Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
133
continued to be unloaded. The Ter ra No va paid its visit on February 4, adding incentive
to Amundsen's plan for attacking the pole.
On February 10 the first of three depot-laying traverses began. The party consisted
of Amundsen, Kristian Prestrud, Helmer Hanssen, and Hjalmar Johansen. Prestrud was
the “forerunner” out ahead of the party, setting the direction and pace while looking for
crevasses. The lead sledge was handled by Hanssen, who Amundsen said was “the most
eYcient dog-driver” he had ever met. Amundsen brought up the rear, where he could
watch the rest of the team and catch any objects that might fall from the forward sledges.
Each of the three sledges carried about 550 pounds of provisions and was pulled by six
dogs.
Although the Barrier was hazy for the first couple of days making surface definition
nil, the dogs pulled well. By February 14 the party had reached 80° S. There they de-
posited more than one thousand pounds of dog food, making a pile of cases twelve feet
high and marking it with a bamboo pole and flag. The dogs pushed it hard on the inward
journey while the men rode on the nearly empty sledges, making the return ninety-seven
miles to Framheim in two long days. Amundsen was justifiably pleased with the dogs'
first performance on the Barrier, calling it a “brilliant result,” and looked forward with
confidence to the ensuing sledge journeys.
With only Henrik Lindstrøm, the cook, left behind, the second depot-laying party
left Framheim on February 22, with forty-two dogs pulling seven heavily loaded sledges.
On February 27 the party reached the depot at 80° S. This time it was carefully marked
by twenty numbered flags with a spacing of three thousand feet, spread on both sides of
the depot in an east-west line perpendicular to the direction of the traverse. Amundsen's
fear was that the party would drift oV course on the return and miss an essential food
cache. Unlike the British traverses along the front of the Transantarctic Mountains, where
depots had been sited by the bearings or alignment of peaks, on the Barrier there were no
such landmarks for determining location.
The party pushed on to 81° S, arriving on March 3. There 1,234 pounds of dog food
were left before Olav Bjaaland, Sverre Hassel, and Jørgen Stubberud turned back. The
other five continued south to 82° S, where a final 1,366 pounds of provisions, mainly
dog food, were cached on March 6. Dropping temperatures during the outward journey
coupled with the heavy weights had tested the dogs to their limits. The teams had also
experienced their first crevasse field, with three dogs going in together, caught by their
harnesses and held by their startled mates. Amundsen had hoped to reach 83° S on this
traverse, but the emaciated state of the animals meant that he dared not risk going far-
ther than the depot at 82° S. As it was, eight dogs were lost on the return as temperatures
reached below minus 40° F.
The third and final depot party of the season departed on March 31, with seven men,
six sledges, and thirty-six dogs. Amundsen stayed at Framheim during this trip. The
party, commanded by Prestrud, returned ten days later, having delivered twenty-two
hundred pounds of fresh seal meat and sundry other foodstuVs to the 80° S depot, bol-
stering that cache to forty-two hundred pounds. Combined with the other two depots,
the total weight of provisions already in place for the following season was in excess of
 
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