|
|
As Peary approached the Pole,
the groups dropped off the expedition and returned to the safety of the
explorer's ship, the Roosevelt, which was moored in the ice east of Cape
Columbia. Before 1909, Peary had made six attempts on the Pole, coming closest
in 1906 when he reached 87 degrees 6' North. The latter expedition gave
him the record of "farthest North" but Peary, in The North Pole,
said he considered the mark "an empty bauble." For his 1909 trek,
Peary left nothing to chance, choosing the best dogs, the strongest Inuit
from Greenland and rounding out his crew with hardy American adventurers
such as George Borup, a 21-year-old college athlete, and Bartlett, his rugged,
30-year-old ship captain.
He compared his assault
on the Pole to "the winning of a game of chess.".. Landry says
where Peary took a "siege approach" and he and Crowley traveled
much more simply, the aesthetic of the two races to the Pole was the same.
"We tried as much as possible to copy the travel style that Peary
had, and for us, that meant leaving early in the season," Landry
says. Peary's army of men and dogs left Cape Columbia on Feb. 28; Landry
and Crowley left nearby Ward Hunt Island on March 2. Peary's men drove
seven-dog teams with sledges with loads of 227 kg; Landry and Crowley
drove six-dog teams and 250-kg sledges.
Both parties battled
fierce storms and unpredictable ice conditions such as open-water leads,
but at different points in their respective expeditions. Peary, upon encountering
the massive lead early in his journey, noted that it appeared as "a
malevolent Styx." The six-day wait that followed bred in him the
"gnawing torment ... of forced inaction.".. Peary had been stalled
by a similar lead in 1906 and had almost died of starvation waiting for
it to freeze over. He was terrified the 1909 lead could do the same.
Modern
Team Made Virtually the Same Speed as Peary
Landry and Crowley, on the other hand, made superb time early in their
quest. They reached Borup Camp at 85 degrees 23' north latitude —
not actually a camp but the point on the ice where Peary sent Borup back
to the Roosevelt — in 17 days, three days quicker than Peary. Both
expeditions made Bartlett Camp — where Peary told Bartlett to return
to the ship — in virtually the same time.
Landry and Crowley's
homemade sleds, with aluminum runners coated with high-density plastic
on the bottom, cut through the snow and ice with startling efficiency.
Compared to Peary's sledges, which often splintered and required constant
repair, Landry's ash and oak sleds held together. "We were really
moving well," Landry says. "It was a beautiful environment,
very harsh but still stimulating.. and challenging for navigating."
Several times, Landry's or Crowley's dog team would crash through thin
ice on a recently refrozen lead and the men would have to haul the animals
from the frigid water. But even that didn't slow the expedition down.
"Our dogs were amazing," Landry says. "The dogs would go
swimming in minus 40 and get out and shake themselves and roll in the
snow and then look at you like, `OK, let's go!' "We had to put one
dog on a diet two weeks before we got to the Pole because he was getting
too fat. They knew how to pace themselves."
Landry and Crowley
noticed the dogs started eating their own excrement to take advantage
of the nutrients they hadn't digested. "They realized it was going
to be a long expedition and so they were very careful. And up until Bartlett
Camp, we were flying.".. Blizzards around the 88th parallel delayed
Landry and Crowley and they took nine days to cover the 240 km between
Bartlett Camp and the Pole. But they managed a final-day push of 44.4
km, which approached Peary's final average marches to the Pole of 48 km.
"We were four days longer in getting to the Pole than Peary. But
you have to look at the two expeditions. There was Paul and I with 12
dogs versus the 19 men and 135 dogs that Peary had," Landry says.
"I don't think it's a big deal considering the resources of both
expeditions."
The jury is still
out in exploration circles about whether Landry and Crowley's push to
the Pole reaffirms Peary's claims. Richard Weber, a two-time winner of
Edmonton's Birkebeiner Lite cross-country ski race and, with his Russian
traveling partner, the first to ski unsupported from Ward Hunt Island
to the Pole, said he doesn't think Landry's quest proved anything... "I
think it's good Paul did it in, what, 42 days? But Peary said he averaged
40 to 80 km a day for several days straight and no one has ever been able
to match that, by sled or on skis. It's unbelievable," said Weber,
who has known Landry since the early '90s. "Paul's expedition still
doesn't answer some burning questions about Peary in 1909. Why was Peary
so lazy about navigating? To me that's unforgivable."
Weber said Peary's
story becomes more farfetched when one considers he made the trek without
the benefit of modern technology. "Today, we've got all the advantages
of navigating by GPS (global positioning system)," Weber says. "We're
in much better physical condition. We've got all our toes. How could Peary
make it (that fast) then and we're still not able to?" Most troubling
to Weber is Peary's claim that he returned from the Pole to Bartlett Camp
in a staggering three days — an average of 80 km a day. "Before
Peary left Bartlett, he averaged 12 miles (19.2 km) a day. Then, Bartlett
leaves, and Peary doubles his speed, and doubles it yet again coming back
from the Pole? I don't see it," he says. "I think Peary got
a few days out of Bartlett camp, realized he was nowhere close to the
Pole and said, "Screw this. I'm close enough. I'll make it up."
Weber, whose unsupported
ski to the Pole and back in 1995 with Mikhail Malakhov took 121 days,
said he believes skiing is a more efficient method of ice travel than
dog team. "On skis, you can go over thin ice and over obstacles instead
of around them. You can ski 14, 18 hours a day, but you can't run dogs
more than 12 hours without resting them," he said. "I admire
what Paul accomplished but I still don't believe Peary did what he said
he did. It's going to take new evidence to make me see how he did those
speeds."
Continued... |
