Chapter VI: Osborne Glacier and Pretender Pass

Explorers in most parts of the world are able to sketch general maps of large areas, which they may have traversed only along a single line of route. Undulating country intersected by prominent waterways and rising at considerable intervals to prominent altitudes can be mapped in a sketchy fashion by the rapidest traveller, if skilled. A few compass bearings fix the position of prominent points; positions, astronomically determined from time to time as opportunity arises, clamp the whole together and enable it to be adjusted on the proper part of the globe; whilst, as for details, who cares about them in a new country? The mountain explorer, however, that person most unpopular with geographers, is faced by topographical problems of a far more complicated character. His routes always lie along valleys, whose sides cut off the distant view and whose bends often prevent him from looking either ahead or back. When he climbs a peak, assuming him to have a clear view, which is rare, he beholds a wide panorama, it is true, but, save in the foreground, it consists of a throng of peaks, whose summits alone are visible over intervening ridges. If, following tradition, he laboriously fixes the position of some of them, it is lost labour, for the mere dotting upon a map of the points of a lot of peaks tells a geographer nothing. What he wants to know is the number and direction of ranges, the position of watersheds, the relation of rivers to the original earth-crinkles which determined their direction and in turn are so remarkably modified by them. To make merely a sketch-map of a considerable mountain area thus involves an amount of travel within it beyond all comparison greater than that entailed by the exploration of open country. The smaller the scale of the mountains, and the closer they are packed together, the more frequently must the area be traversed in different directions before a sketch-map of it can be made.

King James Land is an example of a region excessively difficult to map. It is covered by a wonderful multitude of mountains, which may be described in a general way as planted in ranges running from north-west to south-east. Of these there are about six principal ones between the King’s Highway and the Dead Man, and quantities more to the north. The old-fashioned geographer would have been content to draw parallel caterpillars on his map and so fill it up. But, as a matter of fact, there are throngs of subsidiary ranges and crossing hollows, so that the glacier, flowing down one valley, robs from its neighbour the snow accumulated in its upper reservoir; and it is exactly in these phenomena that the geographical interest of the region consists, for they show how ice-denudation works, and the kind of modelling effect which ice can produce on a land surface, an effect totally different in kind from that fabled by home-staying geologists, with their imagined excavating ice-streams.

Thus far we had only made acquaintance with one glacier-valley cutting across the island from Kings Bay to Ice Fjord. We determined to look into another, to the south, before turning northward to the Crowns group. On July 31 we accordingly broke up camp, loaded the sledges, and bade the men set off, down the way we had come, as far as Junction Point, where they were to await our arrival. Garwood and I, in the meantime, were to cross the range of hills at the south of our camp, descend into the next valley, and return over the pass at its head, which must of course give access to the snowfield of the southern branch of Highway Glacier. Descending that we should come to Junction Point.

