WINTER IN GREENLAND

Evening Star, Issue 21286, 15 December 1932, Page 13

WINTER IN GREENLAND

TALE OF HARDSHIPS The official account of the British Arctic Air Route Expedition, which, spent a year in Southern Greenland in 1930-31 trying to find whether an air service between England and Canady could safely pass over the icy waste, has been published. The author is Mr F. Spencer Chapman, It is a simple tale of how a band of fourteen young men obtained and kept a footing on-a rocky and glacial coast swept by such storms that merely to survive a winter there is no mean achievement. They, exposed themselves to the full hazard of what is probably the worst example in the world of a tempestuous cold weather system gripping a barren terrain ; they accomplished the major part of their work; and they all survived. The distinguishing mark of this expedition was its youth. Its leader* himself a young man of twenty-three, 'explains in a bold preface the principles on which he chose its personnel and conducted it. He would have no onq of greater Arctic experience than himself, and so the party consisted ofi young service' officers and university, men, the majority of whom were visiting the Arctic for the first time.. It is clear that the risks of inexperience were fully set off by the genius of the late H. G. Watkins’s leadership and by the freshness of .capable men getting their first taste of the fun and hardship of Arctic exploration. They, were plunged into appallingly severe conditions before they knew the feel of frostbite, the technique of dog haulage, the discomfort of sleeping bags,] and the twin frets of, monotony and overcrowding. This ; might have been fatal, but it actually stiffened their, moral. They were young enough to be tolerant and frank with one another;! in the matter of luxuries they preferred to eat their cake rather than ration! it; they were sustained in their worst moments by the sheer momentum oij youth. After building their base hut at tlus head of a fjord near the East Greenland Eskimo settlement, of Angmagssalik, it was the expedition’s chief task to establish and maintain a meteorological station, B,oooft up and 140 miles inland, near the highest point of the ice cap of Southern Greenland. This involved a very severe ascent of broken and crevassed glacial coastal slopesThe station was to be manned by two observers frequently relieved, and was successfully set up in September, 1930By the end of,October it was evident' that the winter gales of over 100 miles an hour, sweeping down every few days from the* ice cap, would imperil communication with the station. Not only, was sledge transport enofmously impeded, but since the gales prevented the coastal waters from freezing up. and rendered the ice cap surface unsuitable for landing in winter relief and supply by aircraft, which it had been; hoped to operate continuously from the base, were impossible. On October 23 a sledge party of six men, led by Chapman and carrying two tons of supplies, set off for the ice cap station. Air Chapman’s account, transcribed from his diary, of this terrible journey, forms the most vivid chapter of tha book. By November 15 they bad advanced fifteen miles. On that day halfi the party were sent back, and the remainder, pushing on with lightened loads, struggled in to the station on December 3. The supplies available and the prospects of further relief were such that it was necessary either to abandon the station or to leave one man alone there' for some months. The adventures of Air Courtauld, who volunteered to remain, are well known. A’ relief party sent out in Alarch attained the approximate position of the ice cap station, but failed to find it; reconnaissance by air was equally unsuccessful f and it was only on May 5 that a second relief party, after days of search, discovered a tattered flag; and the top of a ventilator shaft sticking out of a 10fb drift of snow. Air Courtauld contributes a dry and reticent account oS bis imprisonihent under the snow which puts tlie matter in its right proportionThis was the most sensational episode! in the year’s work; but other journeys —to map the coastline north and south' of the base and to cross the ice cap. to the west coast—were equally, arduous.