Page:Aurora Australis.djvu/35

THE ASCENT OF MOUNT EREBUS. hair, fell on our faces. After a hearty breakfast of ‘hoosh’, plasmon biscuits, chocolate and tea, we struck the tents, repacked the sledges, and started again on our journey. The gradient increased now, as we toiled upwards, to 1 in 5, and we found it very hard work dragging the heavy sledge, especially as numerous large ‘sastrugi’ ran obliquely to our course. Frequently these ‘sastrugi’ caused our sledge to capsize, and several times it had not only to be righted, but repacked. Though the temperature at 3 p. m. was –8° Fahr., we found the pulling such warm work that we perspired freely.

Late in the evening we reached a spot a little over half a mile distant from the base of the second, or main cone, and camped this night at an altitude of about 5,630 feet. We had only travelled about three miles during the day, but had ascended over 2,800 feet above our previous camp.

Some of us when we turned into our sleeping bags after tea, found our socks firmly frozen to our ski-boots, and sock and boot had to be taken off in one piece: the temperature that night was –28° Fahr..

We were camped on a zone of less steep slope than that up which we had just travelled; this zone was continuous to the north east with the lowest and