In Antarctic snowdrifts “one’s face became rapidly packed with snow, which, by the warmth of skin and breath, was converted into a mask of ice,” wrote Sir Douglas Mawson, in The Home of the Blizzard, his memoir of the Australasian expedition of 1911-1914. “This adhered firmly to the helmet and to the beard and the face; though not particularly comfortable, it was a protection against the wind. The mask became so complete that one had continually to break it away in order to breathe and to clear away obstructions from the eyes. Outside in the wind, at really low temperatures, it was scarcely possible to remove the casing of ice, and such attempts were liable to lead to painful scratches on the cornea by ice adhering to the eyelids.”
Experienced explorers knew what to do once in shelter: first break the ice away from the helmet “otherwise, when it came to be hastily dragged off, the hairs of the beard would follow as well.” Skin, too, was at risk: patches of superficially frostbitten flesh devoid of feeling “were easily mistaken by the individual for an obstinate remnant of the ice mask.”
