The North Pole Part 17

But fort.i.tude and endurance alone are not enough in themselves to carry a man to the North Pole. Only with years of experience in traveling in those regions, only with the aid of a large party, also experienced in that character of work, only with the knowledge of arctic detail and the equipment necessary to prepare himself and his party for any and every emergency, is it possible for a man to reach that long sought goal and return.

CHAPTER XXII

ESSENTIALS THAT BROUGHT SUCCESS

Something has already been said regarding the fact that our journey to the North Pole was no haphazard, hit or miss "dash." It was not really a "dash" at all. Perhaps it may properly be described as a "drive"--in the sense that when the sledge journey got under way we pressed forward with a speed at times almost breathless. But nothing was done impulsively.

Everything was done in accordance with a scheme long contemplated and plotted out in advance with every possible care.

The source of our success was a carefully planned system, mathematically demonstrated. Everything that could be controlled was controlled, and the indeterminate factors of storms, open leads and accidents to men, dogs and sledges, were taken into consideration in the percentage of probabilities and provided for as far as possible. Sledges would break and dogs would fall by the way, of course; but we could generally make one sledge out of two broken ones, and the gradual depletion of the dogs was involved in my calculations.

The so-called "Peary system" is too complex to be covered in a paragraph, and involves too many technical details to be outlined fully in any popular narrative. But the main points of it are about as follows:

To drive a s.h.i.+p through the ice to the farthest possible northern land base from which she can be driven back again the following year.

To do enough hunting during the fall and winter to keep the party healthily supplied with fresh meat.

To have dogs enough to allow for the loss of sixty per cent. of them by death or otherwise.

To have the confidence of a large number of Eskimos, earned by square dealing and generous gifts in the past, so that they will follow the leader to any point he may specify.

To have an intelligent and willing body of civilized a.s.sistants to lead the various divisions of Eskimos--men whose authority the Eskimos will accept when delegated by the leader.

To transport beforehand to the point where the expedition leaves the land for the sledge journey, sufficient food, fuel, clothing, stoves (oil or alcohol) and other mechanical equipment to get the main party to the Pole and back and the various divisions to their farthest north and back.

To have an ample supply of the best kind of sledges.

To have a sufficient number of divisions, or relay parties, each under the leaders.h.i.+p of a competent a.s.sistant, to send back at appropriate and carefully calculated stages along the upward journey.

To have every item of equipment of the quality best suited to the purpose, thoroughly tested, and of the lightest possible weight.

To know, by long experience, the best way to cross wide leads of open water.

_To return by the same route followed on the upward march, using the beaten trail and the already constructed igloos to save the time and strength that would have been expended in constructing new igloos and in trail-breaking._

To know exactly to what extent each man and dog may be worked without injury.

To know the physical and mental capabilities of every a.s.sistant and Eskimo.

Last, but not least, to have the absolute confidence of every member of the party, white, black, or brown, so that every order of the leader will be implicitly obeyed.

Bartlett's division was to pioneer the road, and keep one day ahead of the main party. It was my plan at this time to keep the pioneer party close to the main party, and thus prevent the possibility of its being cut off from the main party by a rapidly forming lead, with insufficient supplies either for a further advance or for regaining the main division. Bartlett's pioneer division comprised himself and three Eskimos, Poodloonah, "Harrigan," and Ooqueah, with one sledge and team of dogs, carrying their own gear and five days' supplies for the division.

Borup's division comprised himself and three Eskimos, Keshungwah, Seegloo, and Karko, with four sledges and dog teams carrying nearly the standard loads. His division was to act as an advance supporting party, and was to accompany Bartlett for three marches and then return to Cape Columbia in one march with empty sledges. He was to deposit his loads and one sledge at the place where he left Bartlett, making a cache on the line of march; then hurry back to Columbia, re-load, and overtake the main party, which would leave the land one day after himself and Bartlett.

