Our own adventure began on February 8, 2010. That dim morning I flew from the ship to the edge of Sjögren Glacier, a river of ice several miles across and half a mile thick that pours through a fjord into the ocean. I collected rock samples with Greg Balco, a geologist with the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California who hoped to reconstruct the history of how glaciers in the area have receded since the close of the last ice age. Our return flight to the Palmer was waylaid by the snow storm.

Had James, our pilot, continued toward the ship, he’d have risked not finding it—and being forced to land on dimly lit sea ice with no contrast, no shadows, no visual cues for knowing the height of the helo, its tilt, or even whether the spinning blades might strike the ice. “That’s how you end up dying,” he said.

Thirty minutes after landing on the island, James shut down the helo, secured its blades against the wind with ropes staked tight to the ground, and duct-taped foil blankets over the transmission and airspeed sensors to prevent them from icing over. After eight hours of waiting, we called it a night. I bedded down in a tent next to Balco—my bunk mate on the ship whom I hadn’t slept more than two feet from in the last month.

Morning one: Weather worse, wind picking up. We cut blocks of snow and built walls to shield our tents. We rationed our freeze-dried food to one meal per day. We ventured frequently into the blowing snow to take walks for warmth. Balco found a wooden crate sitting in the snow, filled with jars and cans—Leche Condensada and other items too rusted to read—supplies likely left by an Argentine expedition decades before.

Morning two: Three postage stamp-sized squares of chocolate for breakfast, a packet of freeze-dried chili for lunch. Icicles two feet long hung from the helo. The wind shifted directions, prompting us to move our snow-block walls. We passed around a battered Louis L’Amour novel and caught up on sleep—easy in our hypo-caloric stupor.

That afternoon, four brown birds drifted down through the gauzy white and alighted near our camp—sea birds called skuas. They picked at a saucer-sized piece of foil—a wind-shredded remnant of the blankets that James had taped on the helo. Finding it inedible, the birds departed—perfectly at home in this place, even if we were not.

It seemed plausible that we might wait for a week before anyone could fetch us. Food would run out, but at least we’d have plenty of fuel for melting snow into drinking water. One thing, however, worried me.

Among our 100 pounds of survival gear, my worry hinged on something weighing no more than an ounce or two: the rough-textured strips used for striking matches. The wet melting snow and condensation of water was gradually rendering them unusable. If we couldn’t light a stove, we couldn’t drink.