The light, drifting snow was no less a nuisance. It sifted into everything, through the narrowest of openings; and whether the ultimate place of lodgment was the surface of a lens or the back of one’s neck, it invariably found a way through. Unless one took great precautions, a walk in these lowest temperatures was likely to bring real suffering.
When winter came, we were well-clothed to meet it, thanks to the labors of Ronne, who worked so hard making and repairing clothes for the rest of us that he had no time to attend to his own.
The fundamental unit of cold weather clothing is the parka, which is the Eskimo’s overcoat. It is a development of ages of combat with the cold and is the most nearly perfect thing of its kind. Mine was made of reindeer skin, with wolverine rimming the hood. It weighed about six pounds; yet even during walks when the thermometer registered as low as 60° below zero, it offered adequate warmth. It is my opinion that a reindeer skin parka, if properly made and worn, offers double the warmth of the wool parka at half the weight. During the coldest weather, I rarely wore more than twelve pounds of clothing. The cut of my parka I borrowed from the Eskimos at Etah, on the theory that, having lived for centuries in the polar regions, they surely must have developed an efficient cold weather garment. During my daily walks I often tested out new kinds of clothing.
The parka fitted the body snugly, especially about the hips, with a flap that went under the crotch and buttoned in front. It carried a hood, the edges of which projected beyond the face, so as to shield it from the wind. The armpits were made very large, so that the arms could be drawn inside for additional warmth. In a dead calm one can endure very low temperatures with slight discomfort. In fact, a walk at 50° below in still air is rather an exhilarating experience. It is the wind that is cruel. The faintest wind, moving supercooled air against the face, tortures the traveller to distraction. If the wind is not too strong, the projecting rim of the hood forms a cushion of air warmed by the face and offers some protection. But otherwise if the wind is dead ahead, it is better to turn the head sideways. Often, during walks in bitter cold, I came across my colleagues beating their way back to Little America stern first, rather than expose their faces to the knife-like edge of the wind. How great a difference the wind causes was proved by a series of experiments made by Dr. Coman and Mr. Davies on the cooling power of the air under different weather conditions. On July 28th, when the temperature was 70° below and the velocity of the wind about 2½ miles per hour, the skin lost 52 millicalories per square centimeter per second. On August 16th, when the temperature was 5.5° above, and therefore actually 75° warmer, the skin lost 95 millicalories per square centimeter per second. The difference lay in the wind which was then blowing at a velocity of 30 miles per hour.
During a walk, with the temperature in excess of 60° below, my eyelashes froze quite tight. It was so difficult trying to keep them open that I decided to make a face mask. The final product, which was made by June, resembled a baseball mask. It consisted of a wire structure which was covered with windproof material. A funnel-like arrangement led to the mouth. The air was drawn in through the nostrils, and it was expelled in turn through the mouth. As the exhalations condensed and collected in the funnel in the form of rime, it was brushed off with the hand. It was an inconvenient device, but it offered great protection. Rucker invented another type, which fitted over the eyes like goggles and had a wool curtain which draped over the jaw. This curtain was tucked around the neck of the parka, and could be fitted in whatever shape was desired. For example, if the wind was striking the left side of the face, a breathing hole could be made on the other side, and the mask immediately froze in whatever shape it was put.
I suppose we turned out a thousand different kinds of things to beat the cold, some of which were successful, some of which were not. The basis of most of them was reindeer skin, which I believe to be the lightest and the warmest fur that can be had. It is much warmer per unit of weight, than seal skin and, therefore, much more efficient. We had brought the skins of fifty young reindeer to the Antarctic, and these Ronne turned into sleeping bags, parkas, and pants, for the men who could not be properly equipped from the ready-made supplies brought from the United States. The pants were generally made of the softer portion of the hide and were not as thick as the parka, because the limbs are less susceptible to cold.
The feet are the most vulnerable point to frost, especially on the trail. Moisture forms as a result of the cold air coming in contact with the heat of the body and collects as rime, and frost bite, if precautions are not taken, is the result. The warmest boot that I know of is the finnesko. It is entirely covered with fur. Several layers of felt are padded on the bottom, and over them is laid a matting of saennegrass. This grass absorbs the perspiration, and so helps to keep the feet dry. When the shoe is removed, the saennegrass can be lifted out, the rime brushed off and the boot itself kept free of moisture. It may seem odd, but moisture is the curse of Antarctic travellers; it is an enemy no less malicious than wind.
The hours we spent in planning our cold weather clothes, both before we left New York and during our stay in the Antarctic, perhaps exceeded the time we devoted to any other single thing. We steeped ourselves in the lore evolved by such experienced polar travellers as Scott, Shackleton, Mawson, Amundsen and the others. When experience justified it, we added some new development of our own. Always, as we experimented with different kinds of clothing during the winter, we had in mind the proper equipment of the trail parties which we should leave in the spring and the airplane personnel who might have a forced landing far from base. Once the journeys began, proper clothing would be no less important than food.
