Wegener also had to observe them to see the extent to which they could give orders and take them, work cooperatively, follow instructions, and be willing to improvise. Finally, Wegener had to know how hardy they were psychologically. This pertained not just to the reconnaissance team but also to the core leadership cadre that would have to train the others.
Wegener and his companions left Copenhagen on 27 March and arrived in Holsteinborg, West Greenland, on 21 April. Georgi, Sorge, and Loewe were surprised to discover that Wegener was not only known and liked here but actually famous, and that he seemed to know everyone. The captain of their ship, the Disko, Wegener had known since 1912. When they were unloading their motorboat, the Krabbe, it hit the side of the ship and sprung a leak. They towed it to the shipyard in Holsteinborg, where it was fixed by Martin Hansen, the brother of one of Wegener’s companions on the Danmark Expedition. The captain of the Disko thought they lacked enough mooring line and made them a gift of a 100-meter (328-foot) hawser that, as Wegener said, later proved essential; the district officer thought they ought to have a second anchor for their boat and made them a gift of one much stronger than the one they brought from Denmark.94
The warm welcome they experienced in Holsteinborg continued to follow them north. Georgi had immediately learned how to manage the engine, but they knew nothing of local waters and ice sailing, so the district officer arranged for a pilot to accompany them north to Egedesminde, and for a much lower rate than was customary if they would agree to carry the mail sack with them. On the twenty-eighth they ventured north to Godhavn, this time without a pilot, and on their arrival found that the governor of North Greenland was there to greet them, having received a telegram from the secretary for Greenland in Copenhagen. They found themselves guests in the governor’s home, with an offer to leave their European clothing and belongings there during the expedition and to overwinter their boat until they were done with the reconnaissance expedition. The governor also arranged for a 60-kilometer (37-mile) dogsled trip with some experienced drivers so that Wegener’s companions could feel what it was like to travel as a passenger on a sled before they had to pull one themselves.95
They sailed on their own to Jacobshavn, where they were met on 5 May by Tobias Gabrielsen (1878–1945), one of Wegener’s companions on the Danmark Expedition, and one of the best dogsled drivers in Greenland, who had worked on many expeditions since that of 1906–1908. He was also an experienced machinist, quite familiar with the kind of engine on the Krabbe, and he joined the Vorexpedition as machinist and “ship’s husband” to mind the boat while the expedition was reconnoitering in the interior; he would stay with them until October.96
Between 6 May and 17 June they explored the possibilities of a route to the interior from Quervainshavn. The details, many of them hair-raising and all of them good reading, make up the first part of Wegener’s book on this expedition, Mit Motorboot und Schlitten in Grönland (1930).97 Wegener had this book in mind from the beginning, and much of it is a fleshing out of his reports to the Notgemeinschaft with his own diary entries and some from Georgi, Loewe, and Sorge.
They were able, in the course of a sledge trip from 19 May to 11 June, to establish eight depots along a line northwest from their landing spot, marking these with black flags on flexible wands and building snow towers. They calculated that they had traveled 153 kilometers (95 miles) and achieved an altitude of about 2,100 meters (6,890 feet). They had strong winds almost all the time, often föhn, and they had rain and snow on eighteen of their twenty-three days. Although their equipment was good, they were often cold and wet, and all three of the younger men had their hands frostbitten, sometimes badly. Their equipment—sleeping bags, tents, and sleds—worked well, but the sledging rations, the “Amundsen pemmican,” were indigestible, and they all suffered badly from fatigue and indigestion, especially on the way back to the coast.98
They concluded that it was a usable route, suitable for horses, with no mention of dogsleds or motor transport. There were 8 kilometers (5 miles) of rocky ground to traverse to get to the edge of the snow, and from there the path onto the ice itself was quite sudden and steep, almost a scarp, requiring detours that would add extra hours to the ascent. Moreover, once on the ice, in the first 100 kilometers or so, there was an extensive Firnzone of compact snow, and this was fissured with many small crevasses, into which they fell repeatedly up to their shoulders.99
