The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard (online e reader .txt) 📗

pressure above the Cloudmaker. The Last Return Party took 7½ days: the Polar Party 10 days: the latter had been 25½ days longer on the plateau than the former. Owing to their slow progress down the glacier the Polar Party went on short rations for the first and last time until they camped on March 19: with the exception of these days they had either their full, or more than their full ration until that date.

Until they reached the Barrier on their return journey the weather can be described neither as abnormal nor as unexpected. There were 300 statute miles (260 geo.) to be covered to One Ton Depot, and 150 statute miles (130 geo.) more from One Ton to Hut Point. They had just picked up one week’s food for five men: between the Beardmore and One Ton were three more depots each with one week’s food for five men. They were four men: their way was across the main body of the Barrier out of sight of land, and away from any immediate influence of the comparatively warm sea ahead of them. Nothing was known of the weather conditions in the middle of the Barrier at this time of year, and no one suspected that March conditions there were very cold. Shackleton turned homeward on January 10: reached his Bluff Depot on February 23, and Hut Point on February 28.

Wilson’s diary continues:

“February 18. We had only five hours’ sleep. We had butter and biscuit and tea when we woke at 2 p.m., then came over the Gap entrance to the pony-slaughter camp, visiting a rock moraine of Mt. Hope on the way.”

“February 19. Late in getting away after making up new 10-foot sledge and digging out pony meat. We made 5½ m. on a very heavy surface indeed.”341

This bad surface is the feature of their first homeward marches on the Barrier. From now onwards they complain always of the terrible surfaces, but a certain amount of the heavy pulling must be ascribed to their own weakness. In the low temperatures which occurred later bad surfaces were to be expected: but now the temperatures were not really low, about zero to −17°: fine clear days for the most part and, a thing to be noticed, little wind. They wanted wind, which would probably be behind them from the south. “Oh! for a little wind,” Scott writes. “E. Evans evidently had plenty.” He was already very anxious.

“If this goes on we shall have a bad time, but I sincerely trust it is only the result of this windless area close to the coast and that, as we are making steadily outwards, we shall shortly escape it. It is perhaps premature [Feb. 19] to be anxious about covering distance. In all other respects things are improving. We have our sleeping-bags spread on the sledge and they are drying, but, above all, we have our full measure of food again. Tonight we had a sort of stew fry of pemmican and horseflesh, and voted it the best hoosh we had ever had on a sledge journey. The absence of poor Evans is a help to the commissariat, but if he had been here in a fit state we might have got along faster. I wonder what is in store for us, with some little alarm at the lateness of the season.”

And on February 20, when they made 7 miles:

“At present our sledge and ski leave deeply ploughed tracks which can be seen winding for miles behind. It is distressing, but as usual trials are forgotten when we camp, and good food is our lot. Pray God we get better travelling as we are not so fit as we were, and the season is advancing apace.”

And on February 21:

“We never won a march of 8½ miles with greater difficulty, but we can’t go on like this.”342

A breeze suddenly came away from S. S. E., force 4 to 6 at 11 a.m. on February 22, and they hoisted the sail on the sledge they had just picked up. They immediately lost the tracks they were following, and failed to find the cairns and camp remains which they should have picked up if they had been on the right course, which was difficult here owing to the thick weather we had on the outward march. Bowers was sure they were too near the land and they steered out, but still failed to pick up the line on which their depots and their lives depended. Scott was convinced they were outside, not inside the line. The next morning Bowers took a round of angles, and they came to the conclusion, on slender evidence, that they were still too near the land. They had an unhappy march still off the tracks, “but just as we decided to lunch, Bowers’ wonderful sharp eyes detected an old double lunch cairn, the theodolite telescope confirmed it, and our spirits rose accordingly.”343 Then Wilson had another “bad attack of snow-glare: could hardly keep a chink of eye open in goggles to see the course. Fat pony hoosh.”344 This day they reached the Lower Barrier Depot.

Sledging in a High Wind⁠—E. A. Wilson

They were in evil case, but they would have been all right, these men, if the cold had not come down upon them, a bolt quite literally from the blue of a clear sky: unexpected, unforetold and fatal. The cold itself was not so tremendous until you realize that they had been out four months, that they had fought their way up the biggest glacier in the world in feet of soft snow, that they had spent seven weeks under plateau conditions of rarefied air, big winds and low temperatures, and they had watched one of their companions die⁠—not in a bed, in a hospital or ambulance, nor