Shackleton's Endurance

Every February Mark's family meets in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the Munising Ice Fest, a long weekend of cross-country skiing and climbing frozen waterfalls in subzero temperatures.

You have to really love the cold to want to climb ice. It requires putting on several layers of clothing, procuring the necessary gear (harness, crampons, two pick axes, and a helmet), and hiking out to a frozen waterfall. Walls of ice are unforgiving, and don't much care how fit you are or how far you drive to climb them - they are cold and foreboding and will stand firm no matter how much ice you chip off in your attempt to scale the wall and conquer it.

We were exhilarated Sunday night, driving back to Chicago, counting down the temperatures ("Now it's -8!"), and returned from a weekend climbing ice to find...ice. The Chicago River was virtually frozen over, with geese like new penguins sliding around on the geometric shapes of dark black ice. River City's marina was completely frozen, and ice closed in on Mazurka's hull so that it resembled Shackleton's Endurance at the South Pole in 1915. Inside, cabin temperature was 28 degrees - everything was frozen, including all the faucets, pipes, olive oil, and contents of the fridge. It felt like an abandoned ghost ship, save for Hunter and Leo, their fur puffed up, looking a bit shell-shocked and thirsty - their water dish was a solid block.

We deduced that sometime after Saturday afternoon, the electric heater stopped working, probably when the river temperature became so cold that the water inlet froze and the heater could no longer pull in warm water to heat the boat. The backup furnace, which runs on diesel, also stopped, the fuel tube somehow bent. "This is my worst nightmare," Mark said, and started the engine - the quickest way he could think to start warming things up - and we plugged in space heaters. We heard the terrible crack of a pipe breaking; thankfully it was just the drinking water filter under the sink. Expensive, but not dire. We stayed up till 1 AM, when the cabin temperature had risen to 42 degrees, then went to bed on an ice cold mattress over the water tanks, which were probably frozen, too.

While I love climbing frozen waterfalls as much as the next girl, I like it even more when I know at the end of the day, we're going to hike back to civilization and drive back to the hotel, where there's hot soup and coffee and a sauna and whirlpool. Driving eight hours back to Chicago, I was looking forward to a nice, hot 6-minute shower, some clean clothes, and a warm bed. Instead, we lay down on a block of ice wearing the same three layers of clothing and hats and coats we'd worn all weekend. I tried to be grateful that I had a roof over my head when there were plenty of people sleeping under cardboard. It was all I could do not to break down sobbing. "I feel like throwing up," I told my husband in the darkness. He agreed. It was the first time in four months I thought maybe living on Mazurka wasn't such a great idea.

The next morning we worried about living on board without water. We considered which friends we could stay with. Mark said he would stay on Mazurka to make sure she was okay. My first thought was to put my cats in the car and drive to my parents' house till things heated up, but I thought again - I was married now. I would stick by my husband.

Shackleton told about the sound of ice squeezing the Endurance, locking it in a vice that eventually forced the crew to abandon ship and haul lifeboats across the frozen Antarctic tundra. It was one of these lifeboats that Shackleton and a few crewmembers sailed on an amazing voyage to get help and save the entire crew.

I doubt any of that crew ever forgot what it was like to walk away from the Endurance, abandoning her to the ice.

"What's the worst that could happen?" I asked.

"A pipe could burst and the boat would fill with water and sink."

We kept the engine running and space heaters cranked while I drove Mark to work and bought two more space heaters. By mid-morning we were up to 50 degrees. Mark came home just after noon and built a contraption off the dock to suspend the de-icer - a large bubbling fan - beneath the bow of the boat, which began churning the water, fighting the ice from squeezing the hull and potentially cracking it. For fun, and because it looked possible, I decided to test the strength of the ice off the stern and stepped right from the swim deck onto the ice. It held. Cabin temperature kept rising. By late afternoon the pipes had thawed and we had water again, but drains stayed frozen. We decided it was safe to turn off the engine.

That night, we slept in a warm bed, listening to the reluctant moan of ice as it released its grip on our home.

By Tuesday afternoon, cabin temperature was 71 degrees, and we had hot water and functional plumbing again. The de-icer had cleared all the ice from the boat. Hunter and Leo basked in their new sources of heat. Outside, it snowed and windchill remained below zero. By Wednesday, we were floating again.

When I told my friend Anne our adventures, she laughed. "Instead of trial by fire, you're going through trial by ice!"