CHAPTER V
THE KING’S HIGHWAY
The next morning (July 26), being beautifully fine, was devoted to an astronomical determination of our position and other preparations for carrying on a survey. A preliminary expedition up the glacier occupied the afternoon. An easy way was found on to the ice, but there luck turned, for, as a matter of fact, we were not really on the Kings Glacier itself, but on the foot of a small tributary flowing round from an enclosed basin on the south and divided from the main glacier by an immense moraine. This moraine would have to be crossed; we knew enough of dragging sledges over moraines to foresee something of the troubles thus provided. We wandered over the small glacier to the foot of a peak standing in the angle between it and the Highway. Then Garwood and Nielsen set off to climb the peak (Mount Nielsen 3120 ft.) by its rotten arête, whilst I with Svensen went on to investigate the moraine and find the best way over it. Returning the first to camp, I sat in the door, watching the wonder of the glacier’s terminal cliff, its bold towers, tottering pinnacles, and sections of crevasses with fallen blocks wedged into their jaws. Lumps of ice were continually falling. Fortunate enough to be gazing in the right direction, I saw a monster pinnacle come down. First a few fragments were crushed out from right and left near its base; then the whole tower seemed to sink vertically, smashing up within as it gave way, and finally toppling over and shooting forward into the water, which it dashed aloft. The resulting wave spread and broke around, hurling the floating blocks against one another, and upsetting the balance of many. Its widening undulation could be traced far away by the stately courtesy of the rocking icebergs. The front of the cliff was barred across with sunlight and shadow, throwing into relief this and the other icy pinnacle, above some blue wall or gloomy cavern. Behind the wall the glacier was not smooth, but broken into a tumult of seracs, like the most ruinous icefall in the Alps, as far as the eye could reach. Varying illumination on this splintered area evoked all manner of resemblances for the play of a vagrant imagination. Sometimes the glacier looked like an innumerable multitude of white-robed penitents, sometimes like the tented field of a great army, sometimes like a frozen cataract. Its suggestiveness was boundless, its beauty always perfect; moreover, it was worthily framed. The mountains that enclose it are fine in form, with splintered ridges, steep couloirs, and countless high-placed glaciers, caught on ledges or sweeping down to join the great ice-river.
Garwood returned full of a satisfaction which Nielsen heartily shared. The scramble had been exhilarating, the view superb. There was no ice-sheet visible, only mountains everywhere, with glaciers between. The moraine once passed, our way was open ahead up ice apparently smooth. After supper I set out alone in the opposite direction along the shore, for the purpose of starting the plane-table survey from a well-marked eminence near the foot of the second side-glacier, whose black, terminal slope curves round and up with singular regularity of form. The walk was beautiful, the ice-dappled sea being always close at hand with noble hills beyond. There were plenty of torrents to wade, besides one which had to be jumped. It flows down a gully cut sharply into the dolomite rock. Below the glacier are ice-worn rocks, both rounded and grooved; but the direction of the grooves is at right-angles to that of the axis of the glacier, so that they appear to have been scratched when the main Kings Glacier extended thus much farther and higher. Returning, I kept close along the margin of the bay. Innumerable fragments of crystal-clear ice, each filled with sunshine, danced in the breaking ripples. The water splashed amongst them, singing a cheerful song which was altogether new to me. The cliff-front of the glacier ahead was darkened with shadow, and represented a battlemented wall with deep portals leading through to a white marble city within.
