Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-09-15
POLAR PARTY BUSY
PLANNING FOR TRAIL
Brilliant Sunshine at 60 Be.
low Finds Byrd Men Work
ing Like Bees.
BY RUSSELL OWEN.

Times
LITTLE AMERICA, Antarctica, Sep
tember 11.-Brilliant sunshine and 60
below zero. The last few days have
averaged so below.
The two large houses are crowded
with busy men getting ready for the
trail, making charts. overhauling tents,
repairing sleeping bags and footgear,
and in the mess hall there is con-
slant hammering on an anvil and on
the long table, where trail stoves, stoves
for heating the airplane engines, dog
harness and radio sets are being made
or put in condition for the Summer
work.
There is no room for quiet discus
sion from early morning until dinner
time and no escape from the din OF
manufacture and the bantering which
accompanies all effort.
About the only place In camp that
Is relatively quiet is in the house which
Arthur Walden and Chris Braathen
built, tiny house for two men where
at present they are repairing sledges.
It is not noisy and there is only room
for two men to work. BY climbing
up on a bunk. one may keep out OF
the way and talk without disturbing
them.
Snow Cellar Entrance.
The entrance to 1t is through snow
cellar, two rooms divided by a snow
partition, filled with ski and sledges and
dog harness The floor has been COW
cred with tracked-in snow so that it
undulates and ones head brushes the
feathery festoons of rhine that deco
rate the. ceiling with all sorts OF fan
tastic designs.
One room is used for cutting up
seals as food for the dogs. and from
it runs long, dark tunnel, from which
come the growls and impatient banks
of two teams which have lived there
all Winter. 1t is very much like the
whitewashed cellar of an old-fashioned
house in which there are half-concealed
recesses and dim vaults, but instead
of holding the family preserves, they
contain articles that are seldom seen
outside the Polar regions.
Pushing through this tangled pas
sage one comes to a door and opens
it. There is warmth and light, the
ffshy smell of burning seal blubber
in the stove, two work benches,
sledge filling most of the floor space
and two hunks, one over the other, in
a corner. Chris is sitting on stool
working away at something with
knife and Walden is flashing sled.
CHEEKY smile. sit down and be COM
Portable"
Curly and Bearded.
His hair curls in every direction,
most of his face Is concealed by
beard, of which for some reason he
is Unfortunately proud. He bends over
his bench and works rapidly, with con-
centration.
Walden is shorter and more silent, a
pipe in his mouth, his face wrinkled
by wind and sun. He is a veteran of
the Klondike gold rush. when he
freighted goods into the interior Of AL
aska, and he introduced the tandem
double-ended sledges and the gee pole
to Antarctic trail work.
He thinks the Antarctic the most
rnonotonous place in the world, for
there are no hills, nothing to look at,
no game-iust snow and ice. When
he talks, 1t is like a machine-gun sput-
tering, so rapidly do his words fall from
his lips, and he is decided in his
opinions.
Chris is sailor, has been one all his
life and never drove dogs before.
Proud of Mongrel Team.
But how proud of his team now. It
is composed of all the mongrels and
cast-off dogs which other men did not
We DuO SII ID SetS WUEk OUT Oh IL.
His i Ter is half blind and an animal
whose meekness hides its intelligence.
Chris will fight for any of them, the
Goat, the Rat or Moose Moss Mouse,
the leader
He is the best leader in camp, yes,
sir" Chris says. HE does just what I
want him to do, that he does All
Winter he has been loose in the tun-
mel and has not gone out, because I
1nf tn II
anybody say anything about my dogs.
They work for me and I stand up for
them, that I do. Yes, sir"
1t Is a comfortable house built of
odds and ends. Sometimes it is called
the engine crate" because part of it
held an engine. and sometimes the
Twenty-Five Club" because once %
men in some way crammed themselves
into it."
But its real name is the Block House,
after the sons of Paul Block, the
Newark publisher.
That house was put together pain
fully. Three times Chris and Walden
got together the material for it, and
three times it was taken from them
Tor other purposes. They picked UP
bits Of wood wherever they could find
them and hid them in the snow, and
when freighting was over, annexed an
engine crate and with other bits of
wood constructed the only two-man
house that has ever been used for a
Winter IN the Antarctic.
"Were Lucky to Get It."
1t Is place of seclusion and retreat.
They call it Luckheim, because they
were lucky to get it and helm" is Nor
wegian for home; half American and
half Norwegian are the Inhabitants.
Building the stove was one of the
memorable incidents of the early camp
life. Chris is capable engineer as
well as sailor, but everybody has ideas
as to how blubber stove should be
built.
They wrangled with Chris over 1t
for two days while he was trying to
cut up a steel gasoline drum. He
would hit it a crack and the drum
would bounce, with Chris after it; it
leaped and skidded and rolled all over
the place while good advice was offered
to him, until such a steady stream of
Norwegian imprecations came from
him that he could not say a coherent
sentence.
At dinner he was joshed some more
and picked up f1insy camp chair to
throw. The chair collapsed and Chris
got all tangled up in it, and when he
was f1nIy free of the thing he was
too tired to throw it.
Then in came Comdr. Byrd.
Il understand you are making stove,
Chris" he said
Chris jaw dropped as he glared in
speeches. rage and involuntarily his
hand closed over a roll. Then he
realized he couldn't throw it and sub
sided into profound silence.
But he made the stove, and it has
burned seal blubber all Winter, giving
out an intense heat. The fat drips
down below and is ladled up and
poured on the flames, so that nothing