THE FROZEN NORTH.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 102, 30 March 1929, Page 2

THE FROZEN NORTH.

PROSPECTING BY AIR.

TRIBULATIONS OF CANADIANS

These are days of adventure, but there is little to be found outside the realms of fiction to compare with the experiences of a group of about fifty mining men, commanded by Colonel Leckie, of Vancouver, who took three ’planes into the frozen north to prospect for minerals (writes a Vancouver correspondent). Tho schooner bearing the expedition was wrecked in an uncharted channel. One of the ’planes, caked with ice, crashed in Hudson Bay. Two of the party got lost in a blizzard; ono never returned. Three were marooned for nearly a month in the Barren Lands, with .a limited food supply. , .. , A six-passenger plane made its base at Richmond Gulf. Two other machines flew 1500 miles from Tho Pas, in Northern Manitoba to Chesterfield Inlet, thence across the Barrens to Baker Lake. The base ship. Patrick and Michael, was aground five days on a shoal in Hudson Bay, where a IGO-mile an hour blizzard left her. The crew took shelter in a deserted shack erected two years ago by the Mounted Police. A whale boat was outfitted and took them to Chesterfield.

A ’plane set out after a party of two, landed in a blizzard and found a note, “Walking back; grub giving out.” Eskimos were taken to the deserted camp by ’plane, and they followed their trades for seven days, till they merged intd one. The survivor who was found told how liis mate had died from exposure. A machjne took off with the frozen patient with pontoons, wings and struts thick with ice, for its 1500-mile journey to hospital. At Churchill Harbour, where it refuelled, the ’plane sank in taking off. A boat saved the passengers just in time. A wireless message to The Pas brought another ’plane, and Cowans, the distressed prospector, was in hospital next day. Two men who salved the radio equipment from the wrecked schooner were frozen in without fuel, w.ater or food, at 20 below zero. Fortunately, a storm broke up the ice, and they threaded their way through the floes, thence to their base. Meantime a second schooner arrived and saved the shipwrecked crew. The main body of the prospecting party, known as tho Northern Aerial Minerals Expedition, is wintering in the Far North.