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Across this moat and leading up to the gap in the ramparts, the Gateway provided a solid causeway. To climb this and descend its reverse face gave the easiest access to the surface of the glacier. Return of first Southern Party from Lat. 85° 72 S. top of the Beardmore Glacier. Party: E. L. Atkinson, A. Cherry-Garrard, C. S. Wright, Petty Officer Keohane.
On December 4 we arrived within 12 miles of Shackleton's gap or Southern Gateway: we could see the outflow of the Beardmore Glacier stretching away to our left like a series of huge tumbling waves. As we advanced southwards hopes ran high, for we still had the dogs and five ponies to help us. Scott expected to camp on the Beardmore itself after the next march, but bad luck, alas, was against us.
Charles that is, Captain Travers, told it me!" Second Miss. "Law! they won't go away before the ball, I hope!" First Miss. "No, but on the 15th they are to shave their moustaches! He says that Lord Tufto is in a perfect fury about it!" Second Miss. "And poor George Beardmore, too!" &c. Here Tom upsets the coffee over his trousers, and the conversations end.
We wore our excellent crampons and made lighter work of our loads than we had done since facing the Beardmore, and now that the summer season was well advanced the surface snow on the Glacier had mostly disappeared through the effects of the all day sun added to the early summer winds.
Evans's fingers were in a bad state through frostbite, and on the first of the month Scott himself had fallen and shaken himself badly. Temperatures low, too low for any good surface. February 4 found the party amongst crevasses, both Scott and Evans falling into them. Notwithstanding all their troubles they made a fine pace over the ice-capped plateau and down the Beardmore.
We knew that we must expect crevasses now, hidden and bare, and we also knew that we must every day rise our camps until we reached the plateau summit in 10,000 feet. The Beardmore itself is about 120 miles in length and from 10 to 30 miles wide.
My instructions to Captain Mackintosh, in brief, were to proceed to the Ross Sea, make a base at some convenient point in or near McMurdo Sound, land stores and equipment, and lay depots on the Great Ice Barrier in the direction of the Beardmore Glacier for the use of the party that I expected to bring overland from the Weddell Sea coast.
People thought it a matter of course that he would make for Beardmore Glacier, which Shackleton had discovered, and by that route come out on to the high snow plateau near the Pole, since there he would be sure of getting forward. We who knew Amundsen thought it would be more like him to avoid a place for the very reason that it had been trodden by others. Happily we were right.
Wilson did a large amount of sketching on the Beardmore his sketches, besides being wonderful works of art, helped us very much in our surveys. Fringing the great glittering river of ice were dark granite and dolerite hills, some were snow-clad and some quite bare, for their steepness resisted the white cloak of this freezing clime.
The temperature down to 10 degrees below zero made observing unpleasant, when one had cooled down and lost vitality at the end of the day's march. Christmas Day, 1911, found our two tiny green tents pitched on the King Edward VII. Plateau the only objects that broke the monotony of the great white glittering waste that stretches from the Beardmore Glacier Head to the South Pole.
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