Another stark contrast between the two expeditions concerns the subject of tents. The British used off-the-shelf 4-man pyramid style tents which had a fairly elaborate pole structure that had to be assembled whenever the tents were pitched, not an easy task in -40 degree temperatures with a sixty mile-an-hour wind blowing. The Norwegians made their own tent during the Antarctic winter after their experience with the stock 3-man tents that they had initially brought with them and which they used on the depot laying trips the previous autumn. Again, as evidence of the meticulous planning by Amundsen, he had brought with them several bolts of lightweight, windproof gabardine material, from which they constructed the tents. Their home-made tent was designed for six men, making it relatively roomy for five. It was also a square, pyramid style tent, only with rounded corners designed to minimize wind resistance. In contrast to the British tents it had a single, central pole which was lashed to one of the sledges in its full length while traveling, thus requiring no assembly. Their tent could be pitched in a matter of minutes: the tent was pegged down at the corners, then four men each took one of the four guy-ropes, while the fifth (usually Wisting) crawled in through the door and pushed the pole up into the centre, whereupon the others pegged down and tightened the guy-ropes to make it stable. The tent door itself was another homemade innovation, being a round tube of tent material, which both minimized heat loss as someone entered or exited the tent, and which could easily be gathered together and bound with a short length of rope to create a virtually windproof seal. Another innovation, which was ahead of its time, was sewing the tent floor into the tent, rather than having an open bottom and using loose ground-sheets as the British did. All of these little details contributed to the success of the Norwegian venture, while the ignorance of them compounded the failure of the British.

The comparison of clothing is partly true, except that the Inuit style of clothing adopted by Amundsen, with long, loose-fitting anoraks, allowed for air-circulation and the dissipation of sweat. It is untrue that the Norwegians had an easy, and non-strenuous time of it by using skis and dog-sleds, as implied in the essay. There were times on their journey when they expended almost as much effort as the British, most notably the ascent of the Axel Heiberg Glacier, where they ascended 10,000 feet in just four days. Also, guiding the sledges over the extremely rough terrain they encountered, particularly through the "Devil's Ballroom", as they called it, at the top of the Heiberg, was no easy task and almost certainly caused considerable amounts of perspiration and sweating. By contrast, the tight-fitting clothing worn by the British, mostly made of wool apart from the Burberry outer garments, would have absorbed the sweat and quickly become saturated, greatly reducing its insulation properties.