In the summer of 1913 Donald MacMillan and five other men left New York on an expedition to conduct research in the high Arctic. One of their key goals, and the most important one to MacMillan, was to prove or disprove the existence of Crocker Land, a landmass that Robert E. Peary had sighted from Cape Thomas Hubbard in 1906. Tidal data also suggested that there was land in the vicinity. The team spent the fall and early winter of 1913-14 building and settling into their quarters at Etah, Northwest Greenland, and, along with Inughuit, preparing for a major sledge trip to the northwest, to fnd Crocker Land. In late February 1914, they were ready.