Tobias Gabrielsen returned to pick them up with the Krabbe on 14 June, and they sailed to Jacobshavn, where they reloaded their supplies and left for Umanak. The ice conditions in the Umanak region were severe; the Rink Glacier, 60 kilometers (37 miles) to the north of Umanak, was one of the most productive in West Greenland. Moreover, the time of “ice-out” here was a full month later than in the area around Quervainshavn. Wegener and his expedition partners spent the next two weeks incessantly searching along the mainland shore, by boat and on foot, for any way up to the ice that some combination of men, horses, and dogs might traverse.100
They searched most extensively within the Umanak District, with its bewildering side channels, islands, peninsulas, and glacial outlets. Nothing was suitable: this glacier was too steep, that approach had too much slippery and bare rock, this other snow field had too many crevasses, the next glacier calved too many icebergs. They were becoming discouraged when, on a trip on the Krabbe, they motored into what looked like a “dead end,” after having investigated (and found unsuitable) a location that Freuchen and Bertelsen had shown Wegener in Copenhagen.101
Straight ahead they saw a glacier, not very big, and not reaching all the way to the water, ending on a broad, curving gravel beach more than a mile in extent. They looked on their nautical chart, but the glacier and the arm of the fjord in which it lay had no name; they later learned that the local Greenlanders called it Kamarajuk (Black Bight). Wegener sent Georgi and Loewe ashore to investigate. They returned fourteen hours later with the “amazing report” that this small glacier emerged directly from the Inland Ice. This was just what they were looking for: a glacier connected directly to the Inland Ice which did not calve icebergs into the sea. The connection to the Inland Ice immediately at the top of the glacier meant that the “West Station” need not be 100 kilometers or more inland; it could be there at the coast. This would be an enormous saving of time and energy.102
The route they had found on Kamarajuk Glacier was not perfect, but it was an order of magnitude better than anything they had seen. The front of the glacier was only a few hundred yards from the beach. For the first 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) the slope was gentle, though from kilometer 3 to kilometer 6 it became a very steep ascent. At one point, on the left (north side), it was not really a glacier at all but an icefall, with a precipitous face and, in the late afternoon, catastrophically large avalanches of ice, with chunks the size of automobiles falling along a range of about 100 meters.103 Here the right side of the glacier was more compact but deeply crevassed, creating a difficult and circuitous ascent. The best route was a series of meanders back and forth.
Wegener decided to test the glacier as an ascent route, and at the store in Umanak he bought some dogs, dog food, some ice axes, and a large tent. From there he motored the Krabbe, along with a local (for hire) schooner, to the village of Uvkusigssat at the mouth of Umanak Fjord, where he hired seven Greenlanders, their sleds, and their dogs, to help them ascend the glacier with their supplies and to travel with them on the Inland Ice to set up depots.104 In this endeavor Wegener was aided by Johan Davidson, a Greenlander from Nugaitsiak and a respected dog driver who could help train Wegener’s expedition colleagues in this art.
The weather was bad almost every day, with incessant rain and cold wind, but by 18 July they had landed themselves, the Greenlanders, the sleds, and the dogs on the beach at the foot of the Kamarajuk Glacier. The ascent of the glacier with their provisions and equipment turned out to be the most difficult work of the whole expedition. The Greenlanders wore kamiks, with smooth skin soles, and con
stantly fell on the ice. Wegener was the only one who spoke Danish, so his colleagues were unable to help or guide. The going was so steep that the Greenlanders veered off onto the moraine at the left side; here they could drive their dogs up the dirt slope as long as their load was no greater than 100 kilograms. Perhaps it would be possible to make a road here; the moraine was a huge gravel bar parallel to, but hundreds of meters higher than, the ice surface. Once across the moraine, there was a broad meadow sloping upward, with thin snowfields—a good intermediate depot for the main expedition—and it was possible to walk on reasonably flat ground and then recross the moraine 2 kilometers further on, where the glacier was again smoothed out. They named this place Grünau (Green Meadow) and thought it would do well for the ponies.105
The Krabbe (right) and a hired schooner from Umanak (left) at anchor in Kamarajuk Fjord during the 1929 reconnaissance expedition. The photo is taken from the south side of the Kamarajuk Glacier. In the background is the (as-yet-unnamed) Alfred Wegener Peninsula. Photo courtesy of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven.
