The Best American Travel Writing 2012 (32 page)

Having studied and experienced polar exploration throughout my adult life, I'm convinced that Huntford's tough, controversial take on Scott got it right, but that doesn't mean I don't have respect for the Brit. Scott and Amundsen were both courageous men, equally committed to their cause. Both had larger-than-life egos that could lead other men to sublime achievements or bring them unimaginable suffering.

But their styles couldn't have been more different. Amundsen was a brilliant tactician and an exhaustive strategist, Scott a rigid officer and obdurate romantic who failed to understand that the strategies of travel and survival developed by the Inuit were the keys to success.

Both men served long apprenticeships en route to their destinies. Amundsen was born into a wealthy family of ship captains, the youngest of four brothers. He spent half his wild childhood skiing in the rugged fjords and deep forests around Christiania (now Oslo), the other half in shipyards and on the ocean. His father, a ship captain, died at sea when Amundsen was only fourteen. Amundsen attended university to appease his mother, but he had an intensely pragmatic, rational mind that was well suited to a life outdoors and incompatible with the classroom.

Scott was born into a wealthy family of naval officers, with four sisters and a brother. He was a sickly child, gently teased by his sisters, and at thirteen he entered the Royal Navy as a cadet. An exceptional student, especially in mathematics, Scott went to sea for four years, returned to naval college, then went to sea again, sailing around Cape Horn.

Amundsen's heroes included a fellow Norwegian, Fridtjof Nansen, a fabled explorer and the first man to ski across Greenland. Nansen was an ethnologist before the word existed and learned how to survive on the ice from the Inuit, almost reaching the North Pole in 1895.

Scott cast himself in the mold of the tragic British hero Sir John Franklin, a dogmatic, siege-style explorer who perished in the Arctic in 1848 with all 128 of his men, starving after his two ships became hopelessly trapped in ice. When Scott was made an officer, the Royal Navy had ruled the world's seas for more than a century, but it had been gradually weakened by bureaucracy and nepotism. Scott wanted to be the man who restored that glory: he was known for his sly ambition, academic ability, and deep desire for promotion.

Amundsen decided as a teenager that he would become a polar explorer and never wavered, preparing himself in every way and signing on to a polar seal-hunting mission in 1894. He subsequently spent two years exploring the edges of Antarctica, then another three years, 1903–1906, in the Arctic on a quest to become the first to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the ice-choked Northwest Passage. He not only completed this harrowing mission but became the second explorer to reach the magnetic North Pole.

It was during this expedition that Amundsen learned about dogsledding and igloo building from the Netsilik Inuits. What he saw impressed upon him the hard facts of polar travel: fresh meat could prevent scurvy (a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C), dogs and sleds were perfect for the poles, skis were fast and efficient over great distances.

In 1907, Amundsen published
The North-West Passage,
two unheralded volumes of straight, unadorned prose in which he underplays risk, takes struggle in stride, and heralds the primitive winter survival skills of the Inuit as supreme. Like Nansen before him, Amundsen was far ahead of his time, having the genius and openness to master the indigenous culture's ancient survival skills—an ability not simply ignored but often disdained by other explorers of the day.

Scott also spent three years, from 1901 to 1904, probing the edges of the Antarctic. Afterward he wrote an adventure classic,
The Voyage of the Discovery,
a man-against-nature tale that became a critical and financial success. And yet, regarding polar travel, Scott's national prejudices led him to conclude just the opposite of Amundsen: he insisted on the nobility of man-hauling sledges versus the efficiency of dogsledding, was convinced postholing on foot worked better than gliding on skis, and refused to believe that fresh meat prevented scurvy.

At the time the South Pole was the last great prize for explorers. English captain James Cook had been the first to sail across the Antarctic circle, in 1773; his countryman Edward Bransfield the first to set foot on the continent, in 1820; and another English captain, James Ross, the first to chart some of its coast. Ernest Shackleton, who had been with Scott in the Antarctic onboard the
Discovery
in 1901–1904, led his own ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, getting within 97 miles in January 1909 before turning back and almost dying of starvation during his retreat.

Later, in the summer of 1909, the American Frederick Cook, thought to be dead, suddenly emerged from the Arctic, claiming to have reached the North Pole in April 1908. Two weeks after that, American Robert Peary claimed to have done the same in April 1909. Newspapers were abuzz for months.