Let us consider the boot. A simple thing: enough leather to encase the foot and protect it, thongs to bind it tight—what more is necessary? Much, much more. Some of the finest brains enlisted in geographical research have struggled futilely with the problem of what constitutes the most efficient boot for polar travelling. Failure in this respect can bring dire suffering. For every man who freezes his hands in the polar regions, there are 2 5 who freeze their feet. If Achilles was vulnerable in one heel, polar explorers are particularly so in both heels.
With ski boots, for example, the problem lies in inducing shoemakers to make them large enough to accommodate extra protection. Whether it is because they object to excessively large boots from the point of view of art, or simply think that you are wrong, I do not know. The fact is, in bitter cold weather adequate warmth can be secured only by the use of three or four pairs of stockings, plus a liberal quantity of felt and saennegrass on the bottom of the boot. If the throat of the boot is not large enough to admit the enlarged member, the traveller is out of luck. To guard against this contingency, I borrowed from Amundsen the largest boot used on his expedition, and had the boots that were made for us modelled on the same heroic mould. They were about size No. 14. How large they were may be judged from the fact that when I had my boots cut down for summer use, they were still large, even though diminished by three sizes.
No one on this expedition had reason to criticize the boots as not being large enough. The boots were ample enough for temperatures of 70° below zero. They were, of course, much too large for summer wear, and especially for use on a long sledging journey. It was, therefore, necessary to redesign later and make them smaller. Thorne, for example, designed and made an entirely new type of ski boot with material which he had brought to the Antarctic. Balchen and Strom also proved very skillful in cutting down the stock boots for summer use. These boots were made with a flexible leather top, with a leather sole half an inch thick, and were especially strengthened in the heel, where most of the wear comes in skiing. The beauty of these boots lay in a shrewd arrangement by means of which the size could be altered without the impairment of snugness. A pucker thong secured at the heel ran about the ankle, and this could be loosened or tightened, according to the number of stockings one decided to wear. We learned many new things during the winter. When subjected to exc
essive use, the uppers of these boots, which were fastened to the soles as with ordinary boots, had the tendency to pull loose, and were very difficult to repair. On Thorne’s suggestion, we carried the fabric of the uppers outward instead of inward where they were seamed to the sole, and as a result were not troubled by the fault again.
Complementary to this supply of clothing we had windproof shirts, parkas, pants, mittens, socks and sleeve protectors. These were made of a fabric similar to that used in making airplane fuselages, which is so closely woven that the wind does not readily penetrate it. The windproof pants and parkas were worn over fur clothes, and were splendid for keeping drifting snow from seeping down one’s neck and into one’s boots. I rather believe that windproof material was used more extensively on our expedition than on any previous expedition to the Antarctic. How very effective this windproof material is can be appreciated only by a person who has faced a biting wind with and without it.
The sleeping bags were mostly made from reindeer skin, and were covered with windproof material. Sleeping bags were at once the joy and the torment of the camp. I doubt whether there were any two that were alike. Each man modelled his according to his personal theories, with the result that some slept with untroubled serenity and warmth and others complained of cold all winter long. My bag had a cover which fitted snugly and had a zipper arrangement so that it could be drawn closely about the throat, thus preventing the warm air from escaping. Braathen, on the other hand, built his bag with a complicated arrangement of straps and flaps by means of which it could be altered at will. It was the most intricate thing of its kind that I have ever seen, and getting into it was like putting on a full dress uniform. But it worked.
Enough clothes to keep warm, enough food to eat, a few things to divert the mind occasionally—these are the only things that are required in the Antarctic. It is amazing what contentment can be had from them. “What do you miss most in the Antarctic, Taffy?” I asked our physicist. He replied, “Temptation.”
Footnotes
1Cherry-Garrard “Worst Journey in the World,” p. 178. Mr. Garrard was a member of the scientific staff of Scott’s last expedition.
1 Although the aurora was first observed March 16–17, a regular watch was not established until April 3, owing to the necessity of using every man to put the camp in order. The watch continued uninterruptedly until October, when the sun began to shine alt 24 hours. The aurora was last seen September 26, 1929. A total. number of 7,412 half hourly observations were made over this period. The method of classification used was that of Dr. H. U. Sverdrup.
1 Mr. Davies reports that the proportion of clear or only partly cloudy nights on which the aurora was observed between April 3 and Sept. 26 is more than 90 percent.
1 This was the highest wind velocity recorded at Little America.
1 This was the lowest temperature of the year, comparing with Amundsen’s lowest of 74.4° below zero.
2 27.85 inches reduced to sea level.