Over the next week, Wegener, Georgi, Sorge, Loewe, Davidson, and the seven Greenlanders hired from Uvkusigssat managed to cut a path along the least treacherous parts of the glacier and strew it with engine soot from the Krabbe in order to mark it and to help it melt. It was incredibly difficult and dangerous work; on the first day one of the dogs fell into a meltwater stream and was swept away to its death. All too often dogs fell into crevasses, and Sorge, Loewe, and the Greenlanders had to climb down in and carry them out. Once an entire span of twelve dogs disappeared into a crevasse, although all were rescued. It was clear that much help would be needed from the Greenlanders for the main expedition as well, as there were sections of the glacier and the moraine where men carrying backpacks seemed to be the safest way to move supplies.
As the summer wore on, Wegener began to suffer physically more than the younger men, though he still pulled his weight. While he did not complain about his heart “Knax,” he suffered badly from what was then still known as “rheumatism”—arthritic and swollen joints, bursitis in his shoulders, and muscle pain and fatigue. He also had a toothache, about which nothing could be done for the time being. Still, once they were at the top of the glacier and had sent the Greenlanders back to Uvkusigssat on 30 July, they found that they were in a position to do some science in a beautiful place.
After camping for several days in wet and soggy snow, they moved their base camp to a small nunatak that they named Scheideck (The Divide), sitting on a ridge crest at 975 meters (3,199 feet) between the Kamarajuk and Kangerdluarsuk Glaciers. Wegener’s preliminary report of this place to the Notgemeinschaft was, to be sure, a bare-bones tale of trouble encountered and distances covered, but the more ample account in his popular book Mit Motorboot and Schlitten is especially poignant with regard to Scheideck. What a relief it was, as Wegener wrote, “to be on dry land,” to see plants growing, minuscule alpine flowers in the crevices of the rock. It was “a friendly welcoming place—how it makes our hearts swell! And what a view.” The sky was a stratospheric blue overhead, with a softer azure to the west over the ocean and “on the other side, the inland ice!”106 Wegener’s exclamation points are the testament to the surpassing beauty of the setting. Scheideck was not a steep pinnacle but a long rectangular slab. The rock had a clean and unvarnished surface and was a delicate ocher-brown. It made them all a bit homesick, as the color is that of the stucco of a German, or Danish, or Austrian house, “homelike” and beckoning. It was especially beautiful under the midnight Sun, as there was a chiaroscuro effect and the rock had a perpetual alpenglow against the white intensity of the snow and the dark blue of the sky. It was a welcome rest stop for Wegener between the travail of portage up the glacier and the unknown dangers of the Inland Ice.
Over the next week, they were able to do some real science. Here it finally became a scientific reconnaissance, not merely the reconnaissance for the logistics and the transport. They were able to set off a dynamite charge in a borehole and measure the thickness of the ice with the portable seismometer. The work was maddening at first, as the prism had fallen out of the seismometer and had to be carefully built back in, and even though they had a “darkroom tent” designed to keep out all light from the photographic paper on the seismometer, the tent floor turned out to be of lighter material and reflected sunlight upward from the glacial ice on which they were working. Eventually, they solved this and other real problems; Sorge turned out to have a talent for using the seismometer, and he and Loewe were able to measure an ice thickness at Scheideck of about 300 meters (984 feet). These two men then moved their tent and apparatus north to the Kangerdluarsuk Glacier, fought a host of new difficulties, and set off a charge of dynamite showing that glacier to be 600 meters (1,969 feet) thick.107
On 21 August they moved their base of operations, using the dogsleds, to a depot 25 kilometers (16 miles) further inland. They were now in the Firnzone, where the recrystallized snow was very dense and interlayered with thin beds that had already converted to ice. “Here we now had to perform our most important measurements in order to determine whether our method of measuring the thickness of the ice also could be used in the Firn [i.e., not directly on glacial ice].”108
Sorge and Loewe were now a team, switching back and forth between handling the seismograph and exploding the dynamite. On 27 August, at 25 kilometers inland and an elevation of 1,570 meters (5,151 feet), they exploded their last 13.5 kilograms (30 pounds) of dynamite, and Wegener reported ecstatically, “This measurement was unbelievably successful.”109 They got an unambiguous measurement of an ice thickness of 1,200 meters (3,937 feet) and were able to see that the speed of propagation of the waves was the same in the firn as it was in the ice. This meant that as they got deeper into the interior of Greenland, and as the firn achieved greater and greater depth, they need not excavate down to the ice surface in order to get accurate measurements.
