Land of the Long Day

12 –The First Climb of Mt Harmsworth

A slow six miles and some more geology on a median ridge in the next tributary glacier which we called Dilemma, saw us camped a good mile from the foot of the rocky Delta Bluff and our possible route up Harmsworth. A late breakfast of porridge, sausage and beans made an improbable start, and we skied languidly over to the base of the bluff, and wearing alpine boots, toiled up the steep rock. Nothing could improve the face of Antarctica as much as a good wash, preferably delivered via a typical West Coast downpour of about 12 inches in three hours. A great deal of loose boulders and rubble would be washed off leaving clean solid rock behind. Rock climbing in the Antarctic is often more a climb over rocks, unless the face is very steep indeed.
After about three thousand feet we came to a lens of limestone in the diorite, crumbling and brittle. On the summit at about 4,000ft we sat, admired the view, changed into our softer, Himalayan High‑Altitude boots and looked at the way ahead. Sidling the Northcliffe glacier gave a gentler climb but the snow looked soft. Off to our right a steepish ridge, knobbed with granite gendarmes, and barred black with dolerite sills offered a more adventurous way to the skyline ridge.
"That way!" said I, and the others agreed. We dropped off our Boot Hill, over a snow basin, and toiled up the rounded ridge. With height it steepened and we cut round the gendarmes. Under a red granite tor, Heine produced a small primus from his pack and we attempted a boil‑up. Crampons came off to shin over a 500‑foot dolerite sill, and I whaled away with the heavy guide's axe to cut steps up a final ice pitch and through the cornice to reach the ridge summit at 10pm with the sun swinging low to the sou‑sou‑west. The thermometer said "‑12 F" which was quite warm though the breeze was chill.

"Me snoz is froz!" said Heine and indeed his prominent olfactory organ had to be watched continuously for tell‑tale waxy‑white patches. A broad ridge wound off to the south, and we climbed to nearly 10,000 feet to find that this was an un‑named north peak, the higher summit being still at least two miles further on. We descended about a thousand feet to a col which would give an easy descent to the Northcliffe Glacier, the col being marked by two red granite gendarmes. I called it Col des Roches Rouges, after the col on Mont Blanc. It was 4.40 am before we reached the real summit, a broad snow and rock dome with a precipitous face to the east but gentler on the side to the Icecap, visible fifty or sixty miles away. I sampled a white granophyric rock, later to be the centre of a great deal of research, and we built a small cairn. We were tired and Warren was having dizzy spells, sudden ascents from sea‑level to an aneroid reading of 10,120 feet have that effect. Back at the col, we dropped off the ridge and plowed down through soft snow, stopping at a dolerite rock buttress for another drink. I sampled the dark rock studded with orthopyroxene, a mineral like the better‑known olivine, which later proved to be the most magnesian rock found in all the dolerites, it had 21% MgO and about a quarter percent of nickel.
On Boot Hill we changed back to Alpine boots and dourly descended to the Skelton, the gritty limestone inlier being especially irritating, and skiied with no great dash back to our tent at 3 pm for "coffee, fish, fruit, and bed!" We had been on the move for 29 hours, no great feat when you are under thirty years of age, but it leaves one aweary.

The next day, (Tuesday, 12th Feb) the down‑glacier wind rose, gusting to forty knots and burying our sleds in the drift, and it took little persuasion to remain in camp eating and indulging in idle conversation. Not till we read accounts in "The Mountain World" and other books did we realise that never before had a mountain been climbed on the Antarctic Main. In the afternoon the wind died down and I skied on up glacier to look at rocks along the south wall finding a fresh granite.
What now? We had come to the end of the Skelton Glacier trough, to the west the ice rose in steps towards the plateau and there was little rock, however, there were more bluffs on the north and we were about 30 miles from Skelton Depot. After another morning's work, we packed up and moved north across the glacier for 5 1/2 miles. After three miles the snow gave way to glare ice and we wore crampons over mukluks and at 11 pm we camped with the wind pushing 35 knots. Hard it was to get the tent up on the ice and all.
By 9 am the wind had changed to a light breeze up‑glacier, and we parted, I to a rock bluff to the west of the tributary Cocks Glacier, Heine and Warren to go to the east. Three miles over ice and snow patch, a bit of a stiff climb over diorite and out onto a wind‑swept undulating plain of limestone with bedding that folded and weaved back and forth, limestone being soft and as it recrystallises at very low temperature it is amazingly plastic.
Mount Harmsworth formed a classic oil painting to the south as I wandered homeward in the late afternoon to find the others already in the tent and we paused for a feed of potato mash and coffee. At 7:30 we pressed on down glacier for 6 miles to a point opposite another black bluff, ringed by moraines. The next morning we moved another three miles down, put up the tent and leaving Heine, Warren and I put on High Altitude boots and began to ski over to the rock on the north bank. Hard sastrugi about three feet high made progress difficult and later we found that Claydon had attempted the first landing on the Skelton on this very area, the snow surface being in shadow. Apparently the Beaver was lucky not to have ski broken off before clawing her way back into the air. It must have been a rare sight to see.
