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Updated: June 19, 2025
The sastrugi seem to be gradually coming more to the south and a little more confused; now and again they are crossed with hard westerly sastrugi. The walking is tiring for the men, one's feet sinking 2 or 3 inches at each step. Chinaman and Jimmy Pigg kept up splendidly with the other ponies.
To begin with, Bowers broke the only hypsometer thermometer, and so they were left with nothing to check their two aneroids. Then during the first part of the march they got among sastrugi which jerked the sledges about, and so tired out the second team that they had great difficulty in keeping up. And, finally, they found more crevasses and disturbances during the afternoon.
Finnesko give poor foothold on the slippery sastrugi, and for a minute or two drivers have some difficulty in maintaining the pace on their feet. Movement is warming, and in ten minutes the column has settled itself to steady marching. The pace is still brisk, the light bad, and at intervals one or another of us suddenly steps on a slippery patch and falls prone.
The sastrugi are distinctly S.S.W. There isn't a shadow of doubt that the prevailing wind is along the coast, taking the curve of the deep bay south of the Bluff. The question now is: Shall we by going due southward keep this hard surface? If so, we should have little difficulty in reaching the Beardmore Glacier next year.
For about ten minutes or so, while they were near these narrow crevasses, they came on to snow which had a hard crust and loose crystals below it, and each step was like breaking through a glass-house. And then, quite suddenly, the hard surface gave place to regular sastrugi, and their horizon leveled in every direction. To me for the first time our goal seems really in sight.
At 8.30 a.m. we made a start. We take a long time putting on our finneskoe, although we get up earlier to allow for this. This morning we were over four hours' getting away. We had a fine surface this morning for marching, but we did not make much headway. We did the usual four miles before lunch. The temperature was -23° Fahr. A mirage made the sastrugi appear to be dancing like some ice-goblins.
All the sastrugi are from S.W. by S. to S.W. and all the wind that we have experienced in this region there cannot be a doubt that the wind sweeps up the coast at all seasons. A point has arisen as to the deposition. David called the crusts seasonal. This must be wrong; they mark blizzards, but after each blizzard fresh crusts are formed only over the patchy heaps left by the blizzard.
My jaw is swollen from the frost-bite I got on the cheek, and I also have a bit of nose.... We have discarded the ski, which we hitherto used, and travel in the finneskoe. This makes the sledge go better but it is not so comfortable travelling as on ski. We encountered a very high, rough sastrugi surface, most remarkably high, and had a cold breeze in our faces during the march.
The walking is better for ponies, worse for men; there is nearly everywhere a hard crust some 3 to 6 inches down. Towards the end of the march we crossed a succession of high hard south-easterly sastrugi, widely dispersed. I don't know what to make of these. Second march almost as horrid as the first.
We are south of Shackleton's last camp, so, I suppose, have made the most southerly camp. Sunday, January 7. Height 10,560. Lunch. Temp. -21.3°. The vicissitudes of this work are bewildering. Last night we decided to leave our ski on account of the sastrugi. This morning we marched out a mile in 40 min. and the sastrugi gradually disappeared.
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