It was another brilliant day, and so warm that the snow was softened to an unusual depth. During or immediately after frost the surface of _névé_ sparkles in sunlight as though sprinkled with countless diamonds; but on warm days there are no diamonds, but only drops of water, the surface crystals being melted. The forms and surfaces of snow are thereby softened, and this softening effect is recognisable even from great distances. At starting, the view over Ice Fjord was clearer than ever, and we could distinguish Bunting Bluff, Fox Peak, and other scenes of last year’s toils and delights. The work immediately in hand was to ascend a long snow-slope, rising from Highway Pass to a col about 200 feet higher in the range to the south--a broad snow-saddle at the foot of a very fine peak, the ascent of which from this side would be dangerous, for its whole face is swept by ice-avalanches. Somewhere in the rocks of this peak are the nesting-places of many birds, the chorus of whose voices was heard as a faint hum. The new pass looked down upon the head of a large glacier, and across it to an innumerable multitude of peaks, all shining in the blaze of midday. At our feet was a secluded bay of this glacier. A splendid ski-glissade landed us on its snowy floor, and we were soon out on the main glacier, which swept down from the pass we were to cross next. Halting at a convenient spot, we took stock of the view. It was beautiful, of course--every view is beautiful in King James Land; but its interest made me forget its beauty for a time. We expected to find in this trough a glacier parallel to the Highway, and we did find one, and a large one too, larger than the Highway, because fed by several tributaries from the south; but to our surprise this glacier did not flow in the expected direction, but due south for many miles, and instead of ending in Ice Fjord, or on its shore, ran up against a big mass of mountains and, bending round to the right or south-west, disappeared from view. At the angle it received a wide tributary from the north-east. This great glacier, in fact, empties itself into the head of St. John’s Bay. As that bay was originally named Osborne’s Inlet, after an early whaling skipper, we gave his name to this glacier. Garwood, I believe, explains the twist of the mountains which cause this deflection of the glacier as the result of a fault dying out; but, lest I should unwillingly misrepresent his conclusions, I leave him to describe them himself. The mountains near at hand to the south were of beautiful forms, reminding us of well-known Swiss peaks, Weisshorns, Gabelhorns, and so forth. There was much aqueous vapour in the air, reducing its transparency and adding to the effects of distance. The mottled sky cast a decorative patchwork of shadows on the snow. Skeins of cloud were forming, and in the north the weather was again threatening dark and evil things.

On us, however, toiling up the long, long slopes to the pass, coy as are all the wide white passes in this land, the sun shone with painful fierceness. It burned as it sometimes does on the high Alps, so that we soon began to suffer from sun-headaches and parching thirst. Nowhere was there a drop of water to be squeezed from the apparently sodden snow. Having survey instruments and cameras to carry, we were sparely provided with food. Hunger came to weaken us and double the apparent length of the way. At last we were on the col, but the downward slope was very gentle and the snow now became sticky, so that the ski would not slide. We bore away to the right in search of a steeper incline and struck blue ice covered with mere slush that even the ski sank into. There were dry patches of it, too slippery to stand on; it was a mere alternation of evils. Sometimes we stuck fast and sometimes fell heavily. What was looked forward to as an easy and delightful excursion became a most laborious day’s work. “This is your picnic,” cried Garwood to me as he fell more than usually hard, “I hope you like it.” But all things come to an end, and so did this march. Junction Point appeared in sight, with a lake-basin between the branch glaciers where they join, a basin similar to that at the foot of the Terrier, and, like it, recently drained. The heavy ice, formed on its surface in the winter, had been carried all over the neighbourhood by the momentum of the escaping water, and now lay spread about, high and dry. With a struggle and a scramble we passed round the head of the lake and came in view of the men resting on the sledges. The unbelieving Svensen had climbed a neighbouring eminence to look out. Nielsen informed us that Svensen had been full of forebodings all day. They would never see us again, he said. We were gone into the wilderness and would be engulfed; as for them, when the provisions were finished they in their turn would die of starvation. Fool that he was not to take his old woman’s advice and stay at home where he was well off, instead of coming to this snow-buried circle of the infernal regions! Camp was pitched on the very tracks of our upward journey. Then the sky clouded over and the wind rose. After one last look towards Kings Bay, reflecting the golden west and framed by purple hills, we closed the tent-doors and rejoiced to be “at home.”

