Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

On 24 August we went through the sledging ration I had worked out for the
winter journey and made some changes; we decided that it should provide about 4
500 calories a day. (Captain Scott's party man-hauling to the South Pole were on
4,600 calories a day, for a much longer period). We began to go through the
equipment lists and agreed them between us. We fixed on 1 September as the day for
our departure. One afternoon we put on the crampons and adjusted them to fit.
Derek and I went out to try them and made the first ascent of Gash Gully, finishing
up an almost vertical wall of hard snow, in which steps had to be cut. I began to dig
out the tent, which we had pitched near the hut. It was quite a job as base of the tent
had frozen into a mass of ice, which I thawed using salt. 30 August was a bad day
and blizzarding. I finished the sledging harness and spent a lot of time after the 9
o’clock Ob freeing the remainder of the tent. Derek helped me to carry it into the hut
and drape it in a corner near my bed to thaw. One evening I cleaned up a crabeater
seal skin I had collected and got it ready for washing and drying so that we could
make sealskins for the skis (the stiff hairs provide traction). Next day I cut it up into 2
inch strips for the skis and 3 1 2 inch strips for the sledge runners; then I began making
the sealskins for my skis. I was still stitching and only 3 4 finished at 11.15 pm; it was
taking longer than I thought. I finished one of the sealskins on 31 August, working
through the morning and until tea-time.
On 1 September I made a series of line drawings of the coast of Coronation
Island from my sketches to show especially the shape of the skyline, in case of doubt,
from the other (North) side; we were optimistic!! Derek plotted his triangulation points
and we compared them with my enlarged map of Coronation on scale of 1: 100,000
(taken from the Discovery chart). The latter appeared to be well out, especially in the
Sandefjord Bay area and around Mount Noble; it put Mount Nivea very near the
North coast, so Coronation Island might in fact be much wider and Sörlie's map a
closer approximation. I made out a coded message to Dr Fuchs outlining plans for
the journey and stating that in an emergency we would head for the Sandefjord Bay
hut, and reported that we would be off the air for 6 days from 4 September. I began
work on the second sealskin and finished the main sewing by 10.30 pm.; Derek
finished one of his sealskins. Before going to bed I cleaned most of the remaining ice
off the tent and chipped it from the hut floor - where it had refrozen! We weren't
happy with this tent but the other one was certainly too small for three of us. Hoever,
Ralph now told us he didn't want to go on the trip after all, so I sent a message to
Fuchs informing him of the change of plan and Derek and I decided to take the
'lightweight tent’, apparently designed for tropical use.
We finished the sealskins and tried them out on the slopes; fortunately they gave
a very good grip. I began on one for the sledge, which I finished next day and also
did the remainder of the sketches. Derek worked on map plotting, I did much
darning and other preparation for Coronation, including loading seven film cassettes.
In the afternoon I did more line drawings of Coronation Island and sewed them up
as a notebook. Finally, on 4 September, we finished the sealskins and got the food
ready. Also the map was finally plotted and the drawing kit put together. I was up
until 2 am making lists of kit and so on.
The winter journey, 1948. On 24 August we went through the sledging ration I had
worked out for the winter journey and made some changes; we decided that it
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