Five men had to squeeze into one tent that night, but with a minus temperature they did not object to being crowded.
On January 23 a thick fog obscured all landmarks, and as bearings of the mountains were now necessary the party had to camp at 11 a.m., after travelling only four miles.

The thick weather continued over the 24th, and the men did not move again until the morning of the 25th.
They did 17ｾ miles that day, and camped at 6 p.m.on the edge of "the biggest ice-pressure" Joyce had ever seen.

They were steering in towards the mountains and were encountering the tremendous congestion created by the flow of the Beardmore Glacier into the barrier ice.
"We decided to keep the camp up," ran Joyce's account of the work done on January 26.

"Skipper, Richards, and myself roped ourselves together, I taking the lead, to try and find a course through this pressure.

We came across very wide crevasses, went down several, came on top of a very high ridge, and such a scene! Imagine thousands of tons of ice churned up to a depth of about 300 ft.