place A happy birthday trip to Antarctica By Ellen Johnson SPECIAL TO THE SUN When I was in sixth grade, my teacher read aloud each week from Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels -- a great book, which described many of the wonders of the world and Halliburton's adventures seeing them. This inspired a schoolgirl's imagination. Ever since that time, I've wanted to see the world. As a single woman, I carefully planned my trips a couple of years in advance. When people asked me what my hobby was, I replied, "Planning my next vacation."

Margaret H. Renoff, a homemaker and world traveler, died of Alzheimer's disease Sunday at Sunrise assisted living in Severna Park. The former Roland Park resident was 90. Margaret Houghton was born and raised in a rowhouse in the 1700 block of N. Calvert St. She was a 1932 graduate of Western High School and earned a bachelor's degree in education from the Johns Hopkins University in 1936. In 1937, she married Paul V. Renoff, owner of Renoff & Associates. For many years, she assisted her husband in the operation of the business, which designed and distributed electrical equipment.

The Ice Land cometh. Think it's cold here? Sometime this morning, Gus McLeod, a 49-year-old gonzo adventure pilot from Laytonsville, will point the nose of a pencil-thin, fiberglass fuselage toward Antarctica and embark on the most daunting leg of a planned 28,000-mile, pole-to-pole, first-ever solo flight around the world in a single-engine plane. Ah, Antarctica. The Great White South. The place even Eskimos regard as forlorn and where a trillion penguins waddle without fear. While Marylanders are busy braving icy sidewalks, McLeod is leaving behind the comforts of Ushuaia, Argentina, and taking the 30-hour risk of a lifetime.

After waiting five days for a rescue plane, a sick employee stationed at the South Pole will be flying out early today to get medical treatment. The Twin Otter rescue plane arrived at the National Science Foundation's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at 5:13 p.m. yesterday. The name of the male employee of Raytheon Polar Services based in Centennial, Colo., has not been released. Unconfirmed reports indicate he is suffering from bladder problems that could require surgery. The rescue effort had been delayed for five days because of bad weather.

The students leaned in, straining to hear the words emanating from the fancy speakerphone. The voice on the other end of the line - Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett - was beamed yesterday via satellite to Hampstead's North Carroll High School from Antarctica, where the congressman, five other lawmakers and the director of the National Science Foundation are wrapping up a visit to U.S. research stations to learn more about federally funded studies conducted on...

The students leaned in, straining to hear the words emanating from the fancy speakerphone. The voice on the other end of the line -- Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett -- was beamed yesterday via satellite to Hampstead's North Carroll High School from Antarctica, where the congressman, five other lawmakers and the director of the National Science Foundation are wrapping up a visit to U.S. research stations to learn more about federally funded studies conducted on...

The students leaned in, straining to hear the words emanating from the fancy speakerphone. The voice on the other end of the line - Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett - was beamed yesterday via satellite to Hampstead's North Carroll High School from Antarctica, where the congressman, five other lawmakers and the director of the National Science Foundation are wrapping up a visit to U.S. research stations to learn more about federally funded studies conducted on...