OHYAT: The Left Hand Knows Not What The Right Hand Is Doing

[tealin]

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO TODAY, the Polar Party reached the Mount Hooper Depot, where on the outward trip the Motor Party had waited for the Pony Party to catch up.

Cold comfort. Shortage on our allowance all round. I don’t know that anyone is to blame. The dogs which would have been our salvation have evidently failed. Meares had a bad trip home I suppose.

– R.F. Scott

"The dogs" (and Cherry and Dimitri) were at that moment still waiting at One Ton Depot, just over seventy miles north of them. The weather had been bad shortly after their arrival, which would have made travel further south difficult; on top of this, Dimitri was afflicted by a sort of creeping paralysis of his right side. Because there was no dog food at the depot, their time away from base was dictated by what they'd brought with them – Cherry allowed for an eight-day return trip, which meant they would have to turn back by the 10th. If they wanted to stay out any longer they would have to kill some of the weaker dogs to feed to the stronger. This was common dog-driving practise, but Cherry was under explicit instructions not to risk the dogs, so this would have been unthinkable.

When Scott laid out his plans for the trip to the Pole he'd estimated the Polar Party would return to base around the end of March or beginning of April; when the Second Returning party brought news of their progress the estimate was moved forward. As they evidently had not reached One Ton when the revised estimate said they would, Cherry figured Scott's estimate had been right after all and that the dog teams were too early. At no point did there seem to be cause for concern.