The excursion was postponed till next day, when Kennedy, Watson and I roped up and commenced to thread a tangled belt of crevasses. The island was three and a half miles from the camp, exposing a bare ridge and a jutting bluff, nine hundred feet high—Watson Bluff. At the Bluff the rock was almost all gneiss, very much worn by the action of ice. The face to the summit was so steep and coarsely weathered that we took risks in climbing it. Moss and lichens grew luxuriantly and scores of snow petrels hovered around, but no eggs were seen.
Owing to an overcast sky, the view was not a great deal more enlightening than that which we had had from below. The Denman Glacier swept down for forty miles from over three thousand feet above sea-level. For twenty miles to the east torn ice-masses lay distorted in confusion, and beyond that, probably sixty miles distant, were several large stretches of bare rock-like islands.
On November 20, a strong north-east wind blew, with falling snow. Nothing could be seen but a white blanket, above, below and all around; so, with sudden death lurking in the bottomless crevasses on every hand, we stayed in camp.
A blizzard of great violence blew for two days and the tent occupied by Kennedy and myself threatened to collapse. We stowed all our gear in the sleeping-bags or in a hole from which snow had been dug for cooking. By the second day we had become extremely tired of lying down. One consolation was that our lips, which were very sore from exposure to the sun and wind, had now a chance of healing.
Next afternoon, the gale moderated sufficiently for us to go once more to David Island, in clearer weather, to see the outlook from the bluff. This time the sun was shining on the mainland and on the extension of the glacier past the bluff to the north. The distant southern slopes were seamed with a pattern of crevasses up to a height of three thousand feet. To the north, although the way was certainly impassable for twelve miles, it appeared to become smoother beyond that limit. We decided to try and cross in that direction.
We persevered on the 24th over many lines of pressure-ice and then camped near an especially rough patch. Watson had the worst fall on that day, going down ten feet vertically into a crevasse before his harness stopped him. After supper, we went to locate a trail ahead, and were greatly surprised to find salt water in some of the cracks. It meant that in two days our descent had been considerable, since the great bergschrund farther south was well over three hundred feet in depth and no water had appeared in its depths.
A few extracts from the diary recall a situation which daily became more serious and involved:
"Monday, November 25. A beautiful day so far as the weather and scenery are concerned but a very hard one. We have been amongst 'Pressure,' with a capital P, all day, hauling up and lowering the sledges with an alpine rope and twisting and turning in all directions, with waves and hills, monuments, statues, and fairy palaces all around us, from a few feet to over three hundred feet in height. It is impossible to see more than a few hundred yards ahead at any time, so we go on for a bit, then climb a peak or mound, choose a route and struggle on for another short stage.
"We have all suffered from the sun to-day; Kennedy has caught it worst, his lips, cheeks, nose and forehead are all blistered. He has auburn hair and the tender skin which frequently goes with it....
"Tuesday, November 26. Another very hard day's work. The first half-mile took three hours to cover; in several places we had to cut roads with ice-axes and shovels and also to build a bridge across a water-lead. At 1 P.M. we had done just one mile. I never saw or dreamt of anything so gloriously beautiful as some of the stuff we have come through this morning. After lunch the country changed entirely. In place of the confused jumble and crush we have had, we got on to neve slopes; huge billows, half a mile to a mile from crest to crest, meshed with crevasses...