Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
52
On the last day of 1902, with what appeared to be only one more icefall to the pla-
teau, the party cached a week's worth of food at the last outcropping of rock, Depot Nun-
atak. But on New Year's Day, stormy weather again pinned them down. The next day, as
they headed west, Macfarlane, one of the members of B team, collapsed. He was revived
with some strong tea but clearly could not go on. Nor did other members of B team seem
very fit, so Armitage ordered the party to camp while he and the A team pushed west-
ward onto the plateau, vowing to return within five days.
Having mounted the final icefall, the party at last looked out across the endless plain
of white that is the polar plateau. If there was a western shore to Victoria Land, it lay far
beyond the horizon. Armitage and his party had forged the first route through the moun-
tains, stood at the shore of this inland sea of ice, shivered at its vastness, and felt the puni-
ness that every sailor feels when adrift beyond the sight of land.
As the party was approaching the campsite of the B team, stepping over narrow cre-
vasses, Skelton mentioned to Armitage that he thought he could make out two figures.
As Armitage looked up, he stepped into a crevasse and fell seventeen feet, hit an ice pin-
nacle on one wall with his thigh, and bounced to the end of his harness twenty-seven feet
down. At that depth the crevasse was four feet wide and “widened out into what appeared
to be a huge fathomless cavern.” The others quickly lowered a rope and hauled out Ar-
mitage, who escaped with no broken bones and only his wind knocked out. Armitage
had glanced up for only a moment, and the crevasse had surprised him. One advantage of
man-hauling over other forms of traversing is that one is tied to a sledge by means of the
harness rope and thus caught if a fall occurs.
After the A and B teams regrouped, their return to Discovery was uneventful. At Ca-
thedral Rocks, they came upon a torrential meltwater stream between glacier and rock,
where they camped to the sound of rushing water that could be dipped without having
to melt snow. The climb up Descent Glacier was accomplished in eight and a half hours,
relaying one sledge at a time, and using block and tackle on the steepest slope at the top.
The stoic Macfarlane, who probably had had a heart attack (though it was not diagnosed
as such at the time), climbed Descent Glacier one slow step after another, but had to be
carried back on a sledge for most of the inward journey. After fifty-two days on the trail,
the tired men were given a rousing welcome as they approached Discovery, then a bath,
clean clothes, and food when they went aboard. Everyone was keen to hear the stories of
their encounters with new lands where a mighty glacier cut clean through the mountains,
descending from an ice plateau whose farther limits could only be imagined, and to oVer
warm congratulations, as Armitage said, “to the first human beings to storm and carry
the heights of South Victoria Land.”
After the successful return of the western party on January 18, everyone on Discovery was
pondering the whereabouts of the southern party and, as the days went by, anxiously
awaiting their return. On February 3 Skelton and Bernacchi were about 6 miles out on the
sea ice when they saw a bedraggled threesome plodding toward them. Scott, Shackleton,
and Wilson had traversed about 250 miles to the south, and with great hardship had
barely managed to make it back alive. All three were suVering from scurvy, Shackleton
 
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