The lovely weather re-established itself in the daylit night, so that, when we awoke, sunshine lay abroad upon the glacier. Looking downward we had on our right hand the dull slope of the Queens group, where a smooth side glacier comes slanting down the midst of it from a col whose existence had not been revealed till now. It was decided to climb to this col for the purpose of making a closer investigation of the structure of the group. The march accordingly began with a long traversing descent of the main glacier to a point on its right bank at the foot of the side glacier. It mischanced that the area to be traversed was exactly the wettest belt of the whole basin. We skirted it on the ascent; now we had to go right across it, and that too after a series of fine melting days. The watery surface shone like a lake, and did in fact consist of a succession of pools, communicating with one another by slushy belts through which streams sluggishly meandered. The reader must not conceive of the pools, streams, and snow as corresponding to water and land, for the snow, even where it emerged, was permeated with water like a saturated sponge. When the autumnal frost masters a snow-bog and binds its errant molecules into a mass, there is formed a solid, built up of ice-prisms, each about one inch in diameter and as long as the bog was deep. Prismatic ice of this kind, the product of the preceding winter, is frequently met with on Spitsbergen glaciers. Its cause puzzled us greatly when first we came upon it. With the motion of the glacier, the formation of crevasses, and so forth, it often happens that the side pressure which held the prisms together is removed. Their tendency is to thaw and separate along their planes of junction. By this means are produced opening sheaves of long ice-crystals, most beautiful to look upon. I have found them in quantities a foot or more long, opening out “like quills upon a fretful porcupine.” Where there is no relaxation of lateral pressure, the crystals are held together; but they form a fabric of weak cohesion, and when you tread upon it your foot crunches in, almost as far as into snow.

Across this uncomfortable region we travelled for hours. Sometimes there were deep channels to cross; rarely a dry, hard patch intervened; most of the time there was slush of different consistencies which we had to push through. The sledges seemed to grow heavier and more resistant every hour. One of them, of which the runners were not shod with metal, came to grief at a stream-gully, where it pitched on its nose and smashed a runner. At last the water was left behind and dry ice gained. At the foot of a long, downward slope we found a big, frozen lake that had not yet burst the bonds imposed on it by the previous winter; crossing its rough surface, we climbed on to the moraine beyond, at the foot of the side glacier now to be ascended. The stone _débris_ of dolomite rock, covering the lower part of the slope, were dotted about with various common plants, _Dryas octapetala_, _Saxifraga oppositifolia_, arctic poppy, and so forth, the same that grow in the interior wherever there is any soil to accommodate them. Of the ascent little need be said. We shall not soon forget it. The slope was the steepest encountered by the sledges. Our forces just sufficed to raise them, but there was nothing to spare. We arrived at the level top exhausted. Camp was pitched on the col, a wide snow-saddle between the Queen (4060 ft.) and an unimportant but commanding buttress peak. To the latter I hurried, desirous of making observations while the view was clear, for sea-mists had been observed crawling up both from Kings and English bays, and uniting on the pass near Mount Nielsen. There is nothing more beautiful than a sea-fog beheld from above when the sun shines upon it. By contrast its brilliant metallic whiteness makes purest snow grey. Then it moves so beautifully, gliding inland and putting out arms before it or casting off islands that wander away at their own sweet will. Enchanting to look upon are these sea-fairies, save to the victim to their embraces. Once inveigled, all their beauty vanishes, for within they are cold, cheerless, and grey, like the depths whence they spring. But to-day they were not destined to advance far. They came up boldly a while, then faltered and turned back, remaining thenceforward among the seracs and crevasses, except a few rambling outliers that floated away over the glacier or hovered as bright islands in hollows of the surface. Faint beds of variously transparent vapour, horizontally stratified, barred across the fine range of craggy mountains and their glacier cascades that filled the space between Cross Bay and the Crowns Glacier, a mountain group with an exceptionally fine skyline. We were encamped at that level of the glacier which may be described as the singing level, where water trickles all about, tinkling in tiny ice-cracks, rippling in rivulets, roaring in _moulins_, and humming in the faint base of the remoter torrents. It is only on slopes of a reasonable inclination that these sounds arise. The flat snowbogs of our morning traverse were soundless.