Today it's generally accepted that both Peary and Cook were lying, but at the time their claims changed the game completely. Scott and Amundsen, archrivals, immediately set their sights on the South Pole. The race was on.

 

At 845,595 acres, Hardangervidda National Park is the second largest wilderness area in Europe. When the Amundsens tried to traverse it, they winter camped, spending only one night in a hut called Sandhaug. Today, thanks to the Norwegian Trekking Association, there are two dozen huts on the treeless, wind-scoured plateau.

Using Amundsen's description of his ski trek and a topo of the Hardangervidda, Steve and I plotted a roughly 100-mile route from southeast to northwest, passing by eight huts. Two were staffed and served meals; the other six were self-service dwellings stocked with food, fuel, and blankets. Which meant that we could conceivably do a very light ski tour—no tent, no sleeping bags, no stove, no cookware, no food.

“But what if we get lost in a whiteout?” Steve asked. “Or get hurt, or move slow, or for whatever reason don't make it to the next hut? We'll freeze to death.”

He wasn't exaggerating. Three weeks before we left, four Germans skiing hut to hut on another trail in Norway were found dead. Swallowed by a snowstorm, they froze within a mile of shelter. Four years earlier, two Scottish skiers attempting to cross the Hardangervidda hut to hut had been caught in a storm and died of exposure right on the marked ski track.

In the end, we each brought a foam pad and a paper-thin bivy sack, plus one shovel—just enough to dig in and survive a night out if necessary. Throughout the winter leading up to our trip, Steve, a headhunter in Denver and a former high school cross-country ski racer, hit the NordicTrack each morning at four; I skate-skied every day in Wyoming. Knowing that we had to be swift and smooth—or else—we toured together some weekends, through the worst conditions we could find, continuously testing and refining our gear choices.

Steve was expecting calamity and prepared for it. The Hardangervidda traverse didn't strike me as any more difficult or dangerous than some of my other trips—skiing across the heart of Greenland with a Norwegian and Swedish expedition, circumnavigating Yellowstone for a month on skis—so I arrogantly expected an easy eight-day tour.

The first five minutes on the Hardangervidda disabused me of this. The wind was so fierce, it had stripped much of the snow off the tundra. What snow remained was ice, and we were obliged to immediately stretch on our skins to avoid being blown straight backward.

“What'd I tell you!” Steve screamed, grinning ear to ear.

The first hut, Helberghytta, was empty and cold when we arrived. The cabin is named after Norway's most famous World War II resistance fighter, Claus Helberg, and its walls were lined with photographs from the secret mission he'd been part of to destroy a Nazi plant near Telemark that produced heavy water, an essential ingredient in the production of nuclear weapons. We fired up the woodstove, boiled canned reindeer meatballs we'd found in the pantry, burrowed under five layers of woolen blankets like kids in a fort, and felt deeply grateful not to be camping.

The next day the headwind was preposterous. We were repeatedly knocked off our feet, as if we were being slugged by an invisible boxer. At lunch we had to sit on our packs, backs hunched against the wind, lest they be blown away.

“Can't imagine having more fun,” Steve shouted through his hood.

It took us more than eight hours to cover 14 miles to the Kalhovd hut. There we found sixteen Norwegians huddled around the woodstove, drinking tea and waiting out the storm. When our faces thawed enough for us to speak, they were shocked.

“Americans! Why woot you come here to Norvay?”

I mentioned my obsession with Amundsen, and Steve explained that our mother's maiden name was Smebakken—“smith on a hill.” They nodded but still looked confused, clearly wondering why two people from the land of obesity would choose to ski through a storm in long, lean Norway.

The next day the wind remained ridiculous. The Norwegians altered their plans and ended their trip, going downhill with the wind. Steve and I did the opposite, skiing due west across Kalhovdfjorden, directly into the gale, not speaking and stopping only once to wolf sandwiches and energy bars while hiding behind a boulder.

It took us seven hours to go 14 miles. Without skins, despite the fact that the terrain was flat, it would have been hard to reach the next hut, Stordalsbu.

“Amundsen would be proud,” Steve shouted as we arrived at the snug, clean, well-built Norwegian cottage. I made a fire while he cooked. My brother was lighthearted and talkative, unfazed by the unbelievable weather; I was both exhilarated and exhausted.

