User:Apterygial/Sandbox 5

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For Amundsen, the job was not yet over. He was determined to return to civilisation before Scott, and share the news of his victory first. Nevertheless, Amundsen decided to limit their daily distance to 15 nmi, so as to better preserve the strength of the dogs and men. They travelled at night, keeping the sun to their backs, to avoid snow-blindness, and were guided by cairns of snow they had left on their southward leg. The weather, for the most part, stayed fine, and they reached the Butchers' Shop at the edge of the mountains on 4 January 1913. From there, they began the descent. The men on skis "went whizzing down", but for the sledge drivers—Helmer Hanssen and Wisting—it was precarious; the sledges were hard to manoeuvre and brakes were added to the runners to help avoid crevasses.

On 7 January, they reached the first of their depots on the Barrier. Amundsen now felt their pace could be lifted, and the men took to travelling 15 nmi, stopping for six hours and repeating. Under this regime, they were covering around 30 nmi a day, and on 26 January they reached Framheim, "just as we had left it, in the morning sun." Their journey to the Pole and back had taken 99 days—10 fewer than scheduled—and they had covered about 1,800 nmi.