The bluff proved to be more greywacke, traversed by a granite dyke. At 10:40 pm we folded our tents and faded into the desert, walking until 1:40 am and dined on our last tin of peaches and last sugar still having about 11 miles to go to reach the Skelton Depot.
After five miles over eroded sastrugi we put the tent up briefly in a 15 knot chill wind, had a brief meal and left an hour later. By midnight we were about the middle of the glacier and on good level snow, but drift swirling twenty feet into the air hid the depot though we could take bearings on Teal Island. We were on the point of giving up when I saw the Depot flag fluttering half a mile to our left.
At 12:30 we arrived to find Bob Miller, Roy Carlyon and 9 dogs in residence, they having arrived three days before from base. Miller, ever the gentleman, waved aside the lateness of hour and did the honours, inviting our disreputable crew into their tent for cocoa. Wind battered the tent on Saturday, 16th Feb. and the drift pattered and built up. Heine was due to leave for New Zealand almost immediately, but in a lull at 5 pm, Cranfield dropped in with Mulgrew from the Upper Skelton, and took off again as soon as Heine was aboard, for Base. The next day Miller and Carlyon harnessed up and with wild cries and yelps from the dogs took off for Teall Id to set up a survey station. The rate at which they disappeared compared to our own snail‑like progress left us more than a little envious; man-hauling can only be compared to a stretch at the oar in the galleys.
Finally on the Tuesday Claydon dropped in with Hillary aboard and we bundled belongings into the Beaver and took off for home with a call at Plateau depot on the way. About ten miles up the Skelton we were hit by a blinding flash of a signalling mirror, and there almost hidden by drift, were two tiny black tent triangles on the glacier, dotted about by dogs. Brookes, having pioneered the route up to the Plateau, was also on his way home.
That fourteen days made up the only field work to be done in our first 9 months, the isolation of Pram Point and the Base, away out on an island, meant that as far as science and exploring was concerned, our time was largely wasted.
At Base, Bates had made good his threat to build a garage and had welded waratahs, mere triangular steel fence standards, into a series of twenty‑foot trusses. My bridging timber had been used for wall supports, and I joined in nailing tractor case dunnage onto walls and bolting 3 x 2 purlins onto the roof. For the next six days with Bates, Ellis and often Warren and Douglas, I cut, hammered and fitted until finally a large garage with double doors and a side door facing the door into the covered‑way, was completed. Bates then welded up two fuel drums for a heating stove, initially burning blubber, but finally converted to diesel‑drip. Canvas over the timber made the new garage snow‑proof and without it, life at base would have been largely without vehicles during the winter. A little ingenuity and the short‑sightedness of the Ross Sea Committee was circumvented.
"I don't understand," said Larry Gould, a visiting American senior scientist (and ex Byrd Expedition member) to Cranfield, "how a small party like yours can have so many carpenters and support staff."
"Haw!" said Bill. "That's our chief geologist up there on the roof with the gas‑torch, that our biologist nailing the walls with our second geologist, our doctor is over there sawing wood. People earn their keep round here!" At night I had a second project, closing off the bunk areas, and painting in tasteful lilac and primrose shades. Too late I found there were only about three tins of paint so many a bunk remained spartanly bare for the entire winter.
The "Endeavour" was to depart for home about March 1 and there still remained about 40 tons of cargo in her hold which had to be moved. The ice edge was still breaking up rapidly and she was now only a mile or two beyond Hut Point. As waves broke over the ice‑edge we toiled mightily, heavy crates being manhandled onto sleds by sheer muscle‑power, it is quite amazing what a dozen or so fit and determined men can move in a few hours, each tractor pulling two sleds with at least two tons.
Back at Base we settled into a now warm and comfortable Mess, three‑course meals appeared regularly as Buck showed his worth and the future looked assured. Pinned on the notice‑board was an invitation to a final cocktail party aboard the "Endeavour" before she left for the north, which was received with remarkable lack of enthusiasm. There were several reasons for this, the Navy support had not been of the highest calibre, there had been the matter of the water left in hold after the Bay of Biscay storm so that much of our essential gear was ruined by the time it arrived in New Zealand, there was the crushing of the Auster wing in Lyttleton against the "Huntington", the idiocy in the Pack‑ice, the deliberate besetting of the ship inside Beaufort Island, when we had been warned by Captain Ketchum to stand well clear, an incident where some sloppy handling of a cargo sling had dropped all our spare clothing kitbags in the sea, (rescued, but wet), the obvious friction amongst the officers on board, and in fact how Smith restrained himself from challenging Kirkwood I will never understand, Smith from all reports being a fair hand with the steel.
