 What doesn't Baron think was a reason for their failure?
Yet the doorman had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand pardons, Mr. Baron. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. F. No permanent installation with a human crew could survive at either extreme. Poor Jack met us at the rocket landing almost bawling, Sanderson had given him such a gloomy picture of what Brightside was like. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of less activity to the west. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric flow from Brightside to Darkside. The trick was to find a passage that avoided those upheavals as far as possible.
 the Major's experience
 McIvers  the Major's experience  poor mapping  faulty equipment