CHAPTER XI
MORE PLANS AND PREPARATIONS
“BUT you will come away hating one another. The winter night will be a dreadful bore.” Thus, our well-meaning friends as we started south. Now hate is an emotional state that may be acquired anywhere, in a Fifth Avenue drawing room as easily as in a Siberian garrison—more easily, I dare say. And boredom is a surfeited state of mind that has no connection with lines of longitude. Hate? No, we had little of that. There were passing irritations, of course—most of them mild, a few intense. Some, it is true, lasted a long time. One man may have talked too much, to the occasional distaste of several of his fellows. Another had an ungovernable tendency to lose everything he needed the next moment, and would turn the camp topsy-turvy until he recovered it. And still another insisted on telling long, elaborate and (to many) pointless yarns. One or two men were undeniably lazy and this was irritating to all hands.
The great balancing force was the strength of loyalty that infused the organization. Even the lazy man sincerely and keenly wished the expedition to succeed and I should prefer a laggard who sincerely liked his expedition to an energetic man who is unable to give loyalty to anything—not even himself. There are such men, but fortunately we had none of them. Otherwise, our government could not have lasted. But show me a group of men who have lived for a year in unbroken harmony, whose gorges have failed to rise ever so faintly at these very same nuisances or similar ones, and I shall have the doubtful privilege of seeing inhuman dolts.
Boredom? Certainly we were bored at times. There were for all of us periods toward the end of winter when it seemed that time stood still, and the spring and the sun would never come. But those were rare occasions. We were so taken up with special tasks that had to be done that spring seemed to be rushing at us, and the night too short to allow us time for leisure, much less to be bored.
Bear in mind that the men who went south with me were unusual men, picked from thousands, and for the most part were keen men, with an interest in the unusual. A few were brilliant, most were above the average, and the rest were the type of men you can find anywhere and everywhere, doing the routine and the odd jobs of the world with steady sureness. Some were students, with a passionate love of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and some would not have given a pin for all the knowledge you could pack in the City of New York. Some could take a piece of wood, a bolt of cloth, or a fragment of metal and turn it into the neatest and most ingenious contrivance an exploring party might wish for, and there were others who could not keep a fire going if their lives depended upon it. Some were of the virile, out-of-doors type, to whom “roughing it” was a pleasure, and others hated it as a meager and limited existence, and refused to venture far from the stoves until spring came.
But every one of them had a special thing which I thought he did well, or he had an especially fine character that fitted well with our scheme of things. Otherwise he would not have been there. They were prepared to suffer hardships. Had they not, they certainly would not have come. They were willing to endure them without the reward of personal gain. Still they came. These men were not sentimentalists. They were men who had been around, and could penetrate to the true nature of things. And because of the common interest, the common objective and the common keenness, they were capable of a loyalty, tolerance and vivacity that are rarely found except under these circumstances. I had to smile when told that presumably sophisticated New York magazines were inclined to regard them as Rover Boys. Sophistication, I take it, consists of finding more and more fine things to hold up for ridicule by and before intelligences that are too lazy or dishonest to investigate the facts. Least of all they were that. They were as a group the most unafraid men I have ever met.
Some persons have a queer way of looking at things. Surprising as it may seem, we did not enter the Antarctic to create a newspaper story or to develop a motion picture. Hardly. We were in search of information, information that had perhaps no immediate practical usefulness, but that was certainly of great value to science.
Now surely it was worth while to prepare extensively so as to bring pioneering, which is undeniably hazardous, to as low an order of risk and discomfort as is possible. Half the labor of mankind is directed toward finding a more efficient and less dangerous way of doing things. Yet the head of an immense corporation said on our return: “You did your job too easily. It lacked hardships and tragedy.” Rubbish!
No Antarctic journey, whether by air or by surface, is easy. Too many fine men have died, too many more have suffered hardships beyond the ability of other men to describe, to permit that statement to stand. Of course aerial exploration of the polar regions is vastly less troublesome and very much faster than sledging. But each has its particular risks, which are obvious enough not to require definition here: enough to say that the gain in comfort and speed that the airplane provides is offset somewhat, at least at this period in its development, by the independence of ground travel from all but the worst kind of weather and its comparative secur
ity from all but the worst kinds of hazards.
So often we make the mistake of believing that because a mission is executed with sureness and without mishap i, must have been easy. The history of polar exploration is full of contrasts. Witness the southern journeys of Scott and Amundsen. For years it was the practice of certain critics to minimize the risk and the difficulties in Amundsen’s dash to the Pole. Even Scott, on being confronted by the Norwegians’ tracks a few miles to the Pole, decided hastily they must have found an easier way.1
The two parties, Amundsen’s returning north after reaching the Pole, Scott’s still pressing desperately southward, passed each other unseen about 75 miles apart on the polar plateau; and what a picture that must have made, were there an eye to take in both. On the one hand a party moving rapidly and surely according to plan, always on schedule, always confident, light of heart and full in stomach. And on the other hand a party lifting itself from one superhuman effort into another, from one crisis to another, exhausted by attrition, hunger and storm, weakened by injuries, their endurance falling steadily behind their needs, until at last they perished, all of them, on the trail.
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