The Beardmore Glacier is twice as large as the Malaspina in Alaska, which was the largest known glacier until Shackleton discovered the Beardmore.  Those who knew the Ferrar Glacier professed to find the Beardmore unattractive, but to me at any rate it was grand.  Its very vastness, however, tends to dwarf its surroundings, and great tributary glaciers and tumbled ice-falls, which anywhere else would have aroused admiration, were almost unnoticed in a stream which stretched in places forty miles from bank to bank.  It was only when the theodolite was levelled that we realized how vast were the mountains which surrounded us:  one of which we reckoned to be well over twenty thousand feet in height, and many of the others must have approached that measurement.  Lieutenant Evans and Bowers were surveying whenever the opportunity offered, whilst Wilson sat on the sledge or on his sleeping-bag, and sketched.

Before leaving on the morning of December 18 we bagged off three half-weekly units and made a depot marked by a red flag on a bamboo which was stuck into a small mound.  Unfortunately it began to snow in the night and no bearings were taken until the following morning when only the base of the mountains on the west side was visible.  We knew we might have difficulty in picking up this depot again, and certainly we all did.

“It was thick, with low stratus clouds in the morning, and snow was falling in large crystals.  Our socks and finnesko, hung out to dry, were covered with most beautiful feathery crystals.  In the warm weather one gets fairly saturated with perspiration on the march, and foot-gear is always wet, except the outside covering which is as a rule more or less frozen according to existing temperature.  On camping at night I shift to night foot-gear as soon as ever the tent is pitched, and generally slip on my windproof blouse, as one cools down like smoke after the exertion of man-hauling a heavy sledge for hours.  At lunch camp one’s feet often get pretty cold, but this goes off as soon as some hot tea is got into the system.  As a rule, even when snowing, one’s socks, etc., will dry if there is a bit of a breeze.  They are always frozen stiff in the morning and can best be thawed out by bundling the lot [under one’s] jersey during breakfast.  They can then be put on tolerably warm even if wet.

“We started off on a hard rippled blue surface like a sea frozen intact while the wind was playing on it.  It soon got worse and we had to have one and sometimes two hands back to keep the sledge from skidding.  Of course it was easy enough stuff to pull on, but the ground was very uneven, and sledges constantly capsized.  It did not improve the runners either.  There were few crevasses.