stefansson-wrangel-09-32-033v

270 THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

traveling distance between their camp and Cape North
from 140 to nearly 200 miles. At thirteen miles a day
this would make fifteen traveling days. Actual delays in
camp to wait for the freezing of water are common enough
in the milder months of April and November but are
rare in January because of the intense frost that bridges
a lead in fifteen to thirty hours.

In normal weather the competent judge would have
foreseen only one danger to life, that of walking on thin
ice and resulting death by drowning. In ten years of ice
travel, I have had a dozen narrow escapes from such
drowning and most of my companions have had several.
This included Knight, who to my knowledge had had several narrow escapes. I am not sure that Maurer had ever
actually been in danger from thin ice, but I know that he
understood the conditions and the theory. But with a
party who are in a great hurry, the risk is correspondingly increased. They might travel in their haste late
into the gathering twilight some afternoon. Perhaps
there was a snowfall the day before, which spread a
white covering over treacherous ice that would otherwise
have given warning through its color, gray or black. We
have quoted above Knight’s entry for January 12th,
where he describes himself and Crawford making a road
through several hundred yards of rough ice to reach what
they thought a broad solid expanse, but found to be
treacherous young ice covered with a recent snowfall,
thus compelling them to return. The traveling party
may have met exactly such conditions in worse light and
may not have realized their danger until too late. Again,
they may have recognized the danger, may have esti-
mated it carefully, taken chances on it because they were