If wind and tide were the first obstacles, the boats themselves provided their own resistance. The motor proved extremely unreliable, and though Koch and Larsen were able to fuss with and repair it, the real mechanic on the expedition, Vigfus, was always away to the northeast pursuing his primary mission—management of the packhorses. The mechanical difficulties both with the working of the engine itself and with the propeller and rudder were unrelenting. Moreover, motoring coastwise in uncharted waters with uncertain tide conditions, they frequently ran aground, scraped and nicked their keel, and damaged the propeller and its shaft. In addition to the problems with the motorboat, the high gunwales of the barge, which served to increase the carrying capacity and to keep the cargo from wetting in the chop, made it extraordinarily difficult, when the barge was beached (virtually the only way they could load it), to move heavy cargo in and out; the sleds and petroleum canisters made this evident the very first day.
Then, of course, there was the ice—treacherous, grinding, unpredictable, moving as if it were alive, and capable, as were the sharp rocks along the shoreline, barely submerged, of scraping and puncturing both boats. These were often damaged in this way and repaired only with great difficulty. Moreover, in order to repair them, they had to ground them, and when heavily laden, the keels were often overstressed and precariously balanced on rocky surfaces. It was also all too easy to become icebound in such a small boat, much easier than it was with a large ship (and that was easy enough). At one point, they were held ice-fast, with the ice constantly grinding against the hulls of their boats, for twelve days.17 That single round trip from Storm Kap to Kap Stop and back took them twenty-three days.
If the weather was clear, the temperature fell at night and new ice formed, and the winds tended to blow briskly from the west. If it was cloudy and rainy—and Koch had never seen so much rain—they were miserable. In between, if it was foggy, they could not navigate and find their way. All of these uncertainties made chaos of their preplanned rendezvous with the shore party, to compare notes and plan the next steps. Koch and Larsen on the one hand and Vigfus and Wegener on the other saw each other almost never, communicating by written messages at the depots.
Now let us consider the struggles on land. When one reads Wegener’s diaries from this period of time, July through September, it does not take many entries to grasp what’s going on. At a depot and at each stop along the way, the horses would be bridled, saddled, and brought one by one to a pile of gear where the hay sacks and the few provision and equipment boxes would be tied to the saddles. With the pack train assembled, the two wranglers, Vigfus and Wegener, would set out with the pack train, one before and one behind, mounted on their horses. Moving along the shore in relatively uninterrupted terrain, already well known to Wegener, who had traversed it many times (alone and in company) on foot and by dogsled in 1906–1908, they estimated that they should have been able to make about 15 kilometers (9 miles) per day (about half of what they would have done with dogs over snow), which would mean roughly a month of travel, with a little cushion at each end. They would bring a load of hay sacks half the distance, turn around and go back to Storm Kap for another load, and return. With three round trips, of perhaps 150 kilometers (93 miles) each, they estimated that it would take them at most a month. In reality, it took more than six weeks.
The typical day of their journey sounded something like this.18 They would leave their tent at five or even four o’clock in the morning and (without coffee!), in snow and rain usually, set out to find the horses. They had to leave the horses unhobbled in the evening and night, so that the horses could feed themselves on the available grass, in order to conserve fodder, and so that they could flee a bear if menaced by one. It usually took one and a half to two hours to find the horses, a half hour to feed them, and sometimes as long as four hours for the two men to bridle, saddle, and then pack them. The hay sacks were cumbersome, and it took all of their strength to cinch them down securely enough on the packsaddles that they would not slip off during the day. By the time this work was done, Wegener’s arms were so tired that he could barely lift them.19
Having risen in the early morning, it was sometimes early afternoon before they could set out, and they tended to travel through the afternoon and evening, but there were always miscellaneous disasters to hold them up. Rain and snow were constant companions, along with the occasional fog. The way along the shore turned out to be narrow and constrained, and they sometimes had to move on the rocky surface of the intertidal zone at low tide in order to avoid overhanging rocks—wave-cut benches that tended to knock the hay sacks awry on the saddles and loosen the straps. Their prized puppy, Gloë, who proved herself again and again by alerting them to the presence of bears and finding game to hunt (everyone agreed that the dog was the most valuable member of the expedition), would sometimes flush an ermine or a rabbit and take off after it; then they would have to wait for her to return.
