Thursday, 4 January 1912

Scott

Here at 87°32'S, Lt. Evans, Crean, and Lashly turned back for Cape Evans. They were less than 150 miles from the Pole. "Teddy Evans is terribly disappointed but has taken it very well and behaved like a man. Poor old Crean wept and even Lashly was affected," Scott wrote. "I was glad to find their sledge is a mere nothing to them, and thus, no doubt, they will make a quick journey back." [1] Wilson was "very sorry for Teddy Evans as he has spent 2 1/2 years in working for a place on this polar journey." [2]

Oates told Evans, "I'm afraid, Teddy, you won't have much of a 'slope' going back, but old Christopher [Oates' pony] is waiting to be eaten on the Barrier when you get there." [3]

Evans carried a number of messages from Scott, to Kathleen, to the press -- "I am remaining in the Antarctic for another winter in order to continue and complete my work" -- and a verbal one to Meares, changing the orders for the dogs, for the fourth time. He wanted Meares to come out with the dogs and meet them between 82° and 83° S some time in the middle of February, in order to hurry the Polar party back in time to catch the ship.

The three men followed the Polar party for a few miles, stopped, gave three cheers, and turned for home.

Bowers found it difficult to keep up with the team, sinking sometimes to his knees in the snow. "It is a long slog with a well-loaded sledge," he wrote, "and more tiring for me than the others, as I have no ski. However, as long as I can do my share all day and keep fit it does not matter much one way or the other." [4]

"At present everything seems to be going with extraordinary smoothness, and one can scarcely believe that obstacles will not present themselves to make our task more difficult." [5]

Lashly wrote that evening, "We travelled a long time so as to make the best of it while the weather was suitable, as we have to keep up a good pace on the food allowance. It wont do [sic] to lay up much. One thing since we left Mt. Darwin, we have had weather we could travel in, although we have not seen the sun much of late. We did 13 miles as near as we can guess by the cairns we have passed. We have not got a sledge meter so shall have to go by guess all the way home." Cherry added here later, "Owing to the loss of a sledge meter on the Beardmore Glacier one of the three parties had to return without one. A sledge meter gives the navigator his dead reckoning, indicating the miles travelled, like the log of a ship. To be deprived of it in a wilderness of snow without landmarks adds enormously to the difficulties and anxieties of a sledge party." [6]

Back at Hut Point, Meares and Dimitri arrived with the dogs.


Amundsen

The Norwegians reached the Butcher's Shop and their depot of dog carcasses.

It was Helmer Hanssen, Amundsen wrote gratefully, "who, with his sharp eyes, discovered [the depot]. Had that not been the case, I don't quite know what would have happened. The place was completely unrecognisable -- just as if we had never seen it before." Their earlier visit had been in fog. "No, to travel blind in these surroundings is fairly dangerous. I thought I recognized the land yesterday, but subsequently it proved to be absolutely wrong." [7]

He also realised that he had "overestimated the heights of the mountains a lot in the misty atmosphere on the southwards journey." He decided, correctly as it turned out, that they were only twelve to thirteen thousand feet, not eighteen to twenty thousand as he had written to King Haakon, and which earlier Bjaaland "had found so damned difficult to believe." [8]

Stopping only long enough to feed the dogs and load the sledges with the meat from the depot, they "shot off, pell mell, down the slopes, the one worse than the other," as Bjaaland put it. The sledges were braked with ropes wound around the runners. They dropped 3,000 feet from the Butcher's Shop to the upper terrace of the Axel Heiberg Glacier in an hour and a half, having done 23 miles for the day. "[We] have our tent in a warm and cosy place where the sun is in the process of melting us," Amundsen wrote. "The dogs are resting contentedly in the sunshine having devoured a huge portion of dog meat plus pemmican.... Well, we are down from the Plateau again, and we are all extremely glad. We have been comfortable there, but we long for the 'Barrier', which is an old friend. Once down there, we count ourselves as good as home. We have got food there all over the place." [9]

They had been 45 days on the Polar Plateau.


Notes:

[1] R.F. Scott, diary, 4 January, 1912, quoted in Scott's Last Expedition, v.1.
[2] E.A. Wilson, diary, 4 January, 1912, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.475.
[3] E.R.G.R. Evans, South With Scott, p.207, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.475.
[4] H.R. Bowers, diary, 4 January, 1912, quoted by Apsley Cherry-Garrard in The Worst Journey in the World, ch.XVII.
[5] R.F. Scott, diary, 4 January, 1912, quoted in Scott's Last Expedition, v.1.
[6] William Lashly, diary, 4 January, 1912, quoted by Apsley Cherry-Garrard in The Worst Journey in the World, ch.XII.
[7] Roald Amundsen, diary, 5 January, 1912, quoted by Roland Huntford in Race for the South Pole : the expedition diaries of Scott and Amundsen (London : Continuum, c2010), p.224.
[8] Olav Bjaaland, diary, 5 January, 1912, quoted by Roland Huntford in Race for the South Pole : the expedition diaries of Scott and Amundsen (London : Continuum, c2010), p.225.
[9] Roald Amundsen, diary, 5 January 1912, quoted by Roland Huntford in Scott and Amundsen (New York : Putnam, 1980, c1979), p.503-504.