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FYI: Tombits... Shackleton's lost cache an icebound daydream

By: Tom Oleson

Posted: 11/21/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

The correct location of caches was a crucial part of Antarctic exploration in the early days. Explorers making an attempt at the South Pole would drop supplies at regular intervals along the route so that when they set out on the final dash, they would have food for the trip home.

Incorrect caching and a misguided sentimentality contributed to the deaths of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his party, who lost the race for the South Pole to Norwegian Roald Amundsen. Whereas Amundsen used Greenland sled dogs for his trip, Scott used New Zealand ponies. The ponies did not bear up well, as one might imagine, and the expedition had to carry food for them. Amundsen fed his dogs to each other and eventually ate them himself, but perhaps most importantly, Scott dropped his last cache short of where it should have been because the ponies were suffering too much. On the way back, he died trying to reach it.

Another Antarctic cache of an unusual kind is in the news. It consists of two crates of Scotch whisky embedded in the Antarctic ice for the last 100 years. It was left behind by another well-known British explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, whose 1909 attempt at the South Pole failed.

What a catch that cache would be if it were more accessible and if it were not for an international convention that forbids taking out of the continent anything that has previously been left behind. As a life-long drinker of Scotch -- or mother's milk, as we band of brothers call it -- I find that an outrage. They should just break it out, blast it out and invite a few select members of the press to a tasting. As it is, only two bottles will be taken out and returned to the distiller. Even so, with two crates of whisky deep in the Antarctic ice dancing like sugarplums in our heads, the idea of a Scotch on the rocks will never be the same -- just better.

...by Tom Oleson

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 21, 2009 H2

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