Campbell’s party had carried out successful sledging and useful geological work in the region of Evans Coves.  They had then camped on the beach and looked for the ship to relieve them.  There was open water lashed to fury by the wind so far as they could see, and yet she did not come.  They concluded that she must have been wrecked.  The actual fact was that thick pack ice lay beyond their vision through which Pennell was trying to drive his ship time after time, until he had either to go or to be frozen in.  He never succeeded in approaching nearer than 27 miles.

It was now that a blizzard wind started to blow down from the plateau behind them out into the continually open sea in front.  The situation was bad enough already, but of course such weather conditions made it infinitely worse.  Evans Coves is paved with boulders over which all journeys had to be fought leaning against the wind as it blew:  when a lull came the luckless traveller fell forward on to his face.  Under these circumstances it was decided that preparations must be made to winter where they were, and to sledge down the coast to Cape Evans in the following spring.  The alternative of sledging down the coast in March and April never seems to have been seriously considered.  At Hut Point, of course, we were entirely in the dark as to what the party would do, hence Atkinson’s journey over to the western side in April 1912.

Meanwhile the stranded men divided into two parties of three men each.  The first under Campbell sank a shaft six feet down into a large snow-drift and thence, with pick and shovel, excavated a passage and at the end of it a cave, twelve feet by nine feet, and five feet six inches high.  The second under Levick sought out and killed all the seal and penguin they could find, but their supply was pitifully small, and the men never had a full meal until mid-winter night.  One man always had to be left to look after the tents, which were already so worn and damaged that it was unsafe to leave them in the wind.

By March 17 the cave was sufficiently advanced for three men to move in.  Priestley must tell how this was done, but it should not be supposed that the weather conditions were in any way abnormal on what they afterwards called Inexpressible Island: 

“March 17. 7 P.M.  Strong south-west breeze all day, freshening to a full gale at night.  We have had an awful day, but have managed to shift enough gear into the cave to live there temporarily.  Our tempers have never been so tried during the whole of our life together, but they have stood the strain pretty successfully....  May I never have such another three trips as were those to-day.  Every time the wind lulled a little I fell over to windward, and at every gust I was pitched to leeward, while a dozen times or more I was taken off my feet and dashed against the ground or against unfriendly boulders.  The other two had equally bad times.  Dickason hurt his knee and ankle and lost his sheath knife, and Campbell lost a compass and some revolver cartridges in the two trips they made.  Altogether it was lucky we got across at all."[26]