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Gwladys Fouché in Oslo
Monday April 11, 2005
It
will be a test of whether modern man, with his dependence
on mobile phones and Wi-Fi laptops, can emulate the exploits
of early 20th century explorers, who only had compasses
and distance wheels for help.
A team of British and Norwegian adventurers will from
tomorrow attempt to replicate one of the most daring and
tragic exploits of polar exploration - the race to reach
the south pole - with equipment similar to that used in
1911.
That year, the English naval captain Robert Falcon Scott
competed against the Scandinavian explorer Roald Amundsen,
who six years earlier had found a north-west passage between
Europe and Asia. After more than three months of advancing
at a snail's pace in sub-zero temperatures, with his men
often pulling their equipment themselves for hundreds
of miles, Scott eventually reached the south pole. But
he was too late: Amundsen had been there a month earlier.
Scott found a tent erected by the Norwegians, with food
supplies and a letter addressed to him that wished him
a safe return.
In his diary, Scott wrote: "Great God, this is an
awful place, and terrible enough for us to have labored
[sic] to it without the reward of priority." On the
journey back, overcome by disease, starvation and cold,
Scott and his four companions died.
Now five Norwegians and eight Britons will try to emulate
their heroes by competing to find an imaginary south pole
in Greenland - the race cannot take place in Antarctica
because dogs are forbidden there.
They will fly tomorrow to the town of Tasilaq, on Greenland's
south-eastern coast, from where they will start on a gruelling
1,550 mile journey. For orientation, they will only use
sextants, compasses and distance wheels. The objective
is to reach the imaginary pole in less than the 99 days
it took Amundsen. The Norwegian team hopes to do it in
80 days.
"For me, this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,"
said Rune Gjeldnes, an experienced Arctic adventurer who
will head the Norwegian team. "It is a big honour
to lead the Amundsen group and to try to understand what
these men went through."
The adventurers will wear the same clothes, including
garments made of seal and reindeer skin, and eat the same
food - for instance a mix of dried meat, fat, oatmeal
and pea flour called pemmican. The race will be filmed
for a BBC documentary to be broadcast next year.
The challenges ahead are many. Mr Gjeldnes, who crossed
the length of Green land from south to north in 1996,
said: "Temperatures can dip to minus 40C. During
the first 10 days, the wind can blow as fast as 80 metres
per second.
"Amundsen spent three years training for this. We
only had two months. We will also have to cope with the
antiquated equipment."
Some of the extreme conditions Scott and Amundsen experienced
cannot be reproduced, for obvious reasons. The modern-day
adventurers will not kill some of their sledge dogs, like
Amundsen did to feed his men and the remaining animals.
"Some of them are going to be shipped out by helicopter
at some point," Mr Gjeldnes said. The adventurers
will get fresh meat flown in, possibly seal, for food.
The UK camp will be led by former Royal Marine Bruce
Parry. He was unavailable to talk about the expedition.
The team will not use ponies as Scott did. The animals
were so utterly unsuited to the Antarctic weather that
they had to be shot. Scott's men had to pull their gear
themselves. This greatly delayed progress and was one
of the main reasons why the expedition failed.
The 2005 UK team will instead rely on manpower and, in
the beginning, 24 sledge dogs to pull the gear - means
also used by Scott. The dogs will be flown out as the
adventure progresses.
In 1911, on their way back from the south pole, Scott
and his companions quickly ran out of supplies. One man,
Edgar Evans, died from hunger, cold and exhaustion. Another,
Lawrence Oates, realising he was hampering the others'
progress, famously walked out of the tent one evening
and never returned. He said: "I am just going outside.
I may be some time." Later, the last three men, Scott,
Henry Bowers and Edward Wilson were caught in a blizzard
that went on for days. They died, huddled together in
their tent.
In the final pages of his diary, Scott wrote: "We
shall stick it out till the end, but we are getting weaker,
of course, and the end cannot be far."
-
Guardian
Unlimited -
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