The spade, or snow shovel, is an item of equipment required by any community living in the snow, particularly in the accumulation area of an ice sheet, where any object placed on the snow is eventually buried beneath a continually rising surface. Roald Amundsen, Alfred Wegener, R. E. Byrd, A. R. Glen and others have described the hours and sometimes days spent by members of their expeditions moving snow by hand. The Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition, 1949–52 was no exception. Some shovelling is unavoidable, being a consequence of natural accumulation, but much results from the burial of stores and equipment under snowdrifts caused either by the objects themselves or by their neighbours.