he divided them into four teams and sent the first two away on 19 February. Bartlett himself led the last two groups from the camp on 24 February, leaving a note of the party's location in a copper drum in case the camp should drift into an inhabited area. The distance to Wrangel Island was estimated at , but the journey proved to be twice that in length. The ice surface was very broken up, making travel slow and difficult. At first the parties were able to travel along a track that had been marked out by the advance parties. However, recent storms had destroyed much of the trail, and in places progress was held up by breaking ice which at one point almost wrecked Bartlett's camp as his team slept. On 28 February all the parties came together in front of the first of a series of high ridges, from in height, that halted their progress. These stretched east and west, blocking any route to the island. McKinlay, Hadley and Chafe were sent on a risky journey back to Shipwreck Camp to pick up supplies that had been left there, while the rest slowly chopped and cut a pathway through the towering ridges. When McKinlay's group returned to the main party a week later, the path forward had been advanced by only three miles (5 km), but the worst of the ridges had been overcome. Hadley claimed that the ridges were worse than anything he had seen in his long years of Arctic experience. The later stages of the journey were easier, as the group travelled over steadily smoother ice, and on 12 March they reached land, a long spit of sand stretching out from the northern shores of Wrangel Island. Bartlett's journey Bartlett's initial plan had been for the group to rest briefly on Wrangel Island and then to move on together to the Siberian coast. However, because three men—Mamen, Malloch and Maurer—were injured, and others were weak and frostbitten, Bartlett decided that the main party should remain on the island while he went for help taking only Kataktovik. The pair started off on 18 March, with seven dogs and provisions for 48 days (30 days for the dogs), and took an extended route round the island's southern shores to look for signs of Anderson's or Mackay's parties. After finding nothing, they headed across the ice towards Siberia,