The South Pole; an account of the Norwegian Antarctic expedition in the "Fram," 1910-12 — Volume 1 and Volume 2

by Roald Amundsen

In the course of the 28th the ascent came to an end, and with it the crevasses. The wind fell quite light, and the blinding drift was succeeded by clear sunshine. We had now come sufficiently high up to have a view of the sea far to the north-west. During the high wind a quantity of ice had been driven southward, so that for a great distance there was no open water to be seen, but a number of huge icebergs. From the distance of the sea horizon we guessed our height to be about 1,000 feet, and in the evening the hypsometer showed the guess to be very nearly right.

November 29. -- Weather and going all that could be wished on breaking camp this morning; before us we had a level plateau, which appeared to be quite free from unpleasant obstructions. When we halted for the noon observation the sledge-meter showed ten geographical miles, and before evening we had brought the day's distance up to twenty. The latitude was then 77º 32'. The distance to the Barrier edge on the north was, at a guess, about twenty geographical miles. We were now a good way along the peninsula, the northern point of which Captain Scott named Cape Colbeck, and at the same time a good way to the east of the meridian in which he put land-shading on his chart. Our height above the sea, which was now about 1,000 feet, was evidence enough that we had firm land under us, but it was still sheathed in ice. In that respect the landscape offered no change from what we had learnt to know by the name of "Barrier." It cannot be denied that at this juncture I began to entertain a certain doubt of the existence of bare land in this quarter.

This doubt was not diminished when we had done another good day's march to the eastward on November 30. According to our observations we were then just below the point where the Alexandra Mountains should begin, but there was no sign of mountain ranges; the surface was a little rougher, perhaps. However, it was still too soon to abandon the hope. It would be unreasonable to expect any great degree of accuracy of the chart we had to go by; its scale was far too large for that. It was, moreover, more than probable that our own determination of longitude was open to doubt.

Assuming the approximate accuracy of the chart, by holding on to the north-east we ought soon to come down to the seaboard, and with this object in view we continued our march. On December 1, in the middle of the day, we saw that everything agreed. From the top of an eminence the sea was visible due north, and on the east two domed summits were outlined, apparently high enough to be worthy of the name of mountains. They were covered with snow, but on the north side of them there was an abrupt precipice, in which many black patches showed up sharply against the white background. It was still too soon to form an idea as to whether they were bare rock or not; they might possibly be fissures in the mass of ice. The appearance of the summits agreed exactly with Captain Scott's description of what he saw from the deck of the Discovery in 1902. He assumed that the black patches were rocks emerging from the snow-slopes. As will be seen later, our respected precursor was right.

In order to examine the nature of the seaboard, we began by steering down towards it; but in the meantime the weather underwent an unfavourable change. The sky clouded over and the light became as vile as it could be. The point we were anxious to clear up was whether there was any Barrier wall here, or whether the land and sea-ice gradually passed into each other in an easy slope. As the light was, there might well have been a drop of 100 feet without our seeing anything of it. Securely roped together we made our way down, until our progress was stopped by a huge pressure-ridge, which, as far as could be made out, formed the boundary between land and sea-ice. It was, however, impossible in the circumstances to get any clear view of the surroundings, and after trudging back to the sledges, which had been left up on the slope, we turned to the east to make a closer examination of the summits already mentioned. I went in front, as usual, in the cheerful belief that we had a fairly level stretch before us, but I was far out in my calculation. My ski began to slip along at a terrific speed, and it was advisable to put on the brake. This was easily done as far as I was concerned, but with the dogs it was a different matter. Nothing could stop them when they felt that the sledge was running by its own weight; they went in a wild gallop down the slope, the end of which could not at present be seen. I suppose it will sound like a tall story, but it is a fact, nevertheless, that to our eyes the surface appeared to be horizontal all the time. Snow, horizon and sky all ran together in a white chaos, in which all lines of demarcation were obliterated.