The biggest obstacle was geographical and required a good deal of forethought. About a third of the way along, directly opposite a spit of land called Hvalrosødden, where Wegener had first learned to drive dogsleds back in 1906 under the instruction of Mylius-Erichsen, there was an outflow stream from a dammed-up lake immediately to the north, which in 1906 they had named Lakxelv. In August 1912, this outflow stream had turned into a broad lake more than 90 meters (295 feet) wide, too deep to ford, and too broad and dangerous for the laden horses to swim. The level rose and fell with each tide, but even at full ebb tide it was still too deep to cross. Rather than venture across it, they decided to create a depot on its eastern margin.
By 6 August they had transported the hay, sixty-three sacks in all, to their depot just this side of the outflow stream, now a slow-moving rising and falling arm of the sea. Wegener wrote in his diary on 8 August, “We finished with the pack straps early, about noon, and after having something to eat we were enjoying a welcome smoke of our pipes. Then, as often happens when you’re really in need, a good idea comes to you. I suggested to Vigfus that we make out of two empty petroleum barrels, and our waterproof provision box, floats for a raft.”20 They had three long boards intended for the prefabricated house and were able to build a triangular raft, with sections of packing cases as the decking. They tried it and found that it would indeed support a man. They had 30 meters (98 feet) of rope, which was just able to stretch across the lake; they were then able to construct a ferryboat of sorts (their raft) whereby, over a period of three days, they transported all their gear, one sack and one box at a time. At the end Vigfus was able to entice the horses to swim across.
Now past the watercourse, they could begin to wind their way west and south to the final depot at Kap Stop, with a side journey to Wegener’s old meteorological station at Pustervig, to pick up material from a nearby depot left by Koch and Larsen. The same scenes and dramas were repeated day after day: runaway horses, the difficulty of packing, stopping and hunting for food, fording rushing streams, being stalked by bears, incessant rain while sleeping in the open. Planned meetings with Koch and Larsen rarely came off. The latter were struggling constantly with the engine, the tide, and the ice, and all four travelers were struggling with wet reindeer-skin sleeping bags, matches that wouldn’t light, and tobacco that wouldn’t burn; they were working themselves to near exhaustion each day.
It was not until 29 August that they found themselves together at the depot near Pustervig. The meeting was almost accidental. Wegener and Vigfus were there with the horses: they had moved all the hay and fodder to the final depot at Kap Stop and had turned back to pick up a miscellaneous load at the Pustervig depot. Koch and Larsen, who might have pursued a reconnaissance farther into the ice-choked Borg Fjord, could not force the boats any further along in the thickening ice and decided to stop at Pustervig for the night. They were all exhausted, with the possible exception of Vigfus, who was indomitable, but they took time that evening for a celebration. They broke out a bottle of port, a bottle of champagne, strawber
ry preserves, and dried apricots. The only thing they had to drink the champagne out of was their 1-liter (0.3-gallon) enamel mugs, out of which they ate and drank everything, and not wanting to combine the precious port with champagne, they eventually decided to drink the port out of empty cartridge cases “the size of one’s finger.”21
Polar exploration, like the practice of medicine and conduct of war, alternates periods of frantic activity with extended periods of boredom. So it was with the expedition in the first two weeks of September. Having pushed themselves to the limits of their strength (and beyond) to arrive at Kap Stop at the earliest possible moment, they now found themselves unable to proceed.
The ice tongue of the Storestrømmen Glacier merged with that of Bistrups Brae, at a location 15 kilometers to the west of their camp at Kap Stop. The flow of the glacier off the ice cap was so rapid that the ice tongue pushed its way halfway across Borg Fjord and calved icebergs so rapidly and in such profusion that the entire mouth of the fjord was jammed with a chaotic mélange of icebergs and sea ice, excepting only a narrow open lead of water, about 100 meters (328 feet) in width, adjacent to Kap Stop, a lead that opened and closed in every tide cycle.
Koch had imagined that once they had arrived at Kap Stop, the others would organize the equipment and provisions, while he motored in the boat back and forth along the 30-kilometer (19-mile) range of coastline to the west of them, looking for the best point of access onto the Inland Ice and the best road into Dronning Louise Land. He was so convinced that this is how things should unfold that it took him three days of struggling with Larsen to move the boat forward even a kilometer to realize that this would not happen, that the nautical part of this expedition was definitively over, and that the boats must be abandoned.
They now had to wait for the new ice to form in the fjord, before they could begin their reconnaissance. There was, now, no other way forward. They occupied themselves by moving their camp slightly to the north, where they could see clearly across the fjord. They turned their attention to mastering the various complicated harness arrangements for hitching the horses to the sleds. Wegener wrote in his journal, “It’s a complete science, and compared with it, understanding the origin of continents is quite trivial. I made an attempt to enter into these mysteries, studying it energetically, but had completely to give it up and surrender it to the other three.”22
In the midst of the beauty of their surroundings and the fantastic light both on the new ice in the fjord and reflected from the ice front to the west, there was the insistent cruelty of this mode of life. Vigfus had analyzed the health of their horses. Two had already gone missing in the trip from Danmarkshavn, and the remaining fourteen had clearly begun to lose weight. The calculation of the horses’ rations had been inadequate. This was something Wegener had experienced in his own food supply between 1906 and 1908. Just as he had starved on his trip to the north with Mylius-Erichsen, these horses were starving in the persistent cold and overexertion. On 10 September, they shot the four weakest animals, one of which was Wegener’s mount, a horse he had ridden in Iceland and that had carried him for the past six weeks. He noted in his diary, “I was in a black mood all day long.”23
On 15 September, as soon as a two-day storm blew past, Wegener and Koch set out with a man-hauled sledge to try the same reconnaissance over the thickening ice: without the weight of the horses and the large sled, the ice might hold them. The account of the next day or so in their diaries is remarkable only for its tale of ordinary misery. In polar exploration, even when things go well, compared to everyday life in cosmopolitan Europe, they go very badly. They dragged the sled across broken and uneven ice. They were wearing one of their novel forms of footwear: wooden shoes studded with nails. These gave good purchase on the slick surface but were clumsy and difficult when climbing the frequent ridges and protuberances of sea ice. They were there to investigate and photograph the ice front on the other side of the fjord, to locate a place where they might ascend. It was exhausting work at every step, with much backtracking.24
The next morning they decided they could move faster without the sled, and they eventually found a place that, although broken and rough, would allow them to ascend onto the main body of the glacier, avoiding the sheer 70-meter (230-foot) ice wall that dominated most of the western margin of the fjord. Wegener took a number of photographs—he photographed at every opportunity—and then strapped the camera and tripod on his back for the return trip. Along the way they encountered a bear with a freshly killed seal and had to take a circuitous route around it.
On their way around an ice hummock to avoid the bear, Wegener lost his footing on the slick sea ice and flipped over backward, landing on the tripod and camera, which punched through his parka and into his back, just above his pelvis on the left side. He tried to rise to see whether his apparatus was intact (he had, in fact, broken the lens plate in three places), but he fell over bellowing with pain and could not rise again. He passed out and then regained consciousness. He tried to rise again, but he had no strength and could not move his left arm. Then he fainted again.25
When Wegener regained consciousness, Koch gave him two Kolapastillen. These stimulant tablets had as their active ingredient Kola (cola acuminata), the original and principal ingredient of those beverages called “colas.” It was a cardiac stimulant that, in quantity, also increased alertness and physical energy, elevated the mood, and suppressed appetite. That it also increased body temperature, blood pressure, and respiratory rate made it an excellent emergency drug for polar explorers, and Koch was a deep believer in its potency.
