To The Pole With Hillary

The Month's New Reading

With Judy Tudor

Why climb Mt. Everest? Why drive a farm tractor to the South Pole? Sir Edmund Hillary , who has done both, has vritten books about both exploits that make them seem the :ind of thing that any normal man would want to do.

, from a fire-side seat in suburbia or from the safe distance of a f tropical bungalow, you dispute , No Latitude for Error, which :ribes his 16 months in the arctic, 1957-58, could convince otherwise. Or, if nothing else, even in this world of shrinking oratory opportunity, some men ;e their own. ad he been born several centuries ier, he no doubt would have been Edmund, the scourge of the lish Main; in the 20th century, climbed the highest peak in the [d and drove a Ferguson tractor 0 miles across the Polar ice. Fate circumstances) had, of course, inally cast him in the role of a r Zealand bee-keeper, but he soon an end to that. all, the Trans-Antarctic Ex tion which was part of the sh effort in the International physical Year, occupied Hillary’s ghts for about five years: From time when he met Dr. Vivian is in 1953, shortly after the est expedition, until the success conclusion of the Antarctic ad are in 1958.

Modern Assault ichs explained his plan to Hillary ie earlier year, and briefly it was oss the whole Antarctic continent the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea journey that had been attempted sir Ernest Shackleton 40 years ously, and had failed. It had been tried since, but Fuchs led the assault using modern )ment —tracked land vehicles and aft. tien, later on, Hillary was asked ■ganise a New Zealand party, it to be in support of the main ing party led by Fuchs. The Zealanders were to organise a at McMurdo Sound on the Ross md, and to reconnoitre and lay 1 depots for Fuchs’ party on the id part of their journey.

At their first meeting, Fuchs stressed that the expedition was to be basically scientific—a seismic survey, meteorological observations and so on. Hillary thought he detected underneath this scientific British ex terior an honest love of adventure and remarked to himself that with fills approach he heartily agreed . . .

I have never needed a spate of excuses scientific or otherwise, before I considered a job was worth attempt- It probably was the basic difference between the two men. However adventurous Fuchs might have been feeling beneath, he presented a scientific face to the world and this slavery to meticulous scientific recordmg, resulted in considerable delay in

his crossing of the Continent and Hillary’s subsequent impatience and what the newspapers played up at the time as his “race for the Pole”.

It is quite clear from Hillary’s book that, although his role was officially that of support party, he intended from the outset that the New Zea landers would get something further from it. And this, of course, they did —to the extent that in his final chapter he is able to record that as well as leaving a well-equipped base behind when they finally left, they had initiated a wide and continuing programme of scientific research; had explored and mapped a huge area and shown that with resourcefulness and determination it is possible “to get even a farm tractor to the South Pole”.

He Did More This was all over and above ful filling their primary role of support for Fuchs’ crossing party which they carried out to the letter of the agree ment, and amplified.

At the time, of course, much was made by the world’s newspapers of Hillary’s dash for the Pole, with the implication that what Hillary did was not quite cricket and that he should have sat quietly in reserve waiting for Fuchs to take all the kudos in his OWn good time. (Over)

Little was said of the fact that it was the English party which was equipped for extended Polar travel and that the New Zealand party had to make do with farm tractors and their own genius for improvisation. At the time Hillary left Depot 700 —the last he was to lay for Fuchs —Fuchs was already weeks behind schedule and was advised by other Polar experts to quit once he reached the Pole and continue the rest of the crossing the following year.

The incompatibility of temperament between Fuchs and Hillary is evident —and obviously went far deeper than Hillary allows himself to say in his book. His impatience at the crossing party’s slowness and what he took to be their lack of organisation, and their ineptness in making conditions as tolerable as possible for themselves, is quite plain.

Non-U Hillary

No less plain, through his stiff necked messages, is Fuchs’ feeling that Hillary was not quite playing the game and was acting the over zealous, bustling Colonial, in a dis tinctly non-U fashion.

The best of relations were estab lished betwen the Americans and the New Zealanders—both at McMurdo Sound, where their bases were close together, and at the Pole. It was the Americans who presented the Kiwis with two Weasels—covered-in tracked vehicles—although these were not used on the last dash to the Pole.

The New Zealanders themselves built the Caboose in their first Antarctic six-months “night”. The Caboose was a pint-sized caravan on skis. It could be heated, and this they did drag all the way with them, to the Pole. In it they could get warm and sleep comfortably—in contrast, as Hillary found later when he was guiding the crossing party on the last lap from Depot 700, to the cabins of the huge, unheated, uninsulated Sno-Cat, which the crossing party was using.

Sour Comment On this state of affairs Hillary com ments sourly that the traditional British polar traveller felt there was something slightly indecent about being warm and comfortable when a great venture was under way.

Antarctic enthusiasts are crazy guys like ham radio operators—or so we’ve been told recently. But whether crazy Antarcticans or just arm chair ad venturers, you will like this book which crackles and sparkles with the author’s own energy and drive.

(No Latitude For Error. Pub

lished by Hodder and Stoughton. 31/6.)