Project "Snow Cornice"

Abstract

The news coming in through small S P F radio transceiver as we cooked supper in a tent on the vast Seward Ice Field was not good. Definitely not good. It was the 15th of August. On the 27th, we had planned to fly 70 miles south to Yakutat, on the coast of Alaska, and thence 30 miles west to a beach near Sitkagi Bluffs, for further work on the Malaspina Glacier. But now the voice coming through the earphones reported in a jocular, almost light-hearted fashion, that the expedition plane, a red Noordyn Norseman, lay on its back in the middle of the Seward Ice Field-with its ski-wheels extended to the sky, its propeller bent, wing struts broken, and rudder crumpled.