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Updated: June 27, 2025
Started on crampons; one hour after, hoisted sail; the combined efforts produced only slow speed, partly due to the sandy snowdrifts similar to those on summit, partly to our torn sledge runners. At lunch these were scraped and sand-papered. After lunch we got on snow, with ice only occasionally showing through.
We have returned to the last Discovery type with improvements; the magnalium sole plates of our own crampons are retained but shod with 1/2-inch steel spikes; these plates are rivetted through canvas to an inner leather sole, and the canvas is brought up on all sides to form a covering to the 'finnesko' over which it is laced they are less than half the weight of an ordinary ski boot, go on very easily, and secure very neatly.
I thought I might find the remains of poor Julick in this I was unsuccessful; but I wished further to test our new crampons, and with these I am immensely pleased they possess every virtue in a footwear designed for marching over smooth ice lightness, warmth, comfort, and ease in the putting on and off.
It was a fine bit of toboganning and Captain Scott showed himself to be far more expert than any of us in controlling a sledge on a slippery slope. We soon got into the way of climbing around on seemingly impossible slopes and could negotiate the steepest of hills and the slipperiest of steep inclines. It was largely a question of good crampons, which we fortunately possessed.
The crampons are much praised, except by Bowers, who has an eccentric attachment to our older form.
It is only now I realise how much has been due to him. Our ski shoes and crampons have been absolutely indispensable, and if the original ideas were not his, the details of manufacture and design and the good workmanship are his alone.
"Climbing-irons," or "crampons," were also to make, no New York dealer being able to supply them. One great difficulty was the matter of footwear. Heavy regulation-nailed alpine boots were sent all too small to be worn with even a couple of pairs of socks, and therefore quite useless.
With an afternoon to follow we should do well to-day; the wind has been coming up the valley. Turning this book seems to have brought luck. This morning we came over a considerable extent of hard snow, then got to hard ice with patches of snow; a state of affairs which has continued all day. Pulling the sledges in crampons is no difficulty at all.
The double tent was considered a great success, and the new crampons were much praised except by Bowers, whose fondness for the older form was not to be shaken.
The pulling this afternoon was fairly pleasant; at first over hard snow, and then on to pretty rough ice with surface snowfield cracks, bad for sledges, but ours promised to come through well. We have worn our crampons all day and are delighted with them. P.O. Evans, the inventor of both crampons and ski shoes, is greatly pleased, and certainly we owe him much.
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