“Individual dogs always tumbling in, and occasionally part of a team would fall through and begin to fight amongst themselves, and then again a sledge would break through.
“As we neared the mountains the surface became icy, and it became increasingly difficult to keep straight on skis and manage the sledges, but we are camped tonight at the foot of Liv’s Glacier in the very shadow of Mt. Nansen. Very tired after the long trek, but even if I were not I should need much more poetic felicity of expression than I can muster to give any notion of the sublime sight ahead of us—a mighty range of mountains from ten to fifteen thousand feet high, rising sheer from the Ross Barrier, which at their feet are less than 300 feet above sea level. We already feel repaid for the long hard days of travel behind us—up every morning from 5:30 to 6 o’clock, with temperatures from 5 to 30 degrees below zero, start the primus stove to thaw out our food and melt snow for powdered milk and for tea. Then the dead quiet (provided the dogs have not begun to stir about) of the Barrier air is disturbed as I howl, ‘Breakfast! Norman, Eddie, Freddie, Mike, Obie.’ Then breakfast of oatmeal, steaming hot from the vacuum jug, with plenty of rich milk and sugar, then two cups of tea and a biscuit. Breakfast over, great haste to get under way as soon as possible. We stop at noon for a few minutes rest and for two cups of hot tea from the vacuum jug, two biscuits, a bar of chocolate, and a small piece of pemmican. We mush on again until we think the dogs have gone far enough, halt, pitch our tents, picket and feed the dogs. While the others are busy attending to the dogs I am busy getting supper of thick pemmican stew, three biscuits with bacon fat, or, on rare occasions, butter and two cups of tea, and then into our fur sleeping bags. But now all that is changed, and a month, full of opportunity, lies right before us.”
Thus far in our travels we had concentrated entirely on the business of getting to the mountains. Now we were ready to go to work. There were two major tasks ahead of us. We wanted to map or chart as great areas of the Queen Maud Mountains as we could, and here before us lay a veritable paradise for a geologist. Naturally I wanted as much time as possible to devote to my geological and geographical studies. We made a division of labor with George (Mike) Thorne and Jack O’Brien assigned to the task of mapping while I was freed to devote myself to my own particular interests. I assisted with the mapping to the extent of doing the navigating and making all the astronomical observations. In the following weeks nothing seemed to please Mike so much as to stand around with his compass on a jacob staff or with the theodolite shooting angles on peaks and glaciers. He was tireless, and it was principally due to his industry that we were able to bring back so complete a map of our travels in and along the front ranges of the Queen Maud Mountains.
We spent three days exploring the lower part of Liv’s Glacier and the surrounding mountains. We immediately saw the necessity of getting well into the mountains beyond the foothills if we were to reach the rocks that held the key to the geology. These foothills were composed entirely of the old pre-Cambrian rocks, the very oldest rocks we know, while the higher mountains farther south were seen to have their lower portions of old pre-Cambrian rocks overlain by some kind of flat-lying rocks that appeared to be arranged in layers. If these layers turned out to be sedimentary then we should be able to unravel in part the geological story of this great mountain range.
We had hoped to be able to get at these higher mountains by way of Liv’s Glacier, but we found it so steep and so badly crevassed that we were scarcely able to climb it on foot even when shod with crampons. We therefore left this, our first mountain camp, and came along the foot of the range to the southeast and camped on the lower part of what Amundsen indicates on his chart as the western portion of Axel Heiberg Glacier. We established our mountain base here and called it Strom Camp, and immediately set to work making preparations for our projected trips into the mountains and eastward. The most important part of our preparations consisted of taking an accurate inventory of our dog and man food and basing our plans on the amount of food available.
Our first field work necessitated ascending the glacier to get at the rocks that capped Mt. Nansen, which lay at the head of it. We left Strom Camp on December 6th and sledged fourteen miles up the glacier and camped as near as we could to the rocks which I wanted to reach. The flanks of Mt. Nansen were encased in ice which in part pulls away from the rock faces to leave great crevasses which made the ascent to the rocks somewhat uncertain.
