The Home of the Blizzard: Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914Mawson, Douglas, Sir
History
The Home of the Blizzard: Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914
Mawson, Douglas, Sir
Antarctica -- Discovery and exploration; Australasian Antarctic Expedition (1911-1914)
Reviewing the day through our peaceful smoke-rings, I was rather
comforted by the fact that the fall into the crevasse had thoroughly
tested my harness. Correll expressed himself as perfectly satisfied with
his test. McLean seemed to feel somewhat out of it, being the only one
without a crevasse experience; which happy state he maintained until the
end, apparently somewhat to his disappointment.
On the 24th we broke camp at 9 A.M., continuing down the gully towards
the glacier. A lofty wall of rocks, set within a frame of ice, was
observed on our left, one mile away. To it we diverged and found it to
be gneiss similar to that of Aurora Peak. Several photos were taken.
The land was at our back and the margin of the glacier had been crossed.
Only too soon we were in the midst of terribly crevassed ground, through
which one could only thread a slow and zig-zag course. The blue ice was
riven in every direction by gaping quarries and rose smooth and slippery
on the ridges which broke the surface into long waves. Shod with
crampons, the rear of the sledge secured by a tail-rope, we had a
trying afternoon guiding the load along the narrow ridges of ice with
precipices on either hand. Fortunately the wind was not above twenty
miles per hour. As the frivolous "Epic" had it:
Odds fish! the solid sea is sorely rent,
And all around we're pent
With quarries, chasms, pits, depressions vast,
Their snow-lids overcast.
A devious track, all curved and serpentine
Round snow-lids superfine.
On jutting brinks and precipices sheer
Precariously we steer.
We pushed on to find a place in which to camp, as there was scarcely
safe standing-room for a primus stove. At seventy miles the broken ice
gave way to a level expanse of hard sastrugi dotted all over with small
mounds of ice about four feet high. After hoosh, a friendly little
Wilson petrel came flying from the northern sea to our tent. We
considered it to be a good omen.
Next day the icy mounds disappeared, to be replaced by a fine, flat
surface, and the day's march amounted to eleven and a quarter miles.
At 11 A.M. four snow petrels visited us, circling round in great
curiosity. It is a cheerful thing to see these birds amid the lone,
inhospitable ice.
We were taking in the surroundings from our position off the land
scanning the far coast to the south for rock and turning round to
admire the bold contours of Aurora Peak and Mount Murchison at our back.
Occasionally there were areas of rubbly snow, blue ice and crevasses
completely filled with snow, of prodigious dimensions, two hundred to
three hundred yards wide and running as far as the eye could travel.
The snow filling them was perfectly firm, but, almost always along the
windward edge, probing with an ice-axe would disclose a fissure. This
part of the Mertz Glacier was apparently afloat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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