Bad day at the South Pole

100 years ago

British naval Capt. Robert Falcon Scott finally arrived at the South Pole on Jan. 18, 1912 after a horrendous trip filled with peril only to find to his despair explorer Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian flag stuck in the snow where he placed it five weeks earlier.

#To add insult to injury, Amundsen had left a letter behind addressed to the King Haakon VII of Norway, bragging of his achievement and a note asking Scott to deliver it for him. That day Scott wrote in his journal, “Great God, this is an awful place!” 

(Note: On their return from the Antarctic, Scott and his party of five, pulling sledges by hand, beset by illness, hunger and blizzards, all died. Their bodies and diaries were found by a search party eight months later. Scott was posthumously knighted. Glory comes at a high price!)

taken from

The Adirondack Journal

Turning Back The Pages

by Jean Hadden