By this arrangement, if there were no delays, the main party would begin its third march at the same time when Borup started back; the evening of the third day would find the main party at Borup's cache, and Borup at Cape Columbia; the next morning, when the main party began its fourth march, Borup would be leaving Cape Columbia three marches behind, which difference, with a well-traveled trail to follow, he could probably eliminate in three marches.

It chanced that this sending back of Borup for additional loads to overtake the main party, with the later complications which grew out of it, through the opening of leads between him and the main party, was a link in the chain of delays which might have caused serious trouble, as will be hereafter explained.

In order that the reader may understand this journey over the ice of the polar sea, it is necessary that the theory and practise of both pioneer and supporting parties should be fully understood. Without this system, as has been amply demonstrated by the experience of previous expeditions, it would be a physical impossibility for any man to reach the North Pole, and return. The use of relay parties in arctic work is, of course, not new, though the idea was carried further in the last expedition of the Peary Arctic Club than ever before; but the pioneer party is original with my expeditions and for that reason it is perhaps worth while to describe it in detail.

The pioneer party was one unit division, made up of four of the most active and experienced men of the expedition, with sledges lightly loaded with five or six days' provisions, drawn by the best dog teams of the entire pack. When we started from Cape Columbia, this pioneer party, headed by Bartlett, went out twenty-four hours in advance of the main party. Later on, when we reached the time of continuous daylight and sunlight through the twenty-four hours, the pioneer party was but twelve hours in advance of the main party.

The duty of this pioneer party was to make a march in every twenty-four hours in spite of every obstacle--excepting, of course, some impa.s.sable lead. Whether there was a snowstorm or violent winds to be faced, or mountainous pressure ridges were to be climbed over, the march of the pioneer party must be made; for past experience had proved that whatever distance was covered by the advance party with its light sledges could be covered in less time by the main party even with heavily loaded sledges, because the main party, having the trail to follow, was not obliged to waste time in reconnoitering. In other words, the pioneer party, was the pace-maker of the expedition, and whatever distance it made was the measure of accomplishment for the main party. The leader of the pioneer party, in the first instance Bartlett, would start out ahead of his division, usually on snowshoes; then the light sledges of the party would follow him. Thus the leader of the pioneer division was pioneering ahead of his own party, and that whole division was pioneering ahead of the main party.

It is necessary that the arduous work of trail-breaking for the first two-thirds of the distance over the rougher ice nearer the land should be done by one division after another, in succession, in order to save the strength of the main party for their final drive. One great advantage which I had on this expedition was that, owing to the size of my party, whenever the men in this pioneer division became exhausted with their arduous labor and lack of sleep, I could withdraw them into the main party, and send out another division to take their place.

Supporting parties are essential to success because, a single party, comprising either a small or a large number of men and dogs, could not possibly drag (in gradually lessening quant.i.ties) all the way to the Pole and back (some nine hundred odd miles) as much food and liquid fuel as the men and dogs of that party would consume during the journey. It will be readily understood that when a large party of men and dogs starts out over the trackless ice to the polar sea, where there is no possibility of obtaining a single ounce of food on the way, after several days' marching, the provisions of one or more sledges will have been consumed by the men and dogs. When this occurs, the drivers and dogs with those sledges should be sent back to the land at once. _They are superfluous mouths which cannot be fed from the precious supply of provisions which are being dragged forward on the sledges._

Still further on, the food on one or two more sledges will have been consumed. These sledges also, with their dogs and drivers, must be sent back, in order to ensure the furthest possible advance by the main party. Later on, still other divisions must be sent back for the same reason.

But my supporting parties had another duty to perform, only a little less important than the one already noted; that was to keep the trail open for the rapid return of the main party.

The magnitude of this duty is clear. The ice of the polar sea is not an immovable surface. Twenty-four hours--or even twelve hours--of strong wind, even in the depth of the coldest winter, will set the big floes grinding and twisting among themselves, crus.h.i.+ng up into pressure ridges in one place, breaking into leads in another place.

