Saturday, 11 November 1911

Scott

At Camp 8, Scott wrote, "It cleared somewhat just before the start of our march, but the snow which had fallen in the day remained soft and flocculent on the surface. Added to this we entered on an area of soft crust between a few scattered hard sastrugi. In pits between these in places the snow lay in sandy heaps. A worse set of conditions for the ponies could scarcely be imagined. Nevertheless they came through pretty well, the strong ones excellently, but the crocks had had enough at 9 1/2 miles. Such a surface makes one anxious in spite of the rapidity with which changes take place. I expected these marches to be a little difficult, but not near so bad as to-day."

"I wish the sky would clear. In spite of the surface, the dogs ran up from the camp before last, over 20 miles, in the night. They are working splendidly so far." [1]


Amundsen

Taking an observation on the way to the Pole. At the end of the sledge in the foreground can be seen a distance wheel, propped up. [2]

Bjaaland "suggested we do 25 miles a day, but got the reply that this could not be risked for the sake of the dogs." [3]

Amundsen did increase the daily march to twenty miles, three days for a degree of latitude, and this, he noted, "we polish off ... in 5 hours. With cairn building, 6 1/2 hours in all. The night is thus long. It doesn't seem to strain the dogs. They are a little thinner, but in better condition than ever." [4]

"Heard unpleasant thundering in the ice in the distance," added Bjaaland, "now and then it seemed as if it was beneath us. It began at 4 o'clock but by 8 nothing was heard. Can it be the tide or is it the glacier that is advancing?" [5]

Prestrud's instructions had been to proceed in a north-easterly course from the depot, but as he suspected that land was to be found directly east, and since the dogs were running well, he changed direction. They broke camp in a thick fog. "At 11 a.m.," he wrote later, "we passed the easternmost flag, at five geographical miles from the depot, and then we found ourselves on untrodden ground." [6]

"Stubberud, who for the first day or two after leaving the depot had been constantly stretching himself on tiptoe and looking out for mountain-tops, finally gave it as his heartfelt conviction that this King Edward Land we were hunting for was only a confounded 'Flyaway Land,' which had nothing to do with reality. We others were not yet quite prepared to share this view; for my own part, in any case, I was loath to give up the theory that assumed a southward continuation of King Edward Land along the 158th meridian; this theory had acquired a certain force during the winter, and was mainly supported by the fact that on the second depot journey we had seen, between the 81st and 82nd parallels, some big pressure-ridges, which suggested the presence of bare land in a south-easterly direction."

Late in the morning, Prestrud's Eastern party reached the 80° depot laid earlier in the year. "Captain Amundsen had promised to leave a brief report when the southern party left here, and the first thing we did on arrival was, of course, to search for the document in the place agreed upon. There were not many words on the little slip of paper, but they gave us the welcome intelligence: 'All well so far.'" [7]


Notes:

[1] R.F. Scott, diary, 11 November, 1911, quoted in Scott's Last Expedition : the Journals, v.1.
[2] Roald Amundsen Bildearkiv, Nasjonalbiblioteket.
[3] Olav Bjaaland, diary, 12 November, 1911, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.430.
[4] Roald Amundsen, diary, 12 November, 1911, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.437.
[5] Olav Bjaaland, diary, 12 November, 1911, quoted by Roland Huntford in Race for the South Pole : the expedition diaries of Scott and Amundsen (London : Continuum, c2010), p.119. Sixty years later, in 1977-78, the US Antarctic Research Program was to prove, when they drilled a borehole through the ice to the underlying water, that the Barrier was in fact afloat, and affected by the tides.
[6] Kristian Prestrud, "The Eastern Sledge Journey", in Roald Amundsen's The South Pole, ch.15. Note that the date is given as 12th November; see Hinks' note on dates in "The Observations of Amundsen and Scott at the South Pole" (The Geographical Journal, April 1944, p.169).