The next day Mike Thorne, Ed Goodale, Freddie Crockett, and I started out on skis to climb the steep slope above our camp and thread our way, if possible, among the crevasses to the rocks which were our goal. We dared not attempt to climb about here other than on skis for fear of falling into crevasses, and in my log for December 7th, I find the day described as follows:
“Climbed on skis up saddle between two spurs on southern slope of Mt. Nansen—very steep and difficult with a small ice falls half way up, a series of crevasses transverse to our course from one to eight or eleven feet in width, but usually roofed over. We roped to climb and ‘herringboned’ and ‘sidebilled’ our way up on our skis. Had to climb even steeper slope beyond these first crevasses to reach the coveted rocks—a bit hazardous this, for we were climbing along a steep side hill, and some 200 feet below us, paralleling our course, was a great yawning chasm.
“The snow was crusted over, and it was hard to make our skis stick, but we finally reached our rocks, the very rocks that I wanted most to find in the Antarctic. We became so interested in our rock collecting that none of us noted the changing weather. Quite suddenly we were completely engulfed ant could see nothing of our surroundings. We hastened to put on our skis, hoping we would be able to retrace our steps. Then it began to snow, and we began to get a bit nervous. We hurriedly roped and began our descent.
“Mike is an expert on skis, but for the rest of us the down going was more difficult than the ascent. We slipped and fell time after time, knowing the big open crevasse was a few feet below us, got up, swallowed our hearts, and skidded on again. Fortunately the snowfall was not sufficient to cover our tracks, and when we had cleared the first steep slope the clouds lifted enough so we could see our way across the worst of the crevasses. Then came the steep, uncrevassed slope with which we began our climb. Here we could take off our awkward ropes. Mike slid grandly down the hill and Freddie Crockett did pretty well following him, but as for Ed Goodale and me, after trying with great difficulty to sidehill our way down, we finally sat down on our skis and disgracefully slid to the bottom.”
This was really one of the worst days of the whole summer, and not the least significant of the thrills was the realization that the flat lying rocks that cap Mt. Nansen were a great series of sandstones, containing toward their top seams of impure coaly material. This discovery definitely establishes the fact that we are here dealing with precisely the same mountain structure as those known and studied by British geologists along the western borders of the Ross Sea. In other words the structure of the sandstone demonstrates that Mt. Nansen is part of a great uplifted fault block system of mountains, that takes its rise more than a thousand miles away toward the west and north. Furthermore the presence of the low grade coaly material on Mt. Nansen greatly increases the limits of the coal field that is believed to underlie a large part of the Antarctic Plateau.
It was also on this first day’s climb that Ed Goodale found lichens on one of the rocks. It was an interesting find for it was the farthest south at which indigenous life of any sort had ever been found. We were later to find greater growths of lichens even farther south than this.
On the 8th of December we moved farther westward to get at another spur of Mt. Nansen, and Norman Vaughan, Ed Goodale, Mike and I climbed again to the rocks—up ice faces where we had to chop our steps and over ragged pinnacled columns of dolerite—lots of fun and amazingly interesting rocks.
Another day’s work about this side of Mt. Nansen, and then we headed back down the glacier to make preparations for our trip eastward along the foot o
f the range. What a riot it is driving the dog teams down the steep slopes of the glacier. The sledges are rough-locked, that is, ropes are put around the runners to prevent their sliding easily, and then the driver yells ‘‘yake” and tries to keep his team from getting too near another one and away from any chance crevasses.
Coming down Norm’s team and Eddie’s got too close together and mixed in one grand fight. I was sliding grandly along between the sledges. Immediately the fight commenced, and purely from the standpoint of self preservation, I tried to stop, but instead I slid right into the middle of the mêlée and in trying to extricate myself from the jam without getting bitten I parted the dogs and have not yet confessed to the drivers that I did not deliberately set out to separate the dogs for them. I am such an awkward dog driver anyhow, that when I make a grand splurge like this one I hate to confess that it was accidental.
