Wednesday 8 November [Actually November 07]Same wonderful weather, terrain and skiing. We are running like greyhounds over the endless flat snow plain, only broken now and then by a long, gentle wave formation running E-W.
We have built snow cairns every third nautical mile the whole way. Each cairn consists of 60 blocks. All told we will build 200 such cairns. They are more than a man’s height and with a fairly broad front. At each whole degree we place a depot for the return journey, and with these intermediary cairns we are safe. In this way we can drive homewards with almost empty sledges. We can see almost no effect on the dogs after the day’s run. Today we also covered a nautical mile in 15 minutes – ‘ “The girl” is shielded ashore, let her come on board’ etc. Our last lady ended her life yesterday evening because of frivolity. She had also came on heat. All in all we now have 44 dogs. ‘Else’ was deposited at 82°20' S.Lat. This transcript comes from “Race for the South Pole - The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen” by Roland Huntford. It appears by courtesy of the author and The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. |
South Pole 1911–2011 is an informational outreach project run by the Norwegian Polar Institute
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