Shackleton’s tent and sleeping-bag outfit for his southern party of four men weighed, when dry, one hundred pounds.
Two tents, with poles and floor cloths, each weighing complete 30 lbs. Four sleeping bags, each weighing 10 lbs. when dry.—“The Heart of the Antarctic,” Shackleton, Vol. I, p. 249.
If in place of his tent and bags he had had one hundred pounds of pemmican, he could have made the distance and could have won the pole.
One hundred pounds of pemmican represents twenty-five days’ rations for four men.
During the winter of 1905–06, on board the Roosevelt, Marvin and I worked out very thoroughly, first with pencil and paper, and afterward graphically with the assistance of a long twelve-inch-wide board and a twelve-foot graduated measuring-rod, match-boxes for sledges, and percussion caps, of which I had a large number, for rations, an arrangement for a continuous post-road transportation service, with snow igloo stations at convenient distances. This system, with my men and my equipment, could be kept in commission regardless of temperatures or the darkness of the winter night, barring only those occasional blizzards during which both man and beast must seek and remain in shelter.
By this arrangement an advance party could be pushed ahead, kept provisioned, and its communication with the rear kept intact during any season of the year and for any distance with the regularity of a Maine winter lumber-camp tote-road—granted a permanent surface.
I found that this method, attractive as it was, could not be utilized on the uncertain surface of the frozen north polar sea, and it was given up for that region.
It is entirely practicable in the antarctic region, where the surface is permanent and unchanging from year to year, and by utilizing it some future explorer of that region can travel at will as far as and in any direction he may desire.
In the active working out of a polar advance there are numbers of details of practical technic. If the line of march lies through deep, soft snow, an active man in the lead, with broad packers’ snowshoes, can tread a trail that greatly reduces the labor of the following dogs. If there are two men to put in advance, the road is still further improved. Such a road, once made by snowshoes and sledges, can be detected even in the darkness of the winter night by its distinctly firmer consistency.
Sledges should always travel in single file so as to utilize to the utmost the trail-breaking of each sledge. Of course the brunt of the work comes on the leading sledge. The next sledge finds it somewhat easier, the next easier yet, until the last sledge has a firmly beaten trail over which to travel. To equalize work, I had the leading sledge at the end of each hour drop back to the rear. In this way each driver and team of dogs had an equal share of the work.