Before returning to Strom Camp we climbed what we believed to be Mt. Betty, both to make a search for a cache left there by Amundsen eighteen years ago, and to get a look up the eastern part of Axel Heiberg Glacier. We failed to find the cache and did not get much of a view of Axel Heiberg. We returned to our base camp to make ready for our proposed eastern trip. On the 12th Ed Goodale and I made a successful search for the cache of food and gasoline laid down by Admiral Byrd before the polar flight. We brought the food back to camp and were glad to have it, for it gave us a great margin of safety for carrying out our plans without taking too long chances.
On the morning of the 13th—and it was Friday too—we started on our eastern trip. To our left the Barrier was heavily blanketed with clouds, but it was brilliant sunny weather over the mountains, and what a setting for our start! Ahead and disappearing toward the east a great range of mountains unknown and unexplored—fifteen miles away and to our right was Mt. Nansen in all his glory. A great sight is this mountain, dignified and grand as befits anything named for such a man as Fridtjof Nansen.
We camped part way up Axel Heiberg Glacier with Mt. Ruth Gade towering above us—a fairy land setting in this world of white in the brilliant sun. How different it was the next morning—sky overcast and snow beginning to fall. For three days we were snowbound, with a fall of sixteen inches of soft wet snow, and so warm that it melted on everything it touched. We were wet and, of course, very cold, much colder than we had been at 25 below when we could keep dry.
Time hung heavy on our hands. When we left Little America each man was allowed to bring one book, but of course these had been left at Strom Camp when we started eastward. Someone had brought a pack of cards, so we played hearts with our daily issue of chocolate for stakes. How different our camp looked when the sun finally came back. The dogs, as they lay curled in the snow, had melted themselves down into wells. They were half buried, and the tents, sagging under their load, reminded one of evergreens at home with their branches sagging after a heavy fall of wet snow.
On the 7th when the sun returned, we dug ourselves out and were under way again—very heavy sledging and skiing. Directly ahead of us the surface was so badly crevassed that we had to head out into the Barrier to go eastward. We made frequent stops for Obie and Mike to do their surveying. About two o’clock on the 18th we saw that we were coming to a great ice field and decided to turn sharply to our right and go into the mountains and climb up for a look around. We camped at the foot of an interesting looking ridge up which we climbed 2,000 feet after supper. An observation later showed this to be our farthest south, 85° 27’, and even here as at Mt. Nansen we found lichens on the rocks, the farthest south that life has yet been found.
The mountains here were composed entirely of the old pre-Cambrian gneisses, schists and granites, the very oldest rocks known. There was no cap rock of sandstone. The great sheets of ice that had at some not very remote geological time covered all these mountains, had long since carried it all away. But any rocks are of interest to the geologist—and all the members of the party had by this time become amateur geologists—so of course they were ever on the outlook for minerals. In general these old rocks were quite barren of interesting minerals. It was about this camp that were found some copper bearing rocks but not in sufficient quantity to suggest any extensive deposits.
We looked out away from the mountains and to the east, and the surface was ice as far as we could see. But we had decided to go eastward, at least as far as Marie Byrd Land which begins at the 15t0h meridian. In my log for the 19th I find that “We headed out to avoid the ice, but it was no use—soon became so bad that we couldn’t stand on our skis but had to take them off and hang onto the sledges. Ice was fairly smooth at first, but after two hours travelling we found ourselves in an area that had been much crevassed. Fortunately most of the crevasses were not of great extent, but they gave us some nasty spills nevertheless. We had to play a sort of game of tag with them. We could see them easily enough, for they were in part bridged with snow, whereas the rest of the ice was swept clean. But seeing the crevasses and avoiding them were two different matters.
“It was almost impossible to guide the sledges or make the dogs go where we wanted them to go. The dogs have gotten pretty smart about crossing crevasses and have learned that their best chance of keeping out is to head straight across them. But once they are across they forget that a change in their course may pull the sledge into the very hole they have been able to avoid. So we often crashed into them with our sledges. Wrecked one of our best sledges and had to abandon it and badly damaged the runners on the others. We had to travel 25 miles before we could find a patch of snow big enough to anchor our tents on.”
It was the same thing over again the next day, but most of the time we were going down hill so we made another 25 miles to find ourselves well to the east of the 150th meridian—in Marie Byrd Land—on American soil here in the Antarctic.
