Mighty Bad Land: A Perilous Expedition to Antarctica Reveals Clues to an Eighth Continent
Four geologists and two mountain guides face the brutal beauty of West Antarctica eight hundred miles from the US main base. Their search reaches far into the treacherous mountains of Marie Byrd Land. During six weeks of living in tents and traveling by snowmobile, the team endures endless cold and furious blizzards. They cross ice fields and hidden crevasses, which one member of the team learns about the hard way.
What keeps them going in spite of these dangers? Will the mountains give up their secrets? Can these scientists find evidence of the formation of the ranges many millions of years ago as the giant continent of Gondwana began to break apart? Was a new continent, now known as Zealandia, created by this event?
Mighty Bad Land, told firsthand by Bruce Luyendyk, a former professor of geology, reveals his inner battles and challenges: he’s almost fifty, asthmatic, and fights chronic pain. Through deft storytelling, readers are invited into a land of emptiness, beauty, constant daylight, and unseen menace.
In 1989–1990, when Bruce Luyendyk led the first of what would become six scientific polar expeditions, his hero was explorer Ernest Shackleton who, in 1916, led his twenty-seven stranded men from Antarctica to safety. Although nearly eighty years after the time of Shackleton the author’s team lacks the life-saving GPS and satellite communication of modern exploration.
Antarctic veterans warn Luyendyk of dangers in Marie Byrd Land, or “Mighty Bad Land.” The author tells how his six-member team survived whiteout blizzards, endless cold, a fall into a crevasse, and breakdowns in cooperation. Nevertheless, the exploration efforts of Luyendyk and his team of geologists reveal important discoveries about the origin of one-hundred-million-year-old mountains, including a Gondwana origin for a submarine plateau underlying New Zealand and the southwest Pacific.
Bruce Luyendyk’s memoir, Mighty Bad Land (Permuted Press; May 2023), recounts the first of his three geologic expeditions in distant Marie Byrd Land (MBL, or Mighty Bad Land). Order this exciting book on Antarctic exploration and his personal journey on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Praise for Mighty Bad Land
Explorers who enter the unknown not only learn about a world no other has ever seen before, but they also discover themselves. Dr. Robert D. Ballard, Deep-Sea Explorer and author of Discovery of the Titanic (Exploring the Greatest of All Lost Ships), and Into the Deep, who finally discovered someone he thought he has known for the last 50 years.
Bruce Luyendyk is a highly respected geologist whose research took him on three expeditions to Antarctica’s Marie Byrd Land during the 1990s. He even has an Antarctic Mountain named after him. Mighty Bad Land tells the story of the first of these trips to one of the remotest places on earth in personal terms. You emerge with a true sense of the complex emotions and changing relationships that lay at the core of the field experiences. This is a vivid account of the challenges of Antarctic research which resulted in the discovery of a vanished continent: Zealandia. Luyendyk makes tough fieldwork come alive in this unique story. Brian Fagan, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of The Little Ice Age.
Mighty Bad Land is an unvarnished account of a scientist and his team exploring one of the most remote wild places left on Earth. Now retired, Luyendyk tells this story firsthand. Readers will learn from him what kind of people do science at the uttermost end of the earth and how they do it. They will follow his team, and see his personal challenges, on their first expedition. They’ll find the answer to the question: what does it take to prevail in Antarctica today? It takes the same sort of grit that it took 120 years ago from scientists traveling on the Discovery, Nimrod, and Terra Nova. Welcome aboard. — Antarctic Historian Edward J. Larson, 1998 Pulitzer Prize recipient in History for Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion.
With this intriguing narrative, Bruce Luyendyk has created a new genre, the Geothriller. Humans and their agendas are upstaged by rocks, glaciers, and continents, where all seek mischievous outcomes. Once you read this book, you’ll never look at a map the same way. Shelly Lowenkopf Emeritus Instructor, University of Southern California, and author of Struts and Frets
In this deeply personal account of his first Antarctic expedition, Bruce Luyendyk weaves a tale of adventure, peril, frustration, and awe. Mighty Bad Land is also a fascinating window into the interpersonal dynamics of a small, remote field party and the complex mind of its author. Edmund Stump, Professor Emeritus of Geology at Arizona State University and author of Otherworldly Antarctica.
