HUGGING THE SHORE TO GET AROUND HUGE ICE FIELDS
Note the yacht-like lines
PARTY LEAVING THE “ROOSEVELT” FOR CAPE COLUMBIA
The interior of Greenland, or the inland ice, is so cold that it gets virtually no rain, and the snow does not have a chance to melt in the long summer day. So the snow has accumulated century after century until it has filled the valleys, and not only leveled them with the tops of the mountains, but the highest of these mountain-tops have been gradually buried hundreds and even thousands of feet deep in ice and snow. To-day the interior of Greenland, with its 1500 miles in length and some 700 miles in maximum width, rising from 4000 to 9000 feet or more above sea-level, is simply an elevated and unbroken plateau of compacted snow.[2]
On this great frozen Sahara of the North the wind never ceases to blow. It invariably radiates from the center of the ice-cap outward, blowing perpendicularly to the nearest portion of the coast land, except when storms of unusually large proportions sweep across the country. Such a regular thing are the winds of these regions, and so closely do they follow the rule of perpendicularity to the coast, that it is always easy to determine the direction of nearest land. A sudden change in the wind indicates the presence of large fiords, and the crossing of a divide can be detected by the area of calm or changeable winds which prevail, and which are followed by winds blowing from the opposite direction.
Sweeping along the most direct path to the coast, and with greater or less velocity, the wind always carries with it a flying mass of snow, which, on reaching the mountains, settles in the valleys or goes swirling over the cliffs into the sea. When there is only a light breeze the snow is very fine and flies only a few feet in the air; but the stronger the wind, the coarser the whirling snow becomes, and the greater the depth of its current. In blizzards on this desert of snow this drift surpasses in fury the sand-storms of the African Sahara, the snow rising in the air hundreds of feet in hissing, roaring, blinding torrents, which make it almost impossible for one to breathe, and which bury anything stationary in a short time. It penetrates like water, and on stepping into the drift its surface is very nearly as tangible and sharply defined as that of a pool of water of like depth.
The continuous transportation of vast quantities of the snow by the wind is a most important factor in retarding the increase in the depth of the ice-cap, and in my opinion is a factor equaling possibly the effects of evaporation, melting, and glacial precipitation all combined. Only investigations carried on for a period of years can definitely determine whether this snow deposit is increasing or decreasing as the years pass.
Undoubtedly the coldest spot in the world is to be found in the center of the great ice during the polar night, where at an altitude of one or two miles it gets the full benefit of the frigid polar air; is several hundred miles from the polar seas, and is insulated by a mile or more of ice and snow from any radiation of heat from the earth beneath.