Here again we found the same old rocks that form the base of all the mountains and constitute all of the mountains except the great high ones around Axel Heiberg Glacier, where these old rocks are overlain by the sandstone. Here also we found the same fault block structure.
Looking back over the route we have come and the area we have mapped it is interesting to note that eastward from Mt. Alice W. the mountains are much lower and continue so as far east as we could see. The highest peaks in Marie Byrd Land do not exceed 5000 feet, while Mt. Ruth Gade beside Axel Heiberg Glacier is 15,000 feet. This eastern part of our mountains is also characterized by greater glaciers than Axel Heiberg or Liv’s. We charted three great valley or outlet glaciers that should be classed along with the Beardmore which is the largest valley glacier so far known any place in the world.
While Mike was busy finishing his mapping the rest of us climbed the nearest mountain. We called this one Supporting Party Mountain. It was our farthest point from Little America and we had been able to reach it only because of the good work of the Supporting Party. We built a cairn on top of the mountain. In this cairn will be found a page from my notebook with the following note thereon.
“Dec. 21st, 1929
Camp Francis Dana Coman
85° 25′ 17″ S
147° 55’ W
Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica
“This note the farthest east point reached by the Geological Party of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition. We are beyond or east of the 150th meridian, and therefore in the name of Commander Richard Evelyn Byrd claim this land as a part of Marie Byrd Land, a dependency or possession of the United States of America. We are not only the first Americans but the first individuals of any nationality to set foot on American soil in the Antarctic. This extended sledge journey from little America has been made possible by the cooperative work of the Supporting Party composed of Arthur Walden, leader; Christopher Braathen; Jack Bursey; and Joe de Ganahl. Our Geological Party is composed of:
L. M. Gould, leader and geologist
N. D. Vaughan, dog driver
G. A. Thorne, topographer
E. E. Goodale, dog driver
F. E. Crocke
tt, dog driver and radio operator
J. S. O’Brien, civil engineer.”
When I had collected all the rocks I thought we could carry and Mike had finished locating his mountains and glaciers we were ready to start back toward Strom Camp. The essential part of our scientific work was finished. We had mapped 175 miles of the front ranges of the Queen Maud Mountains, we had demonstrated that this great fault block mountain system is continued almost due eastward from Axel Heiberg Glacier for more than a hundred miles, we had demonstrated that there is no such highland as Amundsen thought he saw and called Carmen Land, and furthermore we had helped to push the known limits of the Ross Shelf Ice more than one hundred miles east than they had been known to exist by the base laying flight made by Commander Byrd.
Westward bound toward Strom Camp we found recrossing the glacial ice almost as much of a nightmare as it had been the first time we had crossed. Otherwise the return journey was devoid of special happenings until we camped Christmas Day at the foot of Mt. Betty. We had determined to make a last thorough search of this mountain for the Amundsen cache, for there was no other place that would fit Amundsen’s description of Mt. Betty. As we broke camp, Mike and I skied ahead down to a ridge where we thought we saw something that looked like a cairn of rocks. It was.
We signalled the dog teams to come along. What a thrill we did all get on this Christmas Day to stand where Amundsen had once stood and to find, perfectly intact, the cairn he had erected eighteen years before. We couldn’t help standing at attention, with hats off, in admiring respect for the memory of this remarkable man before we touched a rock of the cairn. It was one of the most exciting moments of the summer when I pried the lid off the tin can in the cairn and took out a bit of paper which had formerly been a page in Amundsen’s notebook, and on which he had briefly recounted his discovery of the South Pole.
Back in Strom Camp again on the 26th. I had wanted to make one more journey into the mountains but the dogs were too tired. We had to give them a few days rest before we began our long trek northward to Little America. We carefully overhauled our gear and discarded pretty much everything except our instruments, our food, and my rock collection. Our good discarded equipment we cached on Mt. Betty not far from Amundsen’s cairn. In a tin can within the cairn we left a note giving a brief account of the Expedition and the Geological Party. I left one of my rock hammers on top of the rock cairn we had built around the cache.
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