Transantarctic Expedition – Ken Blaiklock

Ken wrote in 1995:

All the husky dogs were a subsidiary mode of transport on the main crossing journey on the Trans-Antarctic Expedition, the teams played a small but interesting part on two occasions. On the initial vehicle journey from Shackleton Base to South-Ice, the vehicles had to find a satisfactory route from the Filchner Ice Shelf through the “Ice Wall” and on to the mainland ice. David Stratton and I went from the Air Camp in the Shackleton Mountains to this huge chasm and found an acceptable route. This was flagged for the vehicles, leaving various frivolous and encouraging messages!

Once the vehicles had reached South Ice on the main journey, Jon Stephenson and I left early on Christmas Day with the two dog teams to reconnoitre the route ahead. Our height was about 4500 feet and the last of the mountains were behind us so crevassing was not expected. However the surface was very bumpy with hard high sastrugi. The dogs could easily negotiate these ridges and not for nothing was my sledge named “Snakehips”. Every ten miles we built a six feet high snow cairn which stood out clearly, easing the navigation for the eight vehicles as they twisted and turned to find the easiest way through the. sastrugi ridges. After four days travelling ahead and 100 miles from South Ice, we knew that the vehicles were catching us up, so we built our last snow cairn – at least it was three upright cairns with two large slabs laid on top. This last one we named “Snow-Henge”.

From then till the South Pole the dog teams accompanied the Sno-cats, always leaving first each day, but trailing last to the camp site in the evening.

Ken Blaiklock