With these measurements complete, as well as some borehole measurements and measurements of ice ablation, they were ready to do something that Wegener had wanted more than anything else—a Hundschlittenreise (dogsled trip) into the interior. They made a few experimental trips from their current depot, and Wegener taught Loewe how to “drive.” Davidson led the way so that Loewe’s dogs could follow, and though they were heading into a biting wind, in blinding sunlight and through deep snowdrifts, they covered 26 kilometers (16 miles) in a little more than five hours, and for most of that time they were riding on their sleds.110
With these preliminaries accomplished, they set out to go as far into the interior of Greenland as they could, to mark the way with flags and snow cairns in order to be ready for the main expedition the following year. It was colder now, between −1°C (30°F) and −16°C (3°F), so they had to be careful not to get frostbitten. They had the advantage now that, in the wind, everything dried out, which meant they could sleep dry and warm. The days, however, were not warm, and the camping was difficult because of the blowing and drifting snow, a dry powder that they had to dig the sleds out of every morning. Even in the bright sunlight, the cold wind from the interior was so strong, and the dogs were moving so fast, that from time to time they had to jump off their sleds and run with the dogs in order to get warm.111
In four days they penetrated 154 kilometers (96 miles) into the interior. They turned around on 31 August and took only three days going out. The sky was clear, they were going downhill, they had the wind at their backs, and they did not have to stop and take measurements, as they could aim for the coastal mountains that they could see 100 kilometers away, knowing that they were in a direct line to Scheideck. It was good that this part of the trip was easy, because in the bright sunlight both Davidson and Wegener went snow-blind; Johann lost all his vision for two days, Wegener could barely see, and both men were in terrible pain.112
In the few days that remained to them after their return to Scheideck, they did as much science as they could (mapping, i
ce-boring, photographing), but time was running out. By 6 September they were packing up, and they spent the next two days carrying their instruments from Scheideck down to the shore; met there by Tobias and the Krabbe, they ferried the dogs back to Uvkusigssat and from there sailed to Umanak, arriving on 10 September.113
From this point on, Loewe and Wegener stayed with the boat, and Georgi and Sorge did most of the exploring. On 21 September they arrived in the vicinity of the Jacobshavn Eisstrom, probably the world’s fastest-moving glacier. Georgi and Sorge had planned to investigate this area using the folding boats they had brought with them from Europe. It was late in the year, and the two men found themselves often traveling in darkness, sometimes finding ice where there had been water, and water where there had been ice. It was their chance for independent action, and they gloried in it, the danger notwithstanding. Georgi shot as much film as he could, and Sorge measured the speed of the Jacobshavn Glacier ice front from several points with the aid of a sextant. They returned on 30 September, after a difficult and dangerous (and exhausting) trip over new ice, where they had to abandon their boats, both of which were leaking so badly as to be useless for travel.114
The return sea voyage south to Godhavn was extremely treacherous, owing to a combination of new sea ice forming (just a skim, but making it hard to push ahead) and the peak of the season of iceberg calving, especially dangerous along the Jacobshavn front. Trying to stay inshore, to be out of the wind, and skirting the ice front, they hit a submerged chunk of blue ice which knocked the blades off their propeller.115
They were 80 kilometers (50 miles) across the way from Godhavn, in the dark, with no power, no radio, and no way to get help in a Beaufort 5 east wind (10 meters per second [20 miles per hour]). There were whitecaps and larger swells coming in, and they were making only 4 knots under their tiny sail. They approached the harbor at Godhavn in pitch dark, and Wegener said that if it hadn’t been for Tobias’s sense of direction, they would never have made it at all. Using their flashlight as a semaphore, they were able to contact the shore and were eventually towed in, after fourteen hours of rough cold transit (in ice) on a rough sea—one last scary adventure. On 8 October, with the Krabbe on shore until next year and well covered, they sailed for home on the Gertrud Rask, arriving in Copenhagen on 2 November. Wegener spent the voyage home writing up the book of their adventures, and his sense of satisfaction and pleasure increased with each page. They had done it. And next year, they would do it again.116
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