A polar storm, well, especially in Antarctica,
there is nowhere to hide.
Australian Antarctic explorer, Geoff Wilson,
is fighting for his life
in the midst of a violent polar storm.
It's just a complete encapsulation
of wind and sound and fear.
He rang, and he said,
"I'm not sure the tent's gonna hold."
It's minus 47 degrees Celsius.
He's been awake for three days.
If this storm doesn't break soon,
his dream of becoming a successful polar explorer
will be dead.
If you lose your tent, that tent is gone.
You will probably not survive.
I think that's what those environments do.
They take you to your darkest places, or your most inspired.
"Men wanted for hazardous journey.
Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness,
constant danger, safe return doubtful."
Whether these words,
allegedly penned by explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton
to recruit volunteers to his 1914 South Pole expedition
are genuine or not,
they express perfectly
why polar exploration is not for everyone.
Antarctica is the coldest, windiest,
and driest place on Earth.
Humans are just not equipped to live here,
and yet, somehow we find a way to survive.
Europeans first set eyes on the frozen southern continent
two centuries ago in 1819,
but it was between 1897 and 1922
that a rush of expeditions from Belgium, Britain,
Norway, Germany, Sweden, France, Australia, and Japan,
spurred on by advances in technology,
set out to test the limits of human endurance.
It was a period of science-driven adventure
that would become known as the Heroic Age of Exploration.
Names like Mawson, Shackleton,
Scott, and Amundsen would've been regarded
in the same way that later generations
looked upon the first men on the Moon.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
And in an era when it took seven months
just to reach Antarctica,
it was so intangible to the Victorian world
that it might as well have been the Moon or Mars.
Since then, men and women have continued
to be drawn to Antarctica's wilderness
for research, wildlife, and exploration.
Much has changed since those early 20th century expeditions.
Technology has provided some huge leaps forward.
And yet, in the most extreme environment on the Earth,
the risks have not gone away.
End of day three. Here, a storm raging outside.
The forecast, real big blow, like 49 plus,
which is a tent destroyer.
Just a psychotic storm.
I've never seen anything like it before or since.
And you're trying to survive that storm
in a wind chill of minus 47.
You can do everything right and still end up dead.
You're in this continual survival.
Okay, I need more wall, but I need sleep.
I can't sleep, because of the noise in the tent.
So, there's this horrible cycle that you're watching happen,
and you know that it's just a matter of time.
This may be one adventure too many.
Despite the grueling ordeal,
Gold Coast-based veterinary surgeon, Geoff Wilson,
survived his 2013 expedition, and took the world record
for the fastest solo and unsupported
coast-to-coast crossing of Antarctica in history.
Now he's going back into the hostile polar interior
in pursuit of a new record.
He is going to attempt the longest solo,
unsupported journey across Antarctica
in an endeavor to traverse
over 5,000 kilometers of frozen ice.
It is a journey that will take him to the middle of nowhere,
the furthest point from the coast in Antarctica,
a place more officially known
as the Pole of Inaccessibility.
Next, Geoff will head for the South Pole.
Then, it's onto the enigmatic Dome Argus,
Antarctica's tallest ice feature.
This rarely-visited 4,000-meter-high soaring ice dome
is the rooftop of the Antarctic Plateau,
and the coldest naturally-occurring place on Earth.
If successful, Geoff will be the first human
to summit Dome Argus on foot.
Geoff carries all the food and fuel he will need,
and is equipped with the latest
in navigation and weather data.
But despite these modern advantages,
unlike historical expeditions,
Geoff will be taking on the treacherous,
frozen emptiness alone.
There are a lot of risks associated
with traveling to the polar regions,
and particularly the style of travel that we do,
where the equipment is minimalist,
we're going into extreme environments,
and a long way away from help.
I always underplay these things.
It's not that you couldn't make a fatal error,
but we all prepare very carefully,
and hopefully will not experience a situation
that we haven't anticipated in some way.
You always risk something
when you go outside of the fence.
And I think it's appealing to explorers, actually,
because in the society here,
you follow rules, everything is just so safe,
but when you are on an expedition,
to handle that risk is a part of the challenge.
It's very defining.
Okay, everything's freezing,
the batteries in every single unit did fail this morning.
I've had to stick this GoPro down my pants
for 20 minutes to get it at start.
It's giving me 3% on a full battery.
So, the challenges at this temperature are unbelievable.
I've got an upwind beat this morning.
It doesn't get any tougher. A climbing altitude at minus 24.
Anyway, enough whining.
Day one. Let's go get it.
The start over an expedition
is always the most tricky part for me.
Nobody done it before.
You don't know what's going to happen.
It's a shock for the system.
That shock, I think, it's even bigger in Antarctica
than, for instance, the North Pole.
At the North Pole, you have pack ice, you have open leads,
you have polar bears, you have things to concentrate on,
while Antarctica, it's an endless expansive of snow,
with so few impulses from the outside.
So, I think that a big solo trip in Antarctica
is a bigger mental challenge than many other places.
For Geoff, the first stage of his expedition
will be crucial to its success.
As an Aussie explorer,
you're dropped in from beautiful, sunny 35 degrees.
Boom, suddenly you're at altitude,
you've got less oxygen floating around,
and your body's just shivering continually,
because you're not acclimatized.
So, that first 72 hours is,
if we look historically at most polar expeditions that fail,
it's in that first period.
In 2016, British-born Henry Worsley
was attempting to complete the unfinished journey
of his hero, Sir Ernest Shackleton,
by crossing Antarctica from coast to coast,
solo, unsupported, and on foot.
We're almost,
trundling up there through with his with his dogs, climbing.
In a grueling 75-day expedition,
Henry dragged a sled that contained all his food, shelter,
and fuel, known as manhauling, through brutal conditions.
Well, it's pretty filthy weather out there today.
No visibility whatsoever.
Henry's margin for error was slim.
From his first day on the ice, he was walking a knife edge,
as he literally couldn't eat enough
to replace the calories he used each day.
Just 50 kilometers shy of his goal,
after 71 days, and nearly 1,500 kilometers,
his body could continue no more,
and he made the toughest choice of the expedition,
and called for an airlift.
In his last audio diary from the ice,
he echