The Worst Journey in the World Apsley Cherry-Garrard (novel books to read TXT) 📖

new ranges of mountains extending to the S. E. of the Dominion Range. They are very distant, however, and must evidently be the top of those bounding the Barrier. They could only be seen from the tops of the ridges as waves up which we are continually mounting. Our height yesterday morning by hypsometer was 8,000 feet. That is our last hypsometer record, as I had the misfortune to break the thermometer. The hypsometer was one of my chief delights, and nobody could have been more disgusted than myself at its breaking. However, we have the aneroid to check the height. We are going gradually up and up. As one would expect, a considerable amount of lassitude was felt over breakfast after our feed last night. The last thing on earth I wanted to do was to ship the harness round my poor tummy when we started. As usual a stiff breeze from the south and a temperature of −7° blew in our faces. Strange to say, however, we don’t get frostbitten. I suppose it is the open-air life.

I could not tell if I had a frostbite on my face now, as it is all scales, so are my lips and nose. A considerable amount of red hair is endeavouring to cover up matters. We crossed several ridges, and after the effects of overfeeding had worn off did a pretty good march of thirteen miles.

[No more Christmas Days, so no more big hooshes.248]

December 27. There is something the matter with our sledge or our team, as we have an awful slog to keep up with the others. I asked Dr. Bill and he said their sledge ran very easily. Ours is nothing but a desperate drag with constant rallies to keep up. We certainly manage to do so, but I am sure we cannot keep this up for long. We are all pretty well done up tonight after doing 13.3 miles.

Our salvation is on the summits of the ridges, where hard névé and sastrugi obtain, and we skip over this slippery stuff and make up lost ground easily. In soft snow the other team draw steadily ahead, and it is fairly heartbreaking to know you are putting your life out hour after hour while they go along with little apparent effort.

December 28. The last few days have been absolutely cloudless, with unbroken sunshine for twenty-four hours. It sounds very nice, but the temperature never comes above zero and what Shackleton called “the pitiless increasing wind” of the great plateau continues to blow at all times from the south. It never ceases, and all night it whistles round the tents, all day it blows in our faces. Sometimes it is S. S. E., or S. E. to S., and sometimes even S. to W., but always southerly, chiefly accompanied by low drift which at night forms quite a deposit round the sledges. We expected this wind, so we must not growl at getting it. It will be great fun sailing the sledges back before it. As far as weather is concerned we have had remarkably fine days up here on this limitless snow plain. I should like to know what there is beneath us⁠—mountains and valleys simply levelled off to the top with ice? We constantly come across disturbances which I can only imagine are caused by the peaks of ice-covered mountains, and no doubt some of the icefalls and crevasses are accountable to the same source. Our coming west has not cleared them, as we have seen more disturbances to the west, many miles away. However, they are getting less and less, and are now nothing but featureless rises with apparently no crevasses. Our first two hours’ pulling today.⁠ ⁠…

From Lashly’s Diary

December 29, 1911. A nasty head wind all day and low drift which accumulates in patches and makes it the deuce of a job to get along. We have got to put in long days to do the distance.

December 30, 1911. Sledges going heavy, surface and wind the same as yesterday. We depoted our ski tonight, that is the party returning tomorrow, when we march in the forenoon and camp to change our sledge runners into 10 feet. Done 11 miles but a bit stiff.

December 31, 1911. After doing 7 miles we camped and done the sledges which took us until 11 p.m., and we had to dig out to get them done by then, made a depot and saw the old year out and the new year in. We all wondered where we should be next New Year. It was so still and quiet; the weather was dull and overcast all night, in fact we have not seen much of the sun lately; it would be so nice if we could sometimes get a glimpse of it, the sun is always cheering.

January 1912. New Year’s Day. We pushed on as usual, but were rather late getting away, 9:10⁠—something unusual for us to be as late. The temperature and wind is still very troublesome. We are now ahead of Shackleton’s dates and have passed the 87th parallel, so it is only 180 miles to the Pole.

January 2, 1912. The dragging is still very heavy and we seem to be always climbing higher. We are now over 10,000 feet above sea level. It makes it bad as we don’t get enough heat in our food and the tea is not strong enough to run out of the pot. Everything gets cold so quickly, the water boils at about 196° F.

Scott’s own diary of this first fortnight on the plateau shows the immense shove of the man: he was getting every inch out of the miles, every ounce out of his companions. Also he was in a hurry, he always was. That blizzard which had delayed him just before the Gateway, and the resulting surfaces which had delayed him