The next morning we crossed a pass in the first couple hours and began sliding downhill into a roaring opaqueness. When the terrain leveled out, we guessed we were somewhere near Lake Vråsjåen but needed bearings. As I was holding the orienteering compass over the topo and trying to triangulate, the wind ripped both map and compass from my hands. They disappeared in the maelstrom. Only partially unnerved, Steve pulled out an extra compass and spare maps and we huddled together.

“We're off course!” I yelled.

He looked worried. He knew that if we were really lost, we probably wouldn't survive a night out.

Following a hunch, we made a 90-degree turn to the south. We'd skied half a mile when the clouds cleared just long enough for us to get our bearings, locate the trail again, and identify our next pass. I laughed with relief, and Steve spanked his ski poles over his head.

We ascended the pass slowly, cowering behind rock outcrops where we could. Dropping down the other side was lovely at first. We telemarked over icy meadows and along a wiggling creek. But soon the topography tipped and we found ourselves in a steep defile. For hours we carefully downclimbed frozen waterfalls, zigzagged through birch trees, plowed into snow up to our waists, and cursed the Norse gods.

We reached the Mogen hut deeply grateful not to have broken a leg but well aware that the remaining trip would be both dangerous and challenging. Though there was a trail on the map, there wasn't one on the landscape: almost every day we were out, we had to navigate with map and compass through a howling white wilderness.

 

Amundsen and Scott arrived in the Antarctic in January of 1911, and each team knew that a historic contest was under way. Hundreds of miles apart, both teams built elaborate base camps on the Ross Ice Shelf and prepared to winter over. A single push to the South Pole—1,400-plus miles round-trip, with a dangerous haul over high passes through the Transantarctic Mountains—was impossible, so each team spent the Southern Hemisphere's autumn ferrying supplies to depots along their respective routes. When winter set in—June through August—darkness descended, and temperatures dropped to 50 below.

Amundsen's men, working in well-crafted snow caves, were urgently industrious through the dark season. They tested and altered their ski boots three times, each man cobbling his own boots to conform precisely to his feet to prevent frostbite and blisters. Their fur clothing was repeatedly evaluated on trial runs and then retailored by each member to fit perfectly, eliminating chafing. The men used a lightweight wind cloth to make tents that were nearly half the weight of canvas ones, then dyed them black with shoe polish and ink powder, for three reasons: to make it easier to find the tents in a whiteout; to provide rest for weary, snow-seared eyes; and to soak up warmth from solar radiation. In the snow-walled woodshop, the team's craftsman, Olav Bjaaland, redesigned their dog sleds, cutting the weight from 150 pounds each to 50. Bjaaland, a champion skier, fashioned custom skis for each team member.

Scott was satisfied with his wool-and-cotton clothing and confident in his ponies' ability to plow through snow pulling heavy sleds. The English expedition did not refine its systems. Scott believed courage trumped adversity and that character, not craft, would carry the day. In their base camp at McMurdo Sound, he and his men squandered the winter on esoteric academic lectures, amateur theater, soccer, and letter writing.

For Amundsen, nothing had been left to chance. Pemmican was weighed down to the gram, biscuits (more than 40,000) were counted individually, seal meat was laid in depot larders, sled compasses calibrated, dogs fattened. He had learned from the Inuit that deliberately courting danger was immature, if not immoral.

Scott was a big-picture man with visions of grandeur, and he left the details to others. Besides, for the first 400 miles he would literally be following in Shackleton's footsteps. To set his farthest-south record, Shackleton and three companions had plodded on foot, man-hauling massive sleds. Scott intended to do the same after using ponies and dogs for part of the route.

From the start, Amundsen moved quickly and smoothly. He could barely control the exuberance of his dogs, and the men could sometimes ride on the sleds rather than ski. His teams typically covered 12 miles in five or six hours, then set up camp, devoting the rest of the day to rest and recuperation. If the weather was nasty they built igloos. In the fall they had marked their depots with wide lines of flags in case they veered off course, so that even in storms they easily found their resupplies of food and fuel. For the Norwegians, all of whom were excellent cross-country skiers, it was a grand jaunt. A big ski tour.