OHYAT: The Slough of Despond

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO TODAY:

Miserable, utterly miserable.

Snow had come and gone the last few days but the men and remaining ponies of the Southern Party had marched through it regardless – yesterday, though, a true blizzard blew up which kept them confined to camp. The temperature usually rose with blizzards, but this one was uncommonly warm: as the thermometer kept climbing towards the freezing point, the falling snow would melt if it landed on anything but more snow, so the tents and equipment soon got soaked. Capt. Scott recorded a rhyme from Pat Keohane: "The snow is all melting and everything’s afloat, If this goes on much longer we shall have to turn the tent upside down and use it as a boat."

It's remarkable how infrequently thoughts of the Norwegians make it into the journals, but an oblique reference turns up here in Scott's:

Is there some widespread atmospheric disturbance which will be felt everywhere in this region as a bad season, or are we merely the victims of exceptional local conditions? If the latter, there is food for thought in picturing our small party struggling against adversity in one place whilst others go smilingly forward in the sunshine.

On December 6th, Birdie recorded a temperature of +33°F.

What this means to us nobody can conceive. We try to treat it as a huge joke, but our wretched condition might be amusing to read of it later. We are wet through, our tents are wet, our bags which are our life to us and the objects of our greatest care, are wet; the poor ponies are soaked and shivering far more than they would be ordinarily in a temperature fifty degrees lower. Our sledges—the parts that are dug out—are wet, our food is wet, everything on and around and about us is the same—wet as ourselves and our cold, clammy clothes. Water trickles down the tent poles and only forms icicles in contact with the snow floor. The warmth of our bodies has formed a snow bath in the floor for each of us to lie in. This is a nice little catchwater for stray streams to run into before they freeze. This they cannot do while a warm human lies there, so they remain liquid and the accommodating bag mops them up. When we go out to do the duties of life, fill the cooker, etc., for the next meal, dig out or feed the ponies, or anything else, we are bunged up with snow. Not the driving, sandlike snow we are used to, but great slushy flakes that run down in water immediately and stream off you. The drifts are tremendous, the rest of the show is indescribable.

Birdie Bowers

We have camped in the ‘Slough of Despond.’ The tempest rages with unabated violence. ... The snow is steadily climbing higher about walls, ponies, tents, and sledges. The ponies look utterly desolate. ... A hopeless feeling descends on one and is hard to fight off. What immense patience is needed for such occasions!

R.F. Scott

The thing that most tried Scott's patience was that they were only one day's march away from the Beardmore Glacier, where the second phase of the southward journey would begin. At the start of the blizzard, there was only pony fodder enough to last three days, which would have gotten them to the point where the ponies, who were not intended to pull up the glacier, were due to be slaughtered anyway. It had been observed that blizzards didn't normally last much more than three days: would they see a change in the weather by then?