Under normal conditions, however, this movement of the ice is not very great in a period of eight or ten days, so that a party starting back over an outward trail at the end of several days is able to knit together all faults and breaks in the trail that have occurred during that period by reason of the movement of the ice.

The second supporting party, starting back several days later from a point still farther on, knits together the broken ends of the trail of its own division; and when it comes upon the trail of the first supporting party, reunites such other breaks as have occurred since the first supporting party went over it on its way back to land. So with the third and fourth supporting parties.

When I speak of knitting together breaks in the trail, I mean simply that the pa.s.sage of the supporting party from that point where the trail was broken by the movement of the ice to the point where the trail went on again, some distance either to the east or west, would itself renew the broken trail, the pa.s.sage of the men and dog teams packing down the ice and snow. So that when the main party came back it would simply follow the track of the supporting party, and not have to scout for the trail.

As a result of this method of keeping the return trail continuously open, when the main party starts to return it has a continuous trail back to the land, which it can follow with from fifty to one hundred per cent. greater speed than it was possible to make on the outward journey.

The reasons for this are obvious: no time is wasted in selecting and breaking a trail; the dogs are more energetic when following a beaten track and when on the road home; no time is wasted in making camp, the snow igloos built on the outward journey being reoccupied on the return journey.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPICAL TRAIL IN SOFT SNOW (LOOKING BACKWARD)]

It must be understood that when each supporting party reached the land again, its work in regard to the polar dash was over. It did not come back onto the ice with any further supplies for the main party.

At the very end, when the supporting parties have performed their important work of trail-breaking and transportation of supplies, the main party for the final journey _must_ be small and carefully selected, as the small party resulting from the successive selection of the fittest, can travel much faster than a large one.

Each division of four men was absolutely independent and had its complete traveling outfit; in fact, except for the alcohol stove and cooking utensils, each sledge was complete in itself. On each sledge were the provisions for men and dogs, and clothing for the driver. The standard sledge load would support the driver and the dog team for about fifty days, and by sacrificing a few dogs and using them as food for the other dogs and the men, this time could have been extended to sixty days. Had any sledge and its provisions been cut off from the rest of the division, the man with it would have had everything he needed, except the cooking outfit. Had the sledge which carried the alcohol stove been lost, either in a lead or otherwise, the party to which it belonged would have had to double up with one of the other divisions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TYPICAL VIEW OF THE ICE OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN, NORTH OF GRANT LAND]

The new alcohol stove, the design of which I had perfected during the winter, was used altogether on this northern sledge trip. We did not carry oil-stoves at all, except some very small ones with two-inch wicks, which we used for drying mittens.

The standard method for loading each sledge was as follows: On the bottom was a layer of dog pemmican in red tins, covering the entire length and width of the sledge; on this were two tins of biscuit, and crew pemmican in blue tins; then the tins of alcohol and condensed milk, a small skin rug for the man to sleep on at night in the igloo, snowshoes and spare footgear, a pickax and a saw knife for cutting snow blocks. Practically the only extra items of wearing apparel which were carried were a few pairs of Eskimo sealskin _kamiks_ (boots), for it can readily be imagined that several hundred miles of such walking and stumbling over snow and ice would be rather hard on any kind of footgear which could be made.

Compactness was the main idea in packing one of these sledges, the center of gravity of the load being brought as low as possible in order that the sledges might not easily overturn.

The standard daily ration for work on the final sledge journey toward the Pole on all expeditions has been as follows:

1 lb. pemmican, 1 lb. s.h.i.+p's biscuit, 4 oz. condensed milk, 1/2 oz.

compressed tea, 6 oz. liquid fuel, alcohol or petroleum. A total of 2 lbs. 4-1/2 oz. of solids per man, per day.

On this ration a man can work hard and keep in good condition in the lowest temperatures for a very long time. I believe that no other item of food, either for heat or muscle building, is needed.