Brennan Brunner -- the McMurdo field safety supervisor we met earlier in Happy Camper school -- has plans for me. If Brennan says it’ll be good, it’ll be good.

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At 1330 I present at the Science Support building. I meet my new guide for the day, Eric Knox. We are to explore an icefalls -- a frozen waterfall -- on the south side of Hut Point, which hosts both the U.S. and New Zealand bases on its tip. We load our gear into a waiting "taxi." Taxis here are ordinary vans, but they are mounted on huge tires and require significant athleticism just to get in: The floors are a good four feet off the ground.

As we drive over the dusty ridge to Scott Base -- the New Zealand presence here -- and down onto the sea ice, I ask Eric how he wound up here, coming from Washington State. I remark that there are a few hills there."A few," he chuckles. He got hooked on climbing at 16, he said, and never looked back. That is passion, always to be respected. We stop at a row of waiting snowmobiles. We take the covers off two, load them up and head out a mile or two to the icefalls we will explore for the rest of the afternoon.

I note with pleasure that the climbing gear is somewhat familiar to me, and that I still remember a good bit of what I had been taught by Susan Detweiler some days earlier. Learning new skills or other knowledge is to me one of the finer things in life. It is one of the reasons I open my eyes every morning: What can I learn today?

Roped up, we climb the smooth snow to the side of the icefalls, then approach them cautiously from the top. Some crevasses are obvious even when hidden under the snow -- a linear depression gives them away. Others are completely concealed --: the dangerous ones. During the afternoon I will abruptly locate one of these; fortunately, a small one which swallows a leg, and only that. Even that was quite startling until I could assess the extent of the hazard.

We pick our way about, approaching the lips of several crevasses, but they all are solidly filled in. It seems that we are a high deposition area, and the crevasses are filled in as they open. Time passes, and it begins to look as if this trip will not bear much fruit. It is not hard for me to make my peace with this, since just being here is reward enough. I remark to Eric that it is not hard to stomach that most people pay handsomely to do what we are both -- in different way s-- doing as part of our jobs.

After a few hours we have made a substantial survey of this falls’ crevasse inventory, so we start down the side of the falls opposite our ascension. As we cross a small, filled-in crevasse running across the slope -- gingerly, since what looks like fill for a crevasse can actually be a fragile false floor -- an opening appears to one side, and we hit pay dirt: The crevasse has not been filled completely.

Eric descends a hundred feet down a 60-degree slope, which also puts him under a roof. He wanders around, disappearing from my view from the top, and then climbs out again. It is my turn.

I let myself down the slope. Then, still roped to a snow anchor near Eric, I look around. I am in a "room" about 30 by 50 feet. My first thought is that this is a baroque, monochrome art installation created by one of my demented colleagues. This impression quickly fades: There is far too much variety, detail, and imagination at work here for that.

As I slowly move about, trying to soak this in, a more solemn and reverential mood takes hold, and my metaphor changes accordingly: crypt and catacomb come to mind, even chapel. The difficulty we had in locating this, the closeness of missing it altogether -- we almost descended the way we had come -- combine to reinforce this sense of secrecy and privacy.

As I turn to climb back out and up, I have the strong impression that we did not find this place. It was shown us.

Tomorrow: The South Pole