When I returned from the north pole sledge-trip, which was a trip of arduous and protracted exertion, but not a journey on half-rations, as had been the case on some of my earlier trips, my own weight, stripped to the buff, was 160 pounds, which, by the way, was the same weight to which I trained for my junior-class crew in college at the age of twenty.
OO-TAH
This photo of my best Eskimo, taken immediately after our return from the North Pole, indicates the type of Eskimo for Polar work. The portrait shows the protecting roll of bearskin about the face.
Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History
GEORGE BORUP
Small, wiry men have a great advantage over large ones in polar work. The latter require more material for their clothing, and usually eat more than the former. Large men take up more space than small ones, necessitating the building of larger snow igloos when on the march, or the carrying of larger tents than would be needed for a party made up of small men. Every pound in weight beyond the maximum requirement tends to lessen a man’s agility; in fact, renders him clumsy and more apt to break his equipment. For instance, if a large man on snow-shoes stumbles, a sudden lunge to save himself more often than not results in a broken snow-shoe. The decided disadvantage which a large man is under in crossing a lead or new ice is apparent. This was brought to mind with striking forcefulness in crossing the “Great Lead” on our return from “farthest north” in 1906, when my little party came the nearest we have ever come to death. Two miles of young ice, which would not for an instant have supported us without snow-shoes, had to be crossed, the party spreading out in widely extended skirmish-line, with fifty or sixty feet between each man, each one of us constantly and smoothly gliding one shoe ahead of the other with the greatest care and evenness of pressure, the undulations going out in every direction through the thin ice as we advanced.
I was the heaviest one in the party,—160 pounds net,—and fortunately I had six-foot snow-shoes. Yet for a considerable part of the distance I doubted if I should ever reach the firm ice. The chief engineer of the Roosevelt was a heavy man, weighing 235 pounds or more, and as we stooped to untie our snow-shoes on firmer ice, one of my Eskimos, Ahngmalokto, turned to me with the remark that if the chief had been with us, he never would have reached firm ice. And he was quite right.
Some Arctic travelers advise against having men who have had previous polar experience, as likely to make them opinionated and insubordinate.