The story of the next three days is taken from Wilson's diary:
"January 16. We got away at 8 a.m. and made 7.5 miles by 1.15, lunched, and then in 5.3 miles came on a black flag and the Norwegians' sledge, ski, and dog tracks running about N.E. and S.W. both ways. The flag was of black bunting tied with string to a fore-and-after which had evidently been taken off a finished-up sledge. The age of the tracks was hard to guess but probably a couple of weeks—or three or more. The flag was fairly well frayed at the edges. We camped here and examined the tracks and discussed things. The surface was fairly good in the forenoon -23° temperature, and all the afternoon we were coming downhill with again a rise to the W., and a fall and a scoop to the east where the Norwegians came up, evidently by another glacier."
Amundsen's Polheim—E. A. Wilson, del.
"January 17. We camped on the Pole itself at 6.30 p.m. this evening. In the morning we were up at 5 a.m. and got away on Amundsen's tracks going S.S.W. for three hours, passing two small snow cairns, and then, finding the tracks too much snowed up to follow, we made our own bee-line for the Pole: camped for lunch at 12.30 and off again from 3 to 6.30 p.m. It blew from force 4 to 6 all day in our teeth with temperature -22°, the coldest march I ever remember. It was difficult to keep one's hands from freezing in double woollen and fur mitts. Oates, Evans, and Bowers all have pretty severe frost-bitten noses and cheeks, and we had to camp early for lunch on account of Evans' hands. It was a very bitter day. Sun was out now and again, and observations taken at lunch, and before and after supper, and at night, at 7 p.m. and at 2 a.m. by our time. The weather was not clear, the air was full of crystals driving towards us as we came south, and making the horizon grey and thick and hazy. We could see no sign of cairn or flag, and from Amundsen's direction of tracks this morning he has probably hit a point about 3 miles off. We hope for clear weather to-morrow, but in any case are all agreed that he can claim prior right to the Pole itself. He has beaten us in so far as he made a race of it. We have done what we came for all the same and as our programme was made out. From his tracks we think there were only 2 men, on ski, with plenty of dogs on rather low diet. They seem to have had an oval tent. We sleep one night at the Pole and have had a double hoosh with some last bits of chocolate, and X's cigarettes have been much appreciated by Scott and Oates and Evans. A tiring day: now turning into a somewhat starchy frozen bag. To-morrow we start for home and shall do our utmost to get back in time to send the news to the ship."
"January 18. Sights were taken in the night, and at about 5 a.m. we turned out and marched from this night camp about 3¾ miles back in a S.E.ly direction to a spot which we judged from last night's sights to be the Pole. Here we lunched camp: built a cairn: took photos: flew the Queen Mother's Union Jack and all our own flags. We call this the Pole, though as a matter of fact we went ½ mile farther on in a S. easterly direction after taking further sights to the actual final spot, and here we left the Union Jack flying. During the forenoon we passed the Norwegians' last southerly camp: they called it Polheim and left here a small tent with Norwegian and Fram flags flying, and a considerable amount of gear in the tent: half reindeer sleeping-bags, sleeping-socks, reinskin trousers 2 pair, a sextant, and artif[icial] horizon, a hypsometer with all the thermoms broken, etc. I took away the spirit-lamp of it, which I have wanted for sterilizing and making disinfectant lotions of snow. There were also letters there: one from Amundsen to King Haakon, with a request that Scott should send it to him. There was also a list of the five men who made up their party, but no news as to what they had done. I made some sketches here, but it was blowing very cold, -22°. Birdie took some photos. We found no sledge there though they said there was one: it may have been buried in drift. The tent was a funny little thing for 2 men, pegged out with white line and tent-pegs of yellow wood. I took some strips of blue-grey silk off the tent seams: it was perished. The Norskies had got to the Pole on December 16, and were here from 15th to 17th. At our lunch South Pole Camp we saw a sledge-runner with a black flag about ½ mile away blowing from it. Scott sent me on ski to fetch it, and I found a note tied to it showing that this was the Norskies' actual final Pole position. I was given the flag and the note with Amundsen's signature, and I got a piece of the sledge-runner as well. The small chart of our wanderings shows best how all these things lie. After lunch we made 6.2 miles from the Pole Camp to the north again, and here we are camped for the night."[306]
The following remarks on the South Pole area were written by Bowers in the Meteorological Log, apparently on January 17 and 18: "Within 120 miles of the South Pole the sastrugi crossed seem to indicate belts of certain prevalent winds. These were definitely S.E.ly. up to about Lat. 78° 30´ S., where the summit was passed and we started to go definitely downhill toward the Pole. An indefinite area was then crossed S.E.ly, S.ly and S.W.ly sastrugi. Later, in about 79° 30´ S., those from the S.S.W. predominated. At this point also the surface of the ice-cap became affected by undulations running more or less at right angles to our course. These resolved themselves into immense waves some miles in extent,[307] with a uniform surface both in hollow and crust. The whole surface was carpeted with a deposit of ice-crystals which, while we were there, fell sometimes in the form of minute spicules and sometimes in plates. These caused an almost continuous display of parhelia.
"The flags left a month previously by the Norwegian expedition were practically undamaged and so could not have been exposed to very heavy wind during that time. Their sledging and ski tracks, where marked, were raised slightly, also the dogs' footprints. In the neighbourhood of their South Pole Camp the drifts were S.W.ly, but there was one S.S.E. drift to leeward of tent. They had pitched their tent to allow for S.W.ly wind. For walking on foot the ground was all pretty soft, and on digging down the crystalline structure of the snow was found to alter very little, and there were no layers of crust such as are found on the Barrier. The snow seems so lightly put together as not to cohere, and makes very little water for its bulk when melted. The constant and varied motion of cirrus, and the forming and motion of radiant points, shows that in the upper atmosphere at this time of the year there is little or no tranquillity."[308]
That is the bare bones of what was without any possible doubt a great shock. Consider! These men had been out 2½ months and were 800 miles from home. The glacier had been a heavy grind: the plateau certainly not worse, probably better, than was expected, as far as that place where the Last Return Party left them. But then, in addition to a high altitude, a head wind, and a temperature which averaged -18.7°, came this shower of ice-crystals, turning the surface to sand, especially when the sun was out. They were living in cirrus clouds, and the extraordinary state seems to have obtained that the surface of the snow was colder when the sun was shining than when clouds checked the radiation from it. They began to descend. Things began to go not quite right: they felt the cold, especially Oates and Evans: Evans' hands also were wrong—ever since the seamen made that new sledge. The making of that sledge must have been fiercely cold work: one of the hardest jobs they did. I am not sure that enough notice has been taken of that.