Saturday, 18 November 1911

Scott

Wright with Chinaman, in earlier days at Cape Evans, photographed by Ponting. [1]

Scott, Oates reported, "had a breeze up with Bowers ... about the loads," accusing Bowers of deliberately overloading Scott's pony in order to save his own. Oates, too, had "had words with Scott" that day. "He's a very difficult man to get on with," Oates added. [2] "Scott now realises what awful cripples our ponies are and carries a face like a tired seaboot in consequence."

Scott himself admitted, "I had a panic that we were carrying too much food and this morning we have discussed the matter and decided we can leave a sack." [3]

Scott, Cherry thought, "had begun to feel very doubtful whether the ponies will do their job & evidently thinks Amundsen with his dogs may be doing much better." [4]

"Oates gives Chinaman at least three days," noted Scott, "and Wright says he may go for a week. This is slightly inspiriting, but how much better would it have been to have had ten really reliable beasts! It's touch and go whether we scrape up to the Glacier, meanwhile we get along somehow. At any rate the bright sunshine makes everything look more hopeful."


Amundsen

The Axel Heiberg Glacier. This aerial photograph was taken during the summer of 1956-57. [5]

The dogs climbed the pass easily. On the other side was a descent of about 800 feet, and the sledges had to be braked with ropes around the runners. Then came a small glacier, and another climb so steep that they had to relay and "harness all [42] dogs before two sledges at a time," wrote Amundsen, "and still they found it hard." [6] At the top was another pass; the run down from this, Bjaaland wrote, was "more violent than the first, so dogs and sledges ran into each other. Broke the bow of my sledge and the stern of Hassel's." [7]

They now turned slightly westwards, towards a mountain which Amundsen first called Haakonshallen but later changed to Mount Don Pedro Christophersen after his benefactor. Running suddenly out of the pass, the ground seemed to open up at their feet, revealing "a huge, mighty glacier, absolutely fjord-like, running East-West." [8] It would not be an easy way up, after all.

Mount Pedro Christophersen, 1911. [9]

In the evening, they had difficulty finding a place to camp; when they found a place big enough, they had to tramp down the loose snow before they could pitch their tent, under Haakonshallen with its "mighty ridges," as Bjaaland put it, "that stretched their 15,000 feet up to God." [10]

If only he had listened to the dogs, Amundsen thought, they could have "followed this glacier right up to the tent site we have this evening. Ah, well, we couldn't have done it that way under two days either. [But] this is the glacier that will be our way back when we come down from the plateau." [11]

Amundsen wrote little about the English, but Scott must have been on his mind. Hassel wrote in his diary of bickering between Amundsen and Bjaaland, what Hassel called "a small settling of accounts". Apparently things got to such a pitch that Bjaaland was ordered to leave the polar party, and Hassel to accompany him back to Framheim, as Bjaaland could not navigate. Bjaaland then, Hassel wrote, "ate humble pie and pleaded with the Captain to reverse his decision, which Amundsen then did. However, he reiterated that he would not stand being contradicted." [12]


Notes:

[1] Scott Polar Research Institute.
[2] L.E.G. Oates, diary, 18 November, 1911, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.424.
[3] R.F. Scott, diary, 18 November, 1911, quoted in Scott's Last Expedition, v.1.
[4] Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, ch.IX.
[5] Wikipedia.
[6] Roald Amundsen, diary, 19 November, 1911, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.442.
[7] Olav Bjaaland, diary, 19 November, 1911, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.442.
[8] Roald Amundsen, diary, 19 November, 1911, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.442.
[9] Roald Amundsen Bildearkiv, Nasjonalbiblioteket.
[10] Olav Bjaaland, diary, 19 November, 1911, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.445.
[11] Roald Amundsen, diary, 19 November, 1911, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.446.
[12] Sverre Hassel, diary, 19 November, 1911, quoted by Tor Bomann-Larsen in Roald Amundsen (Stroud, Gloucestershire : Sutton, c2006, c1995), p.107. Note that Huntford does not mention this episode in either Scott and Amundsen or Race for the South Pole, nor does it appear in the Vågemot transcription of Hassel's diary.