Late in the evening, the weather being perfectly re-established, I returned alone to camp. It was an enchanted hour. On one hand, as I sat in the tent-door, facing the sunshine and the view, was the fine peak we named Pretender, rising above the battlement-ridge of the western Queen. On the other hand was a lower hill, shutting off the distance and turning toward me a splendid precipice of rock. Between them was the opening through which the glacier, falling away from my standpoint, joined the apparently boundless expanse of the Crowns Glacier. Beyond were beautiful hills with the silver mist kissing their feet, and, above them in the clear sky, a few wisps of cloud. No breath of air moved, but falling waters sang from near and far, and a fulmar’s whirr occasionally broke the stillness. At such times Nature gathers a man into herself, transforming his self-consciousness into a consciousness of her. All the forms and colours of the landscape sink into his heart like the expression of a great personality, whereof he himself is a portion. Ceasing to think, while Nature addresses him through every sense, he receives direct impressions from her. In this kind of _nirvana_ the passage of time is forgotten, and as near an approach to bliss is experienced as this world is capable of supplying.

The passing hours, whereof some were devoted to sleep, witnessed the establishment of the weather’s perfection. Heights and depths were cloudlessly clear, save low down over the bay, where the bright mist stretched like a carpet far out to sea. Buckling on my snowshoes, I slid forth down the slope, which curved over so steeply at the top that its foot was hidden by the bulge. The exhilaration of that rush through the crisp air is yet quick in remembrance. The cliffs on either hand, glorious battlemented walls of dolomite, seemed to be growing as we descended the side-glacier, whose exit, when we came to it, proved to be closed across by a rampart of moraine. Over this moraine, at a later hour, the sledges had to be carried to the ice of the extreme left margin of the Crowns Glacier, up which we were now to advance. There was no threat of serious impediment for a mile or so, but unexpected obstacles always lie in wait--the seasoning salt of the delight of exploration. A hundred yards on we were brought up sharply by a deep, impassable ice-gully or water-channel, stretching away into the glacier on the left and coming out of the moraine. We turned along its bank and came into the angle where an equally impassable tributary channel branched into it. There was nothing to be done but follow this backward to an overhanging place, cross it there, and then carry the sledges in turn, about a quarter of a mile over moraine, to a point where the other channel fortunately proved traversable. Hummocky ice succeeded for the rest of the march, beneath the grand cliffs of the Pretender (3480 ft.). Two great corries cut into these cliffs, the second of them starting exactly beneath the summit of the peak. We camped at a safe distance below its narrow mouth, beyond the range of frequent volleys of falling stones.

From this point to the base camp would be one long day’s march for men with sledges. We had three and a half days’ provisions left. We could therefore only spare two and a half days for exploration of the neighbourhood. That was not enough, so we sent the two men away with empty sacks to fetch more stores. There was plenty of work to be done in the neighbourhood, for the Pretender’s cliff disclosed all the mysteries of the great fault, which, cutting right across the country, approximately along the line of the King’s Highway, divides the uncontorted, almost horizontally stratified plateau-region of the north from the series of ranges of splintered peaks extending southward to the Dead Man. Accurate observation and careful mapping were, therefore, essential.

After lunch, when the men were gone away, we sat on a sledge in the sunshine, with our coats off, rejoicing in life. The glacier was working and cracking about us unceasingly; stones kept toppling from the moraine close by. High aloft rose the Pretender’s cliff, 2000 feet, almost sheer. It is the most beautifully coloured cliff I ever saw. For foundations it has a contorted mass of ruddy archæan rocks, brilliantly adorned with splashes of golden lichen, picked out with grass-grown ledges. Here, as all along the mountain’s face, are the nesting-places of countless birds. The fulmar petrels choose the lower edges; some, as we found, only just beyond reach of a man’s hand. The wall below them is generally overhanging, for the birds know exactly the limits of a fox’s climbing powers, and they avoid places accessible to him. Higher up are the homes of the little auks, who sit close together in rows, sunning their white bosoms. On the top of every jutting pinnacle of rock a glaucous gull keeps watch, with his own nest near at hand, ready to dive into any unprotected nest, or to pounce on any unfortunate bird that falls a victim to disease. The little auks always fly together in companies, I suppose for mutual protection. There is continual warfare between them and the gulls, but it seems to be carried on in accordance with some accepted law, for though any stray auklet or fallen fledgling is fair game for a gull, he does not seem to attack individual auks sitting near their nests. Indeed, we often saw auks and glaucous gulls sitting close together on the same ledge, when it would have been easy for the gull to have snapped up one of his small neighbours. This, however, must be illegal. We never saw such a crime committed, and the auks evidently felt confident of the gull’s correct behaviour. The nests are not placed in the gullies where stones habitually fall. No matter how big stone-avalanches may come down the usual ruts, the birds watch them unconcerned. But when a stray stone fell down the cliff in an exceptional direction, the birds flew out in their hundreds and thousands, filling the air with protests, the fulmars swooping around, the little auks darting forth horizontally at a higher level straight out and back again, whilst the glaucous gulls more leisurely floated away on confident wing, their white plumage seeming scarcely more solid than the glowing air which sustained their poise.