On the following day, sun brightly shining and breezes blowing fresh, we loaded up two sledges with food for ten days, and set forth up the King’s Highway. A laborious struggle took the sledges past the terminal moraine, but the ice beyond was dotted with frequent stones, so that the runners were generally foul of one or more. The slope was very steep. Reaching a more level place, we encountered ice so humpy that the sledges were always on their noses or their tails. Then came a cañon, 50 feet or so deep, and about 20 feet wide. We had to track alongside of it in an undesired direction till a doubtful-looking bridge was found, over which a passage could be risked. More lumpy ice followed till we were level with the foot of Mount Nielsen, where a smoother area was entered on. Here I left the caravan and climbed to the top of a hump on the arête of the peak to continue the survey. My solitary industry was enlivened by the neighbourhood of countless nesting birds, snow buntings, little auks, and guillemots, whose home is in the cliffs. Thus far the big moraine was close by on our left hand, mountains on our right; the level stretch of ice led between the two to the meeting of moraine and mountain at the entrance of the next side valley beyond Mount Nielsen. Here the stone-strip had to be crossed. I came up with the others just as the crossing began. We thought the moraine belt at this point would be but a few yards in width. It was more than half a mile. We only found that out after unloading the sledges and taking every man his burden. They were carried over, a return made for more, the process repeated, and so on for two whole hours—a heartbreaking experience. It was a hilly moraine or set of moraines, with two main ascents and descents besides several minor undulations. Footing was, of course, on loose stones only. In such places laden men slip about, bark their shins, twist their ankles, and lose their tempers. Beyond the stones came humpy ice again, ridged into short, steep undulations. A sledge required vigorous hoisting over each of them, the distance from trough to trough being about five yards, and the ridges transverse to our line of route. “On every hump,” said Nielsen, “a sledge capsizes.” Certainly one sledge or the other was generally rolling over on its back. After six hours of hard work we agreed to camp (460 feet)—“the hardest day’s work I’ve done in a long time,” was Nielsen’s comment, and we believed him, for he put his back into it with hearty goodwill. Only when the tents were pitched had we leisure to enjoy the warm sunshine and the exhilarating, absolutely calm air. Out on the ice we could sit in our shirt-sleeves without being chilled. All around spread the great glacier in its beauty; the sky overhead was blue; the bay reflected the sunshine; fleeces of mist adorned the hilltops. In that perfect hour we craved for nothing save the company of absent friends.
AN EASY PLACE.
The next day (July 28) we made good progress, ascending 720 feet and covering a long distance. None of it was easy-going; in fact, when you have sledges to drag there is no easy going except on the flat. Every stage of a glacier has its own troubles. First comes the steep snout and its moraine, then humpy ice and open crevasses, next honeycomb ice and water-holes, which gradually pass (in fine melting weather) into glacier covered by waterlogged snow. We began the day with honeycomb ice and water-holes. The honeycomb ice on the Nordenskiöld Glacier made rather good travelling; it was otherwise on the King’s Highway. Several fine days had flooded the surface with water, so that, where crevasses ceased and the water had no downward outlet, it was obliged to trickle about, forming pools, rills, and rivers, all in different ways perplexing to the traveller. The cells of the honeycomb ice were thus full of water, and, as they gave way under the pressure of a tread, the foot crunched through into water at every step. By slow degrees the honeycomb was replaced by sodden snow, which grew steadily deeper as we advanced to higher levels. Here the whole surface shone in the sunlight, for the water oozed about in pools and sluggish streams, forming square miles of slush. There were brief intervals of dryness where the surface rose in some perceptible slope, but they were short, the almost flat waterlogged areas covered the larger part of the region to be traversed. If the march was uncomfortable and toilsome, each could laugh at the antics of the others. We steered a devious route, seeking to follow the white patches and to avoid the glassy blue areas where water actually came to the surface. But all that looked white was not solid. You would see the leader shuffling gingerly forward on his ski, trying to pretend that he was a mere bubble of lightness. Suddenly, through he would go up to the knee, the points of his ski would catch in the depths and a mighty floundering ensue. The sledges got into similar fixes, and often added to the confusion by rolling over most inopportunely. The leading sledge usually served to indicate a way to be avoided, so, before very long, the two parties wandered asunder and enjoyed one another’s struggles and perplexities from a distance.
It is obvious that Nature must provide some sort of a drainage system for such a quantity of water. The bogs and pools leak into one another and by degrees cut channels with ill-defined banks of snow, along which the current slowly crawls. By union of such streams strong-flowing torrents are formed; these make deep cuttings into the glacier and unite into a trunk river, deep, swift, and many yards wide. Every uncrevassed side glacier above the snowline pours out a similar river on to the surface of the main glacier, and these rivers in their turns presently join the trunk stream. Thus, whatever route you take, whether you keep near the trunk stream or far from it, the side streams have to be crossed. The crossing of them is often a tough business. Their icebanks are about twelve feet high and usually vertical; their volume of water is too considerable to be waded, seeing that their beds are of smooth, slippery, blue ice, on which footing cannot be maintained for a moment. They are seldom less than four yards wide. The blue strip with the clear water between the white walls is always a lovely sight, but to a traveller quite as tantalising. A crossing can only be accomplished where the water has chanced to undercut one of the banks and at the same time to leave a level place beside it at the foot of the other bank. You can then jump over with some hope of gaining a footing where you land. The sledges have to follow with a perilous bump. Rarely you may find a snow-bridge. In search of possible crossings we had to travel alongside of these streams, time and again, far out of our line of route, whilst, to make matters worse, it happened that we were on the wrong side of the trunk river; thus that also had to be crossed, a problem apparently insoluble, till a great and well-blessed bridge was found just at the end of the day’s march.