In addition, there was the unspoken feeling that a formal farewell would only rub in the knowledge of the coming twelve months of isolation, in our society it is simply not done to admit one might miss wives and children, like all other vicissitudes, such things are to be shrugged aside with the usual morose indifference, and I suspect many did not want to be in a situation where this might crack, even momentarily.
Sir Ed appeared dressed for the party and eyed us all in some dislike:
"Well, are you lot coming?" There was a negative rumble in response and the domineering streak surfaced in Our Leader immediately.
"I've never seen such appalling manners in my life!" he rasped. "There wouldn't be a Base here now if it wasn't for them and the least we can do is show some appreciation ‑ you will all be there, the bloody lot of you!" It was an interesting confrontation because there was scarcely a man in the room that Attila the Hun could have budged against his will, and it would have only taken a single man to responded, "Nothing doing!" and there would have been a mass defection which would have made Sir E's position rather difficult from then on. Had Sir E. had the slightest inkling of how to handle men, he would have said something like, "Oh, come on chaps, I know we have had problems with some of the navy, but some of the people there have helped us a good deal and it would be a pretty bad show of manners to simply ignore them !" and we probably would have gone along without further word but Sir E. does not have the instincts of a gentleman.
In any group of men there soon comes a common, unspoken realisation that in a certain situation, a certain man can be looked to for guidance, and every eye in the room slowly revolved towards ‑ Dr George Marsh. Plainly it was up to George, but he was far too good and experienced an Expedition man to cause an irrevocable rift, much as Sir E's manners or rather lack of them, grated. He laughed lightly:
"Nicely put, Ed!" he said softly, "Well chaps, presented with so charmingly worded an invitation, what do you say, shall we go and drink the gallant Captain's appalling rum? After all, we do owe Randall Heke and Hoffman a good deal!" An almost audible sigh ran round the room and the tension died, and we went off like lambs to gather parkas for the trip to the ship, but as George passed me he muttered, more to himself, in some exasperation: "Christ, that man is a boor!" Good manners are the lubricant of any society and it was not the last time Marsh employed his native breeding, tact and wit to smooth over a rough spot in the expedition.
The party on board was a restrained affair though Captain Kirkwood was at his jovial best and Jamaican rum and gin circulated freely. Even Smith in immaculate uniform and gold braid was affable and he could tell a witty story: "After we heard the "Takao" blow up," he said, "and after popping to the surface of Singapore Harbour by mistake, we wiggled out through the nets and reached the Mother‑Ship. Do you know, I had been so sure we would never return that I had given away all my clothes and I had to go round begging them off every matelot on board, ha, ha, ha! Well, you know, unfortunately our mine went off under the crew's quarters and we killed about 800 of them, well, my Mother was most put out. "Willie," she said "Did you really kill all those poor Japanese? I think it most reprehensible of you." ha, ha, ha!"
The humour of the Smiths of this world is still a little beyond me! George related one of his stories of landing at Hope Bay to take charge of the British Hope Bay Base to find himself under machine gun fire of the Argentinians.
"No idea of protocol, those Argies," he said sorrowfully, shaking his head. "I mean, after‑all, it is well understood internationally that all machine guns should be fired above heads not in the water at your feet, and while it is perfectly acceptable to push loaded pistols in bellies, they should never under any circumstances be cocked as mine was! So I said " M'dear chap, while we are waiting for the cruiser to arrive from Port Stanley to blow you to hell, why don't we all have a drink?" By the time the cruiser arrived we were having a roaring party and had sorted out where the Argies could put their base. They never caught on to sledging of course, but we had some great parties!"
As the ship they landed from was the one under our feet, then called the "John Biscoe", it all had a certain piquancy. Randall Heke had become something of a by‑word during Base construction. He supervised all the unloading, manifests in hand and we never had roof panels arriving before floor joists as so often happens. One could drive a tractor up in snow or shine and there would be Heke's blue ski‑balaclava above the rail. We wondered if he ever slept. Hoffman had performed equally well on Base site and as far as we know, no Base has ever been built and functioning in so short a time on the continent, we did indeed owe them a good deal. I even said a farewell to Shorty, the Buffer.
"Endeavour" was tied up outboard of "Towle" and as we filed ashore the dreaded moment of realisation came that ahead were the months of the Long Dark and it would be a year before we would see another face. The tension built up. No sooner had we reached the sea‑ice when.....
