Scott's Last Expedition/Volume 2/Ascent

A party of six left Cape Evans on December 2, 1912, with the main object of surveying the old crater, and if time permitted making an ascent to the rim of the present active crater. It was originally intended that in the final climb Professor David's route should be followed, but our researches in the old crater led to the adoption of quite a different way, and one where a sledge could be pulled to a height of considerably over 9500 feet, at least 3000 feet higher than the Shackleton Expedition party were able to reach before being obliged to abandon theirs.

We left our Cape Royds camp (1000 feet above sea level) on December 4. It was not an ideal day for starting, and for the first 2000 feet of the ascent we groped from nunatak to nunatak through a thick cloud, and Debenham was unable to commence his plane table survey.

We lunched above this cloud belt, and although it swelled slowly upwards we were, with the exception of a very few minutes in the early afternoon, able to keep ahead of it until we camped beneath a prominent cone about 4,000 feet above sea level, which is well seen on the sky line from Cape Evans, and which would therefore be an important point of Debenham's survey, linking the portion ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/523 ​of Erebus visible from Cape Evans and Cape Royds with the country beyond the shoulder, which was the last ridge visible from winter quarters.

As we were caught by the fog in the act of camping and the landmarks below had been blotted out all the afternoon by the belt of cloud, we were obliged to wait here until the weather cleared and we could fix the cone, and so persistent was the bad weather that it was not until 10 a.m. of the 7th that we struck Reflection Camp, as we had named it, and were able to proceed.

Our first objective, the Northern Nunatak, or Demetri's Peak as we afterwards named it, was within easy reach by lunch time, so I decided to camp at a large nunatak about a mile and a half from the peak and take a rope party to examine it. So far all the rocks we had passed had been the typical kenyte so familiar to us at Cape Royds, but we found ourselves now camped on basalt, an allied but distinct rock which was not seen by the Professor's party, who had kept close in to the main crater and had not attempted any side issues such as our present divergence. After lunch I took Gran, Abbott, and Dickason, leaving Debenham with Hooper to help him to continue his survey, and made straight for the peak, which we reached without crossing any bad country, though crevasses were numerous above our route.

We climbed the small triangular hill from bottom to top, making its height 300 feet, and from the top we obtained a good view and a photograph of the old crater and of a strongly seracced glacier which loomed up as a bad obstacle in our examination of the district.

​The peak proved more interesting geologically than was expected, and we took back a good crop of specimens and photographs.

From here our route to the old crater itself proved steady, steep (for sledges), and uninteresting, and we camped on the gravel of a small nunatak on the lower side of the crater glacier at 5 p.m. on the 8th (8000 feet).

From this point Debenham was able to initiate the survey of the crater, and the next day all six of us carried one tent and equipment for three men a mile or two up the side of the glacier and established a camp in a gully nearly 9000 feet above sea level. After making this camp I took a rope party of four across and collected from the lower fang of the crater, while Debenham took Abbott and continued his plane table survey. What I saw from the crater side of the glacier decided me to make the final climb from a point about half a mile beyond the Gully Camp, and so I sent Gran with two of the men back for a supply of food from a depôt we had laid three or four miles back and almost on the Professor's route.

After lunch I returned with the other two, and we struck the single tent at our lower crater camp, collected all spare gear and depôted it and the extra food, and on the return of the other three we pulled the sledge with its skeleton equipment as far as the Gully Camp, where we spent the night.

On the morning of the 10th we again pulled out, and by 11.30 a.m. we were camped in the position from which I had decided to make the final ascent. After discussion with Debenham, I selected Gran, Abbott, and Hooper to ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/527 ​accompany me to the top, leaving Debenham, who had slight mountain sickness, to continue his survey, and Dickason, who was feeling the height more than the other two men, to help him.

From here we were taking a single camping equipment—tent and poles, bags, inside cooker, primus, oil, and four days' provisions on full ration, and after this had been apportioned each man was permitted to take a reasonable amount of personal gear. All hands dragged the packs on the sledge some distance up the first snow slope, but the gradient soon became so steep that we were obliged to anchor the sledge with ice axes and assume our packs, while Debenham and Dickason tobogganed back to camp on the sledge.

By climbing about a hundred feet at a time and taking long spells we were able to make steady if slow progress up the rock ridges, which were here nearly continuous as far as the rim of the second crater. The only difficult bits to negotiate were when we were obliged to cross the snow-slopes from ridge to ridge, and these were only dangerous because, owing to scarcity of ice axes, the four of us were able to have but three between us, and I was never sure where the fourth man would fetch up if he slipped. This necessitated step cutting and slowed us up considerably, and it was not until three hours and a half after we had left the sledge that we reached the rim and saw the second crater stretching out in front of us.

Our first care was to select a good site for our camp, and after that was pitched to cook our evening meal and turn in. The clouds prevented our getting a view of the ​active crater and no photographs were possible. The only effect the height had on us as yet was to cause sleeplessness and a slight shortness of breath, but we were already beginning to experience some discomfort from the low temperatures, and the whole time we remained at or above this elevation the mercury remained obstinately below −10° F., and at one time registered −30° F.

