| SOUTH POLE adventures, South Pole expeditions, south pole |
Sample Passage from South Pole: 900 Miles on Foot
Pages 111 to 114
... Robert, nervous about being in the lead across crevassed ice, remained sandwiched between us during my two stints, leading only when he was sure the surface was solid.
As I looked around, I saw hundreds of sites clearly worthy of a whole day's exploration. I walked as if in a trance, hesitant to even glance at my feet lest I miss a tiny fraction of this remarkable and seldom-viewed land. I recorded in my diary that night, "Position today nearly opposite mouth Alice Glacier. Felt so much fitter & feet are definitely better - if only this left foot would let up."
Scott, manhauling over the same ground 74 years before, made for the Commonwealth Range until, upon reaching the middle of the Beardmore and encountering pressure ice, he was forced to change course toward the Cloudmaker. As he moved closer to the western edge of the glacier, he was able to view some peaks in the east missed by Shackleton. I wondered how he felt, travelling up the Beardmore with Shackleton's stamp on virtually every peak, valley and glacier within sight.
Shackleton, encountering blue ice and thinly bridged crevasses almost immediately, wrote, "... we have had one of our hardest day's work and certainly the most dangerous so far." Each of them in turn had plunged through fragile snow lids, saving themselves only by their harnesses. "The situation became momentarily more dangerous and uncertain. The sledges, skidding about, came up against the sheer, knife-like edges of some of the crevasses. ..."
December 15 - Day 43 - 444.9 miles. We travelled over névé for most of the day, donning crampons to cross the occasional patch of blue ice and polished sastrugi. Awkward after so many days on skis, I stumbled about, the sharp tines of the crampons catching tiny peaks in the rippled surface. I arrived at camp 25 minutes behind Roger. Robert was nowhere in sight. Opposite Hewson Glacier, just north of the Cloudmaker, we ate our meal in silence and, as the weather was fair, bivouacked between our sledges. To have one night's freedom from the close confines of the tent was too precious an opportunity to miss.
Robert, upon arrival two hours later, moved painfully, his pale face drawn from the day's rough ascent.
"God, you look buggered. What's the problem?" Roger asked sympathetically.
Robert winced. "My knee's bad. I caught my foot in a crack and fell. I could hear the bloody thing snap as I went down. It's damn sore, and my back hurts like hell too. I must've twisted it."
"You look pretty bad," Roger said. "Eat your dinner and get into your sleeping bag. We'll take a look at your knee."
Robert had wrapped a bandage around his knee hoping to provide some support. There was little more that we could do. Later, as we lay in our bags under the too-bright sky, Roger and Robert reviewed Robert's options.
"You'll just have to keep moving at your own pace. We can't stop," Roger said. "We'll keep an eye out so that we don't get separated."
"It's that damn sledge. It was all over the place. I think I'm going back to solid trace. There's no control with rope," Robert said drowsily as he closed his eyes to the pain and fatigue.
On this same day in 1911, Roald Amundsen and his four companions reached the Pole. As Amundsen described it, "I had decided that we would all take part in the historic event; the act itself of planting the flag. It was not the privilege of one man, it was the privilege of all those who had risked their lives in the fight and stood together through thick and thin. It was the only way I could show my companions my gratitude here at this desolate and forlorn place. ... Five roughened, frostbitten fists it was that gripped the post, lifted the fluttering flag on high and planted it together as the very first at the Geographic South Pole."
While Amundsen was celebrating his victory, Scott and his 12 companions were still floundering through deep drift 360 nautical miles to the north. The weather continued to conspire against them, forcing an early stop due to white-out conditions. Scott wrote, "... but oh! for fine weather; surely we have had enough of this oppressive gloom.".
December 16 - Day 44 - 463.15 miles. Reattaching Robert's solid trace while Roger cooked breakfast, I found myself looking forward to the day's advance up the glacier in the clear, mild conditions, and was expecting a smooth surface. Within half an hour I was forced to halt to tape a broken blister. Where this would have caused me great anxiety on the Ross Ice Shelf, I now viewed it with little concern. We completed six miles by the end of the first session, passing close under the Cloudmaker before stopping for lunch on a lateral moraine where the sun's warmth was evident in the surrounding meltwater pools.
It was about here that Scott, on December 17, built his midglacier depot, and it was also here that Shackleton camped, bruised and tired after having spent a day tumbling into crevasses and skating over hard blue ice...
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Sample Passages:
· The Beardmore
· Leopard Seal Attack
· Hut Point
· Epilogue
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