The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard [free ebooks for android TXT] 📗

hard. The immediate test was the bad surface, and this was the result of the crystals which covered the ground.

Simpson has worked out301 that there is an almost constant pressure gradient driving the air on the plateau northwards parallel to the 146° E. meridian, and parallel also to the probable edge of the plateau. The mean velocity for the months of this December and January was about 11 miles an hour. During this plateau journey Scott logged wind force 5 and over on 23 occasions, and this wind was in their faces from the Beardmore to the Pole, and at their backs as they returned. A low temperature when it is calm is paradise compared to a higher temperature with a wind, and it is this constant pitiless wind, combined with the altitude and low temperatures, which has made travelling on the Antarctic plateau so difficult.

While the mean velocity of wind during the two midsummer months seems to be fairly constant, there is a very rapid fall of temperature in January. The mean actual temperature found on the plateau this year in December was −8.6°, the minimum observed being −19.3°. Simpson remarks that “it must be accounted as one of the wonders of the Antarctic that it contains a vast area of the earth’s surface where the mean temperature during the warmest month is more than 8° below the Fahrenheit zero, and when throughout the month the highest temperature was only +5.5° F.”302 But the mean temperature on the plateau dropped 10° in January to −18.7°, the minimum observed being −29.7°. These temperatures have to be combined with the wind force described above to imagine the conditions of the march. In the light of Scott’s previous plateau journey303 and Shackleton’s Polar Journey304 this wind was always expected by our advance parties. But there can be no doubt that the temperature falls as solar radiation decreases more rapidly than was generally supposed. Scott probably expected neither such a rapid fall of temperature, nor the very bad surfaces, though he knew that the plateau would mean a trying time, and indeed it was supposed that it would be much the hardest part of the journey.

On the night of January 15, Scott wrote “it ought to be a certain thing now, and the only appalling possibility the sight of the Norwegian flag forestalling ours.”305 They were 27 miles from the Pole.

The story of the next three days is taken from Wilson’s diary:

“January 16. We got away at 8 a.m. and made 7.5 miles by 1:15, lunched, and then in 5.3 miles came on a black flag and the Norwegians’ sledge, ski, and dog tracks running about N. E. and S. W. both ways. The flag was of black bunting tied with string to a fore-and-after which had evidently been taken off a finished-up sledge. The age of the tracks was hard to guess but probably a couple of weeks⁠—or three or more. The flag was fairly well frayed at the edges. We camped here and examined the tracks and discussed things. The surface was fairly good in the forenoon −23° temperature, and all the afternoon we were coming downhill with again a rise to the W., and a fall and a scoop to the east where the Norwegians came up, evidently by another glacier.”

Amundsen’s Polheim⁠—E. A. Wilson

“January 17. We camped on the Pole itself at 6:30 p.m. this evening. In the morning we were up at 5 a.m. and got away on Amundsen’s tracks going S. S. W. for three hours, passing two small snow cairns, and then, finding the tracks too much snowed up to follow, we made our own beeline for the Pole: camped for lunch at 12:30 and off again from 3 to 6:30 p.m. It blew from force 4 to 6 all day in our teeth with temperature −22°, the coldest march I ever remember. It was difficult to keep one’s hands from freezing in double woollen and fur mitts. Oates, Evans, and Bowers all have pretty severe frostbitten noses and cheeks, and we had to camp early for lunch on account of Evans’ hands. It was a very bitter day. Sun was out now and again, and observations taken at lunch, and before and after supper, and at night, at 7 p.m. and at 2 a.m. by our time. The weather was not clear, the air was full of crystals driving towards us as we came south, and making the horizon grey and thick and hazy. We could see no sign of cairn or flag, and from Amundsen’s direction of tracks this morning he has probably hit a point about 3 miles off. We hope for clear weather tomorrow, but in any case are all agreed that he can claim prior right to the Pole itself. He has beaten us in so far as he made a race of it. We have done what we came for all the same and as our programme was made out. From his tracks we think there were only 2 men, on ski, with plenty of dogs on rather low diet. They seem to have had an oval tent. We sleep one night at the Pole and have had a double hoosh with some last bits of chocolate, and X’s cigarettes have been much appreciated by Scott and Oates and Evans. A tiring day: now turning into a somewhat starchy frozen bag. Tomorrow we start for home and shall do our utmost to get back in time to send the news to the ship.”

“January 18. Sights were taken in the night, and at about 5 a.m. we turned out and marched from this night camp about 3¾ miles back in a S. E.ly direction to a spot which we judged from