More Tales – Noel Downham (Continued)
Dogs, seal, rope, sledge and fights all mixed up. It was hell at the time – very funny in retrospect. At least it was not a leopard seal! The seal slipped back and then the job of disentangling the traces started. It is a wonder that I wasn‘t heard in the Falkland Islands.
I personally always used the centre trace but the variable length fan was favoured by some of the Hope Bay field parties. The fan had its plusses but one very large disadvantage was the several feet of plaited tangle that had to be sorted out every evening when it came to stopping for the night. It was a point that I had to gloat over when I met up with Chico (John Cheek) in Banff recently.
One characteristic I appreciated most about the dogs was how they calmed down and cooperated in time of real crisis. It is of course possible that our handling had improved when the crisis arrived, perhaps it was a combination of both. We always tried to camp in the open with the prospect of a good initial run in the morning before any problems such as crevasses, sastrugi or tide cracks slowed us and we needed their help.
Three examples:
A crevasse bridge collapsed under me in Bill‘s Gulch swallowing myself, my team, and the whole sledge. When the others came back and started fishing us out the dogs could not have been more cooperative though sadly two had to be put down with broken limbs when we finally sorted things out. (Note: see “Drama and Death in Bill’s Gulch” – Stonington 1964)
Once when on very thin sea ice that was camouflaged with a skiff of fresh snow, seals started pushing their heads up through the ice. If we had had the usual free for all we would all have broken through but the dogs must have sensed that things were badly wrong and a slow ‘irra‘ brought them faultessly round and onto solid ice and safety.
Geoff Renner (now my brother in law) and I were heading south by Pegasus off James Ross Island The sea ice was melting from underneath and we had a warm Fohn wind ‘ destroying it from the top‘. If the pool was light blue it had ice a few inches underneath, if it were dark it was bottomless. In an astonishing way the leader twisted and turned taking us round the dark pools and through the light blue pools. We all got very wet but at least none of us had to swim for it.
Noel Downham – Met. Admiralty Bay – 1960; GA – Hope Bay – 1961 & 1963; GA/BC – Stonington – 1964