SLEDGE PARTY ON THE MARCH WITH GOOD GOING
HARD GOING
My despatch telling of the discovery of the north pole was dated September 6, 1909. Amundsen sailed for the south pole in June, 1910. In the nine months before that time the details of my work were known everywhere. In Amundsen’s journey to the south pole he used dogs exclusively for traction; pemmican was his mainstay for food; his clothing was fur; he had one object, the south pole.
Many are under the impression that the ice of the polar sea is smooth as glass and that explorers simply ride to their destination on dog sledges. In reality the only smooth ice to be found is while still on the glacial fringe, an ice-foot which extends along the northern coast of Grant Land and Greenland, varying from one-half to five miles in width. Parts of the outer edge of this fringe rise and fall with the tide, and sometimes large areas of ice will separate from it and float off to sea, but as a body it is stationary. Outside the fringe is a shore lead, or tidal crack, which opens under the stress of offshore winds or ebb-tides in the spring, and shuts under the effect of northerly winds and spring-flood tides. The constant battle which occurs here between this glacial fringe and the heavy, detached floes smashes the ice into all shapes and sizes, and piles it up in great pressure ridges which may be a few feet or a few rods high and several rods or a quarter of a mile wide.
Farther out huge floes are hurled against one another by the wind and tides, thus forming more pressure ridges. Between these series of ridges old floes are found which at times are comparatively smooth.
The ice of the polar sea during the summer is constantly moving, large fields of ice ranging from ten or fifteen to over one hundred feet in thickness, break away from glaciers, crushing the thin ice and smashing against other fields, splitting them and forming new ridges until the surface, when it again hardens in the winter, is simply a chaos of broken ice. Nine-tenths or more of the distance between northern Grant Land and the pole is composed of these floes, the rest being ice, formed by the sea-water freezing during the autumn and winter months.
Continued northerly winds during the autumn, when the masses of ice are gradually freezing together, will force the heavier ice toward the shore while farther out the edges of the ice-floes where they meet pile up in regular series of ridges. If, however, the winds are not strong during the autumn many large ice-fields separate from other floes, and between these masses of ice new ice, fairly smooth, and never over eight or ten feet thick, will form. This remains until summer unless violent winds occur to crush it up.
The difficulties and hardships of travel over these ragged and mountainous pressure ridges must be experienced to be appreciated. A trail oftentimes must be hewed out with pick-axes, and the heavily loaded sledges pushed, pulled, hoisted, and lowered over the hummocks and steep acclivities, even unloaded, and the equipment carried over on one’s back. On our return from farthest north in 1906 we encountered a seemingly endless and indescribable chaos of broken and shattered ice at the place where we had been held up by the big lead on our upward march, and it took hours of grim and exhausting work to carry us through it.