A PARTY'S EXPERIENCE 



did not sight Glacier Tongue till they were close to it, 

 and they found that owing to their fear of going outside 

 it, they had got too far east, and were about a mile and 

 a half from the depot. They started to march alongside 

 the Tongue towards the depot, but a strong south- 

 easterly wind came up, with heavy drift, so they decided 

 to cross the Tongue, and managed to climb up a drift 

 after just missing a twenty-foot drop into a hollow 

 scooped out by the wind in the snow. By this time 

 the men could not see more than a yard or two before 

 them, and they hurried across the Tongue, taking the 

 small crevasses in their stride, and after travelling three- 

 quarters of a mile pulled up the sledge within half a 

 dozen yards of the other edge of the Tongue, at a point 

 where they afterwards found there was a forty-foot 

 precipice. Wild felt his way along the edge with the 

 ice-axe until he came to a steep slope that seemed to 

 promise a means of descent, and then all three tobogganed 

 down on the sledge and camped for the night in the 

 lee of the glacier, with a blizzard blowing over them 

 and the temperature rising, the result being that every- 

 thing was uncomfortably wet. They managed to sleep, 

 however, and when they awoke the next morning the 

 weather was clear, and they had an easy march in, being 

 met beyond Cape Barne by Joyce, Brocklehurst and the 

 dogs. They had been absent four days. 



Each party came back with adventures to relate, 

 experiences to compare, and its own views on various 

 matters of detail connected with sledge-travelling. 

 The conversation in the hut after the return of a party 

 would become very animated, for each man had definite 

 opinions, born of experience, on such important questions 

 as how to dress and how to get into a sleeping-bag with 

 the minimum of discomfort. Curiously enough, every 



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