Above the ancient foundation rocks of the mountain comes a bed of green sandstone, above this a dark red bed, the same which forms the substance of all the Crowns group, except their caps. On the top of the sandstone, whose face has a sloping profile, is planted the summit cap of pink dolomite, cut off on this side in a plumb-vertical cliff horizontally stratified. High aloft in the wonderful air this rose-pink cliff, with its level lines of orange and other tones, like courses of masonry, was an object of rarest beauty, as all who know the Dolomites of Tirol can realise; but the sharp clear atmosphere of the Alps must yield the palm to the soft mellow arctic air, in which Spitsbergen’s mountains almost seem to float. Rose-pink aloft, then purple-red, then green, and finally red again splashed with orange and green: such was the chord of colour presented by this lovely mountain-face between the blue sky and the white glacier foreground.

A funnel-shaped gully, with its upper edge at the foot of the dolomite cliff and the foot of its couloir ending on the glacier, was exactly behind our camp. Snow-slopes at its head were melting fast in the sun, so that a cascade laughed aloud all down the height of it. Stones were continually loosened by the melting; each started others in its fall, so that the rattle of tumbling rocks, now and again swollen by the roar of some big stone avalanche, kept the air in ceaseless vibration.

I made two expeditions out upon the glacier in different directions for the purpose of investigating its character at its most energetic part, just below the summer snowline. It was a maze of crevasses throughout its entire breadth and all the way down from the edge of the _névé_ to the sea. A few traversable lines of route could be found, either parallel to and between the crevasses, or across them, where, owing to a change of slope in the bed, the lips of the crevasses were brought together within striding range. At best the surface was very bumpy, and I foresaw a bad time coming for the sledges. The ice phenomena would have struck any Alpine climber as curious. Every year there are added, even to the central and crevassed portion of an arctic glacier, accumulations of ice formed by the thawing and re-freezing of the winter snow, and these patchwork additions take the most unexpected forms. For instance, a crevasse that happens to be full of water will be roofed over with ice a few feet thick. If the rest of the water is then drained off a tunnel is formed, across which again crevasses may open. We found two or three such tunnels, whose roofs had been squeezed up into barrel-vaults. One of them was still full of water, but the roof had been raised high above it by pressure, and a doorway had been formed by the fall of a portion of the arch. I climbed into this grotto and stood on a ledge. Sunlight glimmered through the crystal roof; the walls were white; for floor there were the indigo-blue depths of the water. This was but one of the strange and beautiful objects that the glacier offered to the wanderer’s admiration. Near the foot of the Pretender a blood-red river, dyed with the dust of the falling sandstones, flowed in a deep white channel cut into the glacier. It soon came to the crevasse that was its fate and plunged down the fatal _moulin_. That was close to camp. Of course, we called it the Moulin Rouge!

After wandering far I returned home for the night, meeting Garwood on the way. Our backs were to the boundless snowfields; before us the Pretender’s mighty cliff shone warm under the mellow midnight sun, pink high aloft, crimson and green at lower levels, and striped blood-red where the water was pouring down. The white-mounded glacier was mottled over with blue shadows. Perfect weather, perfect scenery, perfect health--what more could we desire?