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essential factor in Amundsen's success was the location of
his base camp. After extensive study he figured out that the
Bay of Whales (Ross Ice Shelf) was the best place to have
his base camp and to dock his ship, since it was blocked from
the wind and its shoreline had not moved for about 80 years.
This location would also give Amundsen the advantage of
starting 60 miles (100km) closer to the Pole, however, it
would require pioneering a route up to the polar plateau.
The team built a small wooden prefab hut where nine men
spent the winter, the hut was named 'Framheim' (home of
Fram) after their ship.
During the time before Amundsen and his team set off for
the South Pole, they had days and months to prepare for
the main trip. One important thing they did was to lay three
different depots before their long journey to the Pole started.
They did this so that they would not have to carry supplies
for the entire journey with them.
In Antarctica, winter lasts from around April to September,
so after the depot laying trips, they had about five months
to wait before they could start off to the South Pole.
On October 20, 1910, the journey began
for five men and 52 dogs to be the first to reach the South
Pole.
Amundsen made sure that they traveled the most direct route
to the Pole. They were willing to go over anything that
got in their way. After the party passed the 82 degree 17'
latitude, they were in unknown territory.
On November 5 they reached 82 degrees
south, which was their last supply depot before the last
leg of their journey. At this point they were only 480 miles
from the Pole.
November 9, they reached the 83rd parallel
and dropped some supplies creating a new depot for their
way back. At this time they had 42 dogs left to pull the
4 sleds.
On November 18, Amundsen started the mountain
crossing.
On December 8, 1911, the team hit a landmark
point in their expedition. They finally passed the 88 degrees
23' , which was the world record for the furthest anyone
had gotten to the Pole.
Then came the day to remember. On Friday December
14, 1911, the team had finally reached their destination,
the South Pole. It was a glorious moment for the men and
all of Norway. It was a moment the world would never forget.
Amundsen had finally achieved the goal that he had worked
so hard to win. They arrived with 17 dogs and three sleds.
They set up camp and for three days they made calculation
to make sure that they were really at the South Pole. They
then skied in a 10 miles radius so to be sure to have actually
been to the Pole, in case their calculations were off. They
planted the Norwegian flag to show that they had first reached
the Pole.
They had returned to the Bay of Whales on January
26th, 1912, victorious and healthy. Soon afterwards
they departed from their base camp to sail home. On
March 7, 1912 they arrived in Hobart, Tasmania
to spread the great news of their victorious exploration.
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As soon as the hut was built, Scott
commenced an ambitious program of depot-laying. He established
a telephone line between Cape Evans and Hut Point.
Scott rushed through the organization for the depot laying
in less than a week. Amundsen felt that one year was hardly
enough time to organize depots. The depot laying was
an act of improvisation and done in a state of hurry.
When the time came for the main expedition to the South
Pole, Scott had decided that the ponies were the only reliable
form of transportation. He figured that they would not be
able to survive the whole way, which meant that the party
would man haul the remaining distance that the ponies would
not manage to make.
In November 1911 Scott and his Polar team
left on the race to the South Pole. Their going was
miserable. The ponies kept breaking through the ice cover
and the men sank in the snow. The ponies soon proved to
be useless. They were shot on Dec. 9, tired, starved and
frozen.
For the final push to the Pole, Scott had chosen his companion
on his previous furthest South, Edward Wilson, along with
Lawrence Oates, Edgar Evans and Henry Bowers. Adding Bowers
was quite a tactical error, since the food, tent and skis
had been planned for a four-man team.
On January 17, 1912 the five men arrived
at the South Pole, only to find that Amundsen had beaten
them by 33 days.
The only thing left for Scott's party was to survive the
journey back to base camp, which would prove to be an impossible
feat to achieve for the starving and exhausted group.
A delirious Evans died on February 17;
a month later, Oates was in such bad shape that he prayed
not to wake up upon retiring. The next morning, deeply disappointed
to find himself still among the living, Oates walked out
of the tent during a raging blizzard, telling his companions
simply, "I'm just going outside and may be some time."
This blizzard, which lasted 8 days, would take the lives
of the remaining expedition members, just 11 miles (18km)
from their next supply depot. Their courageous struggle
lasted until March 29, 1912, when Scott
wrote his last diary entry:
"Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale
WSW and SW. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and
bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have
been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside
the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift.
I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We
shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker,
of course, and the end cannot be far.
It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.
R. Scott
Last entry.
For God's sake look after our people.
Their fate was not
discovered until the next summer when the search-party dug
out their almost completely buried camp. It was a tragic
sight. Among their possessions were 35 pounds (16 kg) of
rock samples - a testimony, either to their dedication to
science, or complete fool-hardiness.
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