Kirkus Review
“Vividly details the harshness and hazards of life in a ‘land of hypnotic chaos.’ “
”Luyendyk’s memoir recounts a geological expedition to the “pure wilderness” of Antarctica’s Marie Byrd Land. The Marie Byrd Land region of Antarctica is one of the most remote territories on the planet, a “pure wilderness experienced by few humans” that has earned the nickname Mighty Bad Land. For six weeks in late 1989 and early 1990, the author, a geology professor, experienced it as the leader of a six-person scientific expedition, encountering enough challenges to satisfy even the most demanding fans of nonfiction adventure. In Marie Byrd Land, “zero degrees Fahrenheit is a warm day, grandeur stirs disbelief, and in summer, there is no night,” he writes in his engaging account of the expedition. The goal of the enterprise was to investigate, through the analysis of rock samples, how the southern “supercontinent” of Gondwana split apart. To that end, Luyendyk and his team endured an eight-hour flight in a Hercules transport aircraft to the McMurdo Station on Antarctica’s Ross Island, where they spent two weeks preparing to “unearth the secrets of Marie Byrd Land.” The author is particularly adept at evoking the privations of Antarctic life—a McMurdo building “reminded me of a down-market ski resort,” while a colony of penguins “stunk like old fish.” The team’s sojourn into the eerie emptiness of Marie Byrd Land included such mishaps as one member’s falling 100 feet into an ice crevasse—“I almost died,” he told Luyendyk—and some tense interpersonal dynamics. Luyendyk struggles with his own demons, fretting over his “weight of responsibility” as expedition leader: “I felt frightened often, more than I expected, and anxious,” he later tells his therapist. There is some padding that weighs down the book, as the author re-creates every planning discussion with his colleagues, and lay readers may find the level of geological detail—as when the team members get into an argument about “anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility”—somewhat intimidating. But the journey is mostly a memorable one, leaving no doubt that, “In Antarctica, nothing’s under control.” Kirkus Reviews
Seattle Book Review
Mighty Bad Land is an excellent memoir. Author Bruce Luyendyk, geologist and namesake of Antarctica’s Mount Luyendyk, writes of his and his team’s dangerous, exciting, and eventful expedition to Antarctica. With the objectives of exploration and discovery, Luyendyk and his team are looking to find the when, how, and why of the supercontinent Gondwana’s split. After years of approval for funds, Bruce is beyond excited to undertake the adventure and opportunity of a lifetime: to explore the wilderness of Antarctica.
Reading this book, I was amazed at the sheer willpower of Bruce and his team to even arrive at this barren land. The book begins on a shaky plane from New Zealand to McMurdo Station, a base for scientists, researchers, and essential personnel in Antarctica. Immediately in this first chapter, you begin to see the grave danger Antarctica can pose, landing a plane on floating ice amidst a pending whiteout blizzard. Fortunately, Bruce and his team arrived unharmed, although a bit shaken. After settling into their dorm rooms and learning their way around, Bruce and his team are slammed with information on Antarctica’s conditions and safety procedures. After all, they have a very quick turnaround time before they must leave this base and go into the wilderness.
Just reading some of the weather classifications that Bruce and his team went through was incredible to me. With a good day at 19 degrees Fahrenheit and a bad day with a wind chill below -100 Fahrenheit, I still am in awe at how they managed to sleep in tents and simply survive. A testament to their dedication, drive, and grit to complete their research goals, Bruce and his team not only survived but thrived in this hostile environment.
The entirety of the book follows this team through their trek into Antarctica and back to McMurdo Station with their research samples. Along the way, the reader hears of team members’ conflicts, health issues, testimonies, and trials. This kind of terrain challenges one physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was glad Bruce dived into this aspect of his journey; it is one thing to make such an accomplishment physically, but another to do so under the adversity and conflict they faced.
Admittedly, I love true stories, so this book was right up my alley. However, all readers, especially those who enjoy adventure-type books and memoirs, would thoroughly enjoy this book!— Theresa Kadair, Seattle Book Review 4 Stars
Midwest Book Review