On the morning of April 6th I left Crozier Island, and a few hours later, at the point of Cape Hecla, we swung our sledges sharply to the right and climbed over and down the parapet of the ice-foot on to the polar pack. As the sledges plunged down from the ice-foot their noses were buried out of sight, the dogs wallowed belly deep in the snow, and we began our struggle due northward.
We had been in the field now just a month. We had covered not less than 400 miles of the most arduous travelling in temperatures of from –35° to –57° F., and we were just beginning our work, i. e., the conquest of the polar pack, the toughest undertaking in the whole expanse of the Arctic region.
Some two miles from the cape was a belt of very recent young ice, running parallel with the general trend of the coast. Areas of rough ice caught in this compelled us to exaggerated zigzags, and doubling on our track. It was easier to go a mile round, on the young ice, than to force the sledge across one of these islands.
The northern edge of the new ice was a high wall of heavily rubbled old ice, through which, after some reconnoissance, we found a passage to an old floe, where I gave the order to build an igloo. We were now about five miles from the land.
The morning of the 7th brought us fine weather. Crossing the old floe we came upon a zone of old floe fragments deeply blanketed with snow. Through the irregularities of this we struggled; the dogs floundering, almost useless, occasionally one disappearing for a moment; now treading down the snow round a sledge to dig it out of a hole into which it had sunk, now lifting the sledges bodily over a barrier of blocks; veering right and left; doubling in our track; road-making with snowshoe and pickaxe.
Late in the day a narrow ditch gave us a lift for a short distance, then one or two little patches of level going, then two or three small old floes which, though deep with snow, seemed like a Godsend compared with the wrenching earlier work. We camped in the lee of a large hummock on the northern edge of a small but very heavy old floe, everyone thoroughly tired, and the dogs dropping motionless in the snow as soon as the whip stopped.
We were now due north to Hecla, and I estimated we had made some six miles, perhaps seven, perhaps only five. A day of work like this makes it difficult to estimate distances. This is a fair sample of our day’s work.
On the 12th we were storm-bound by a gale from the west, which hid even those dogs fastened nearest to the igloo. During our stay here the old floes on which we were camped split in two with a loud report, and the ice cracked and rumbled and roared at frequent intervals.
In the first march beyond this igloo we were deflected westward by a lead of practically open water, the thin film of young ice covering it being unsafe even for a dog. A little further on a wide canal of open water deflected us constantly to the northwest and then west until an area of extremely rough ice prevented us from following it farther. Viewed from the top of a high pinnacle this area extended west and northwest on both sides of the canal, as far as could be seen. I could only camp and wait for this canal, which evidently had been widened (though not newly formed) by the storm of the day before, to close up or freeze over. During our first sleep at this camp there was a slight motion of the lead, but not enough to make it practicable. From here I sent back two more Eskimos.
Late in the afternoon of the 14th the lead began to close, and hastily packing the sledges we hurried them across over moving fragments of ice. We now found ourselves in a zone of high parallel ridges of rubble ice covered with deep snow. These ridges were caused by successive opening and closing of the lead. When, after some time, we found a practicable pass through this barrier, we emerged upon a series of very small but extremely heavy and rugged old floes; the snow on them still deeper and softer than on the southern side of the lead. At the end of a sixteen-hour day I called a halt, though we were only two or three miles north of the big lead.