Fortunately nothing came of our expectation that the scamper would have a frightful ending in some insidious abyss. It was stopped quite naturally by an opposing slope, which appeared to be as steep as the one we had just slid down. If the pace had been rather too rapid before, there was now no ground of complaint on that score. Step by step we crawled up to the top of the ridge; but the ground was carefully surveyed before we proceeded farther.

In the course of the afternoon we groped our way forward over a whole series of ridges and intervening depressions. Although nothing could be seen, it was obvious enough that our surroundings were now of an entirely different character from anything we had previously been accustomed to. The two mountain summits had disappeared in the fleecy mist, but the increasing unevenness of the ground showed that we were approaching them. Meanwhile I considered it inadvisable to come to close quarters with them so long as we were unable to use our eyes, and, remembering what happens when the blind leads the blind, we camped. For the first time during the trip I had a touch of snow-blindness that afternoon. This troublesome and rightly dreaded complaint was a thing that we had hitherto succeeded in keeping off by a judicious use of our excellent snow-goggles. Among my duties as forerunner was that of maintaining the direction, and this, at times, involved a very severe strain on the eyes. In thick weather it is only too easy to yield to the temptation of throwing off the protective goggles, with the idea that one can see better without them. Although I knew perfectly well what the consequence would be, I had that afternoon broken the commandment of prudence. The trifling smart I felt in my eyes was cured by keeping the goggles on for a couple of hours after we were in the tent. Like all other ills, snow-blindness may easily be dispelled by taking it in time.

Next morning the sun's disc could just be made out through a veil of thin stratus clouds, and then the light was more or less normal again. As soon as we could see what our surroundings were, it was clear enough that we had done right in stopping the game of blind man's buff we had been playing on the previous day. It might otherwise have had an unpleasant ending. Right across our line of route and about 500 yards from our camp the surface was so broken up that it was more like a sieve than anything else. In the background the masses of snow were piled in huge drifts down a steep slope on the north-west side of the two mountains. It was impossible to take the sledges any farther on the way we had hitherto been following, but in the course of the day we worked round by a long detour to the foot of the most westerly of the mountains. We were then about 1,000 feet above the sea; to the north of us we had the abrupt descent already mentioned, to the south it was quite flat. Our view to the east was shut in by the two mountains, and our first idea was to ascend to the tops of them, but the powers of the weather again opposed us with their full force. A stiff south-east wind set in and increased in the course of half an hour to a regular blizzard. Little as it suited our wishes, there was nothing to be done but to creep back into the tent. For a whole month now we had seen scarcely anything but fair weather, and the advance of summer had given us hopes that it would hold; but just when it suited us least of all came a dismal change.

The light Antarctic summer night ran its course, while the gusts of wind tugged and tore at the thin sides of our tent; no snowfall accompanied the south-easterly wind, but the loose snow of the surface was whirled up into a drift that stood like an impenetrable wall round the tent. After midnight it moderated a little, and by four o'clock there was comparatively fair weather. We were on our feet at once, put together camera, glasses, aneroids, axe, Alpine rope, with some lumps of pemmican to eat on the way, and then went off for a morning walk with the nearer of the two hills as our goal. All three of us went, leaving the dogs in charge of the camp. They were not so fresh now that they would not gladly accept all the rest that was offered them. We had no need to fear any invasion of strangers; the land we had come to appeared to be absolutely devoid of living creatures of any kind.

The hill was farther off and higher than it appeared at first; the aneroid showed a rise of 700 feet when we reached the top. As our camp lay at a height of 1,000 feet, this gave us 1,700 feet as the height of this hill above the sea. The side we went up was covered by névé, which, to judge from the depth of the cracks, must have been immense. As we approached the summit and our view over the surrounding ground became wider, the belief that we should see so much as a crag of this King Edward Land grew weaker and weaker. There was nothing but white on every side, not a single consolatory little black patch, however carefully we looked. And to think that we had been dreaming of great mountain masses in the style of McMurdo Sound, with sunny slopes, penguins by the thousand, seals and all the rest! All these visions were slowly but surely sunk in an endless sea of snow, and when at last we stood on the highest point, we certainly thought there could be no chance of a revival of our hopes.