My attainment of the Pole

by Frederick Albert Cook

We laboriously picked a way among hummocks and pressure lines which seemed impossible from a distance. Our dogs panted with the strain; my limbs ached. In a few hours we arrived at the summit of an unusual uplift of ice blocks. Looking ahead, my heart pained as if in the grip of an iron hand. My hopes sank within me. Twisting snake-like between the white field, and separating the packs, was a tremendous cut several miles wide, which seemed at the time to bar all further progress. It was the Big Lead, that great river separating the land-adhering ice from the vast grinding fields of the central pack beyond, at which many heroic men before me had stopped. I felt the dismay and heartsickness of all of them within me now. The wind, blowing with a vengeful wickedness, laughed sardonically in my ears.

Of course we had our folding canvas boat on the sleds. But in this temperature of 48° below zero I knew no craft could be lowered into water without fatal results. All of the ice about was firmly cemented together, and over it we made our way toward the edge of the water line.

Passing through pressure lines, over smaller and more troublesome fields, we reached the shores of the Big Lead. We had, by two encouraging marches, covered fifty miles. The first hundred miles of our journey on the Polar pack had been covered. The Pole was four hundred miles beyond!

Camp was pitched on a secure old ice field. Cutting through huge ice cliffs, the dark crack seemed like a long river winding between palisades of blue crystal. A thin sheet of ice had already spread over the mysterious deep. On its ebony mirrored surface a profusion of fantastic frost crystals arranged themselves in bunches resembling white and saffron-colored flowers.

Through the apertures of this young ice dark vapors rose like steam through a screen of porous fabrics and fell in feathers of snow along the sparkling shores. After partaking of a boulder of pemmican, E-tuk-i-shook went east and I west to examine the lead of water for a safe crossing. There were several narrow places, while here and there floes which had been adrift in the lead were now fixed by young ice. Ah-we-lah remained behind to make our snowhouse comfortable.

For a long time this huge separation in the pack had been a mystery to me. At first sight there seemed to be no good reason for its existence. Peary had found a similar break north of Robeson Channel. It was likely that what we saw was an extension of the same, following at a distance the general trend of the northernmost land extension.

This is precisely what one finds on a smaller scale when two ice packs come together. Here the pack of the central polar sea meets the land-adhering ice. The movement of the land pack is intermittent and usually along the coast. The shallows, grounded ice and projecting points interfere with a steady drift. The movement of the central pack is quite constant, in almost every direction, the tides, currents and winds each giving momentum to the floating mass. The lead is thus the breaking line between the two bodies of ice. It widens as the pack separates, and narrows or widens with an easterly or westerly drift, according to the pressure of the central pack. Early in the season, when the pack is crevassed and not elastic, it is probably wide; later, as the entire sea of ice becomes active, it may disappear or shift to a line nearer the land.

In low temperature new ice forms rapidly. This offers an obstruction to the drift of the old ice. As the heavy central pack is pressed against the unyielding land pack the small ice is ground to splinters, and even heavy floes are crushed. This reduced mass of small ice is pasted and cemented along the shores of the Big Lead, leaving a broad band of troublesome surface as a serious barrier to sled travel. It seems quite probable that this lead, or a condition similar to it, extends entirely around the Polar sea as a buffer between the land and the middle pack.

In exploring the shore line, a partially bridged place was found about a mile from camp, but the young ice was too elastic for a safe track. The temperature, however, fell rapidly with the setting sun, and the wind was just strong enough to sweep off the heated vapors. I knew better atmospheric condition could not be afforded quickly to thicken the young ice.

Returning to camp that night, we surprised our stomachs by a little frozen musk ox tenderloin and tallow, the greatest delicacy in our possession. Then we retired. Ice was our pillow. Ice was our bed. A dome of snow above us held off the descending liquid air of frost. Outside the wind moaned. Shudderingly, the deep howl of the dogs rolled over the ice. Lying on the sheeted deep, beneath my ears I heard the noise of the moving, grinding, crashing pack. It sounded terrifyingly like a distant thunder of guns. I could not sleep. Sick anxiety filled me. Could we cross the dreadful river on the morrow? Would the ice freeze? Or might the black space not hopelessly widen during the night? I lay awake, shivering with cold. I felt within me the blank loneliness of the thousands of desolate miles about me.