OVER A PRESSURE RIDGE
A HALT ON THE MARCH
One storm will play more havoc with the dogs and their harnesses and traces than the work of two weeks’ continuous traveling. To get the sledges and the dogs and tent dug out, to say nothing of untangling and repairing the dogs’ traces, which become terribly twisted and tangled, is enough to keep two men busy for hours. After almost every snowfall we had to help the dogs drag the sledges. For this purpose a long line of walrus hide was tied to the front of the sledge, running out over the dogs, so that one of us could attach it to our shoulders and pull in advance of the team. To the side of the sledge a short line was fastened enabling the other man to pull and drive the dogs at the same time. Dragging the sledges through soft snow is very disheartening work for the dogs, and every expedient that ingenuity can devise or that is known to the Eskimos must be used to urge them forward. Only one thing can make traveling harder on the inland ice, and that is a precipitation of frost, which, covering the surface like sand, makes the sledges drag like so many loads of lead. Dogs that in ordinary going can haul two sledges at a fair rate of speed require the combined assistance of two men to move one. For this condition of snow even icing the runners seems to do but little, if any, good.
This process of covering sledge-runners with a coating of ice, taught me by the Eskimos, is most interesting, and wonderfully increases the tractive power of a sledge in low temperatures.
A long strip of thick walrus skin, which, when frozen, is the toughest and most unbreakable of all substances, the same width as the runner and from which the hair has not been removed, is first applied to the bottom of each runner, being fastened by lashings of rawhide run through slits in the edges of the walrus hide. After this has been allowed to freeze solid the entire length of each runner is covered with soft snow which has been dipped in warm urine. This is pressed and shaped with the hand until it is three-quarters of an inch, perhaps an inch, thick. When this has been given time to freeze solid it is chipped and made smooth with the aid of a knife, and rubbed over by hand with water. As the dogs get tired and the going becomes harder, the ice coating on these shoes should be renewed nearly every day on inland ice cap-work. The effect of high elevation is very perceptible upon men and dogs, and it is difficult to force dogs to go faster than at the rate of two miles an hour. At such times we iced the sledge-runners twice a day.
The routine on our long marches was for the most of the time about as follows: The work of caring for the dogs, harnessing them in the morning and unharnessing and tying them to stakes at night and feeding them at the end of the day’s march, was my special work. During the march my companion took charge of them while I kept the course, except when to vary the monotony we exchanged duties. My companion always built the snow shelter at night which served as a kitchen, and we took turns acting as cook. The man on duty in the kitchen slept there all night, and stood ready to re-secure any dogs which might break away during the night.
In my first trip across the ice cap of Greenland I used a considerable number of Eskimo dogs which had just been purchased from the natives and were entirely unacquainted with us and we with them.
Naturally our unusual size, strange complexion and stranger language were at first a source of terror to them and in the earlier stages of the journey when a dog got loose at night it was sometimes quite an effort to secure him again. Before the journey was over we had no trouble with any of our dogs.
Other parties using Siberian dogs for the first time may have the same experience.