INNOCENTS ON THE ICE, A MEMOIR OF ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION, 1957 (SIGNED)
Niwot, Colorado: University of Colorado Press, 1998. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo, 6 x 9.2 in., pp, xix + 6 (maps) + 428. Illustrated with black and white photographs. Inscribed, signed, and dated (October, 2000) by author on half title page. Black cloth boards with silver title to spine. Very small chip and small crease to top of dustjacket spine. Award winner gold sticker to front panel of dustjacket; sticker is lightly rubbed. Protected in mylar. Near Fine / Very Good Plus. Item #85773
This account is taken from a journal that Behrendt painstakingly kept of his 17-month expedition to Antarctica in 1957-58. It was the Winner of the Colorado Book Award.
"John C. Behrendt is an internationally known scientist who has made twelve trips to Antarctica, traveling there in every decade since the 1956-58 International Geophysical Year expedition. Behrendt is currently a Fellow Emeritus and Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado-Boulder....
But it was the first trip in 1957 that was (his) life-defining experience. "You can only go to Antarctica for the first time once," said the tall, lanky geophysicist (Behrendt). The book's observations on everyday life in the confined, harsh winter world of the Antarctic earned Behrendt the adult nonfiction prize from the Colorado Center for the Book in 1999.
"I went to Antarctica the first time for the science and the adventure," Behrendt said recently. "But I didn't realize that adventure in Antarctica doesn't happen unless somebody makes a mistake." Those were innocent times, when the then-24-year-old graduate student and an equally youthful group of fellow scientists did "nutty and crazy things," Behrendt said. While they realized they were breaking new scientific ground, they failed to fully realize the hazards of working on the uncharted ice.
His ship froze in the Antarctic ice at the beginning of his journey, breaking the propeller screw and punching a hole in the side. Killer whales would pop through thin spots in the ice shelf, eyeing the scientists as possible penguin snacks before disappearing. They pulled a man out of a suddenly yawning glacial crevasse. There were mistakes - "we just weren't careful enough," he said - but no deaths. Behrendt, though, came close to being a victim of the Antarctic on a later expedition, one of several that he led. The wingtip of a plane in which he was riding hit a mountaintop. "We thought we were 3,000 feet in the air," Behrendt said." (from an article in The Colorado News).
Price: $35.00