The 11th saw us still shrouded in cloud and, except for a short walk in the immediate neighbourhood of the camp, we got nothing done; but Gran woke me at 1 o'clock in the morning of the 12th, to find the weather so magnificent that I roused all hands at once and we got breakfast, deciding to take time by the forelock and not risk a change of weather.

The only drawback to the morning was a low temperature, −15° F. to −18° F., and a cold southerly wind which gave us a good deal of trouble, as the high altitude very much decreased our chances of resisting frostbite. From the scenic point of view the volcano could not have been better, for it was very active, and the steam cloud was being carried steadily northward by the breeze. As we approached the active crater we secured photograph after photograph, and I also took several looking back at our camp and the old crater in the background, and at Mount Terror and Mount Bird. A good description of these two upper craters has already been given by Professor David, and repetition would be unnecessary and useless. The principal impression they have left on our minds is that of absolute bareness and desolation.

As our altitude increased we were more and more ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/531 ​troubled with shortness of breath and fatigue, and were obliged to rest every hundred yards or so; but we reached the summit of the active cone within two or three hours of leaving the camp, and while Gran made a cairn for the record I had prepared, I endeavoured with the help of Abbott and Hooper to light the hypsometer; but the breeze was too stiff and enfiladed the crater rim so that no adequate shelter could be obtained, and after wasting half a box of matches and getting several frostbitten fingers we were obliged to desist. Gran and I then took a series of photographs on the rim of the crater, but we were unable to see more than a few feet down because of the steam and sulphur vapour, which caused us considerable inconvenience even during the short time we spent on the rim, for every slight variation of direction of the wind resulted in our complete envelopment by the vapour, which was not too good to breathe in.

After a short while on top Hooper reported that his feet were frostbitten, and I at once ordered him back to camp, telling off Abbott to accompany him and to collect a rucksack full of pumice on his way down.

Gran and I continued slowly down the cone, collecting felspars as we went, and I had descended about 500 feet when I discovered to my annoyance that instead of the record we had left a tin of exposed films at the summit. Gran immediately volunteered to fetch this and place the real record, and as I wished to collect thoroughly I continued slowly on my way down. I had reached the second group of fumaroles and was beginning to photograph them by the time he should have reached the top, when there was ​a loud explosion, and amongst the smoke I could see large blocks of pumice hurled aloft. This eruption made me extremely anxious for Gran's fate, especially as he did not appear on the farther side of the smoke cloud as soon as he was due, so in spite of breathing trouble I made good speed up the hill, and had reached within fifty feet of the top in record time, and without a halt, when he strolled out of the steam cloud all serene and looking none the worse for his adventure. He had had a unique opportunity of observing an eruption of Erebus, and that the opportunity was not wasted can be seen from his description, which is as follows:

'Whilst making some notes of the things I had seen, I heard a gurgling sound come from the crater, and before I had realised what was happening I was enveloped in a choking vapour. The steam cloud had evidently been much increased by the eruption, and in it I could see blocks of pumiceous lava, in shape like the halves of volcanic bombs and with bunches of long drawn-out hair-like shreds of glass in their interior. The snow around me was covered with rock dust and the smoke was yellow with sulphur and disagreeable in the extreme.'

Gran was fortunate in not experiencing any worse effect of the eruption than a slight sickness during the next few days, which we both attributed to the sulphur vapour. I think of the two of us my own experience was the worse for, as he says later in his diary, 'It is no joke taking a mountain by storm, especially with the barometer standing at eleven inches.'

The hair-like lava I had already noticed on the slopes ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/535 ​of the crater, and it is doubtless of the type known as Pele's hair.

Gran made his escape from the steam cloud on the western side of the mountain, and so was able to get a good view of the Western Mountains, and believed he could see a range stretching back and cutting across the plateau at about the latitude of Granite Harbour.

We then returned slowly to camp, collecting as we went, and arrived in about 9.30 a.m., to find that Hooper's feet had recovered and that Abbott had collected a fine lot of specimens.

After our return to camp we rested in our bags for a few hours, and then struck camp and glissaded down the 2000 feet till we rejoined Debenham and Dickason, covering in a few minutes a distance that had taken us three or four hours on our upward way. During our absence the latter had made good use of their time, finishing the survey of the old crater and collecting from moraines left by an ancestor of the crater glacier.

We spent the night camped here, and the next morning proceeded on our way down the mountain, using ice axes in rope grummets at the after end of the sledge as brakes and making such good way that the same day we picked up all our depôts, and camped within striking distance of Hooper's Shoulder, as we afterwards named the Southern Nunatak, in time for a late lunch.

In the afternoon Debenham, Abbott, and Hooper and I walked over to the shoulder, photographed it and collected from it, and by 6 p.m. we were back in camp.

The final descent was delayed until the 16th by bad ​weather, but on that date we pulled as near Cape Royds as we could take the sledges, and from there packed our own bags and such equipment as we required to Shackleton's Hut, where I reported to Lieutenant Campbell and gave him an outline of the trip. ​Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/539