Wegener was, stimulated or not, unable to get up, and Koch had to go for the sled. They had only one gun between them, and there was a bear a few hundred meters away. Koch left the gun with Wegener and set off as fast as he could go to retrieve the sled. He was as close to panic as he had ever been in his life. He was a man of immense physical strength, patience, and courage, but he was so terrified that Wegener might die that he could barely concentrate. It would take two hours to get the sled. What if Wegener lost consciousness? What if he froze to death on the ice? What if the bear came? What if the bear comes after me while he’s got the gun? Would he be able to fend a bear off with only his Alpenstock?26
After an endless hour, Koch found the sled and loaded it with essentials: sleeping bags, anoraks, and food. Then came the most difficult part: finding Wegener again. It is impossible to exaggerate how difficult this was: in icy terrain there is no scale. Everything is the same color as everything else: that block of ice might be 5 meters (16 feet) tall and 100 meters away, or 20 meters (66 feet) tall and 0.5 kilometers (0.3 miles) away. Without Koch’s experience as a cartographer and way finder, without his automatic, subconscious registry of the location of each landmark and his ability to triangulate automatically in his head, Wegener would have perished that afternoon.
Another hour later, after some anxious searching, Koch found Wegener. In the two hours he had been gone, Wegener had been able to pull himself up and, bent over, with his useless arm resting on his left knee and a ski pole in his other hand, had managed to drag himself 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) across the ice. He kept going via frequent pauses, more kola pills, and a good deal of loud singing, but he was exhausted, retching with pain and exertion, and nearly incoherent when Koch found him.27
Koch bound him to the sledge and dragged him back to their campsite, but the ordeal was far from over. Koch knew he could never drag Wegener over the last of the broken ice between their campsite and Kap Stop. He would have to leave Wegener alone in the tent and go for help. That night Wegener at least showed some appetite for food, and even more for tobacco. The latter encouraged Koch mightily, as he knew Wegener’s passion for smoking and welcomed the calming effect of nicotine on Wegener’s system.
The next morning Koch left Wegener alone and headed back for the encampment at Kap Stop. This time he took the gun with him. Wegener lay all morning in the tent and in midmorning had a good scare, which he
recorded in his diary. He had seen that the ice tongue coming off the glacier was actually plunging into the fjord, beneath the new and rapidly thickening smooth ice on which he was camped. He had seen, several times in the previous day, the startling spectacle of an iceberg calving from the submerged tongue of the glacier and bursting up through the newly formed ice, sending radial cracks in every direction with thunderous reports. While he was waiting for Koch to return, such an event took place, with one of the radiating cracks passing within 10 meters of his tent and opening a lead in the ice more than a meter wide.28 Further fissures could radiate from that spot at any moment and drop him into the fjord in his sleeping bag, too weak to clamber back on the ice—certain death.
Rescued by Koch and Vigfus that afternoon and taken back to Kap Stop, Wegener was still in a bad way. The next morning, 18 September, Koch dressed the wound in Wegener’s back, first with Mercurochrome and then with a coal tar plaster in a tight bandage. At the very least the muscles were badly torn, and more likely he had snapped his ribs close to the spine. Koch wrote in his diary, “Whether there’s a trace of sense than anything I did, only God knows.”29 Wegener noted that even though he could not lie on his back or stay comfortable in any position for long, he could at least keep the stove burning, cook the food, and do various housekeeping chores while the others prepared to drag their 20,000 kilograms of gear across the fjord to the ice road (which he and Koch had discovered) at the base of the great glacier.30
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