"Look!" shouted Bates. "There's Heke! Git th' bastard!" and a volley of snowballs and ice lumps were flung back and forth between crew and shore. I sheltered behind a Weasel and found I was sharing my foxhole with Admiral Dufek and Commander Flynn, both were roaring with laughter and heaving snow with a will. There was more than a touch of hysteria about the whole thing and finally we slumped silently on the sledges and jolted off through the gloom, back to Base which for a year was to be the only home we had. While to some degree the Victorian character of Sir E moulded attitudes in the following months, in many ways he simply expressed an outlook common to most of us. Shortly afterwards someone produced the famous pin‑up of Marilyn Monroe, the one where she claimed "I had the telephone on", and Sir E's response was immediate and automatic.
"Get that damned thing out of here!" and Marilyn vanished to behind a door in the Scientific hut.
"Dash it all," said Ron Balham, our biologist, "Marilyn is Art, not pornography", and Ted Gawn took raising a glass to "A‑a‑absent friends, b‑banned by our G‑gallant L‑leader!" Ted having a slight stammer. However, few of us would have tolerated pin‑ups, women were never discussed in the Mess or elsewhere in my hearing, even swearing was mild and only used under provocation, in fact I cannot recall ever hearing a crude remark which was to the good, one does not respect the originators. George had a fund of risque stories brought out on party nights but which were always witty, though they shocked some of the more puritanical American officers. Some of the American Lower Deck were however of a different class.
One night we had several guests over for dinner and one, who was definitely "Other Ranks" had invited himself along. After a few drinks he began reciting lurid details of his last night in "Chee Chee", complete with heavy sarcasm as to the morals or lack of them in the women of that city. Now, no one cares to hear women of his country referred to as "A Bunch of Whores" even if the coat fitted, and, many of us had associations with Christchurch. The temperature at the table dropped to something equivalent to that out‑side, and set stony faces stared at the now untouched plates, but none so thunderous as that of Our Leader at the head of the table. I was mentally debating taking some action such as giving the speaker the heave‑ho, when our storyteller became aware of the atmosphere.
"Hey, Guys! Whassamarrer?" he slurred, looking about. No one spoke a word. He lurched to his feet.
"Sir Hillary, if Ah shot mah ass off, I wanna 'pologise!"
"I think you've said quite enough already!" rumbled Sir E in tones that Queen Victoria would have loved to emulate. Embarrassed American Officers quickly dragged the culprit out, muttering apologies.
"I think Ed went a bit far tonight." said someone to me later.
"A bit far!" I said, surprised. "I would have kicked the sod out right at the beginning!"
Sir E always presided over the table on our formal dinner nights on Sunday evenings. Perhaps someone had been reading "Voyage of the Discovery" because the same rules applied, one had to appeal to the President of the Mess for permission to speak or tell a tale, no bets or use of reference books allowed etc. No sooner had one speaker finished when another would be on his feet:
"Mr President, I beg leave to utterly denounce the misleading and irrelevant nonsense proposed by the speaker on my right ....!" and so it went. When cries of "Mr President, your permission, Sir!" was heard from four points of the compass at once, Sir E would gesture toward the next to have the floor.
"Mr President, I am forced to say, with all respect to our gallant medico and with due respect for his years of experience in the medical world treating scourges and epidemics of dread diseases such as distemper, that his claim of growing bananas at Hope Bay is the sheerest nonsense, Sir! Lady Finger bananas could only be grown at that latitude with the greatest difficulty Sir, and while common rosaceae might flourish ...!"
All of this was a common kind of dig at George Marsh, Hope Bay being at a latitude of only 65S, while we were at 78S. and we like to pretend to dismiss George's tales as taking place "Up in the 'Banana Belt'"
George always seemed able to produce another story by the time the cognac made the rounds and after cigars had been lit, the tables were cleared and an hour of highland dancing was next on the agenda, indeed it is a great pity no one brought a set of pipes, though we had some good recordings of strathspeys and schottisches.. American visitors were often obviously delighted with formality of our evenings, rather different to their own and some, especially upper‑class New Englanders, joined in very effectively. One night Bernie Fredovich and another scientist from the Yank Camp were visiting with a young seaman who was a little bemused by the proceedings. He intercepted a bottle of drambhui and being obviously unacquainted with liqueurs, filled a beer glass and quaffed it down. He then unsteadily climbed on top of the table:
"Mishta Presh‑Preshident, I think you're ‑ youra great buncha ‑" and he crashed on his face, out like a light. Fredovich and Co carried him out, "He needs a breath of fresh air," they said.
"I'd better give you a ride home'" said I. "I'll get out a Weasel!"
"No! No! He can walk, we'll just keep rollin' him along!" and they left. A few minutes later I saw Sir E emerging in windproofs and down jacket.
"Hello, where are you off to?"
"They'll never get him home in that state, I'm going to follow them up in the Weasel!" He apparently found them half way across the airfield, the seaman out cold on the snow and the other two debating whether to leave him and come back in a vehicle (it was about 30 below). By the time they had got back he might have been in a bad state.
I felt somewhat annoyed that I had let Sir E show more responsibility than I had.

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