One of the pony snowshoes from the Terra Nova Expedition, photographed in 2009 by the Antarctic Heritage Trust. [1]Keohane's pony had gone lame. The going had started out well, but soon the ponies were sinking deep into the snow. "[This] afternoon," Scott wrote in his diary, "we tried our one pair of [pony] snow-shoes on 'Weary Willy.' The effect was magical. He strolled around as though walking on hard ground in places where he floundered woefully without them. Oates hasn't had any faith in these shoes at all...."
"Immediately after our experiment I decided that an effort must be made to get more, and within half an hour Meares and Wilson were on their way to the station more than 20 miles away. There is just the chance that the ice may not have gone out, but it is a very poor one I fear. At present it looks as though we might double our distance with the snow-shoes." [2]
Notes:
[1] Antarctic Conservation Blog, 10 August 2009.
[2] R.F. Scott, diary, 31 January, 1911, quoted in Scott's Last Expedition, v.1.
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