December 28.  The last few days have been absolutely cloudless, with unbroken sunshine for twenty-four hours.  It sounds very nice, but the temperature never comes above zero and what Shackleton called “the pitiless increasing wind” of the great plateau continues to blow at all times from the south.  It never ceases, and all night it whistles round the tents, all day it blows in our faces.  Sometimes it is S.S.E., or S.E. to S., and sometimes even S. to W., but always southerly, chiefly accompanied by low drift which at night forms quite a deposit round the sledges.  We expected this wind, so we must not growl at getting it.  It will be great fun sailing the sledges back before it.  As far as weather is concerned we have had remarkably fine days up here on this limitless snow plain.  I should like to know what there is beneath us—­mountains and valleys simply levelled off to the top with ice?  We constantly come across disturbances which I can only imagine are caused by the peaks of ice-covered mountains, and no doubt some of the ice-falls and crevasses are accountable to the same source.  Our coming west has not cleared them, as we have seen more disturbances to the west, many miles away.  However, they are getting less and less, and are now nothing but featureless rises with apparently no crevasses.  Our first two hours’ pulling to-day....

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From Lashly’s Diary

December 29, 1911.  A nasty head wind all day and low drift which accumulates in patches and makes it the deuce of a job to get along.  We have got to put in long days to do the distance.

December 30, 1911.  Sledges going heavy, surface and wind the same as yesterday.  We depoted our ski to-night, that is the party returning to-morrow, when we march in the forenoon and camp to change our sledge runners into 10 feet.  Done 11 miles but a bit stiff.

December 31, 1911.  After doing 7 miles we camped and done the sledges which took us until 11 P.M., and we had to dig out to get them done by then, made a depot and saw the old year out and the new year in.  We all wondered where we should be next New Year.  It was so still and quiet; the weather was dull and overcast all night, in fact we have not seen much of the sun lately; it would be so nice if we could sometimes get a glimpse of it, the sun is always cheering.

January 1912. New Year’s Day. We pushed on as usual, but were rather late getting away, 9.10—­something unusual for us to be as late.  The temperature and wind is still very troublesome.  We are now ahead of Shackleton’s dates and have passed the 87th parallel, so it is only 180 miles to the Pole.

January 2, 1912.  The dragging is still very heavy and we seem to be always climbing higher.  We are now over 10,000 feet above sea level.  It makes it bad as we don’t get enough heat in our food and the tea is not strong enough to run out of the pot.  Everything gets cold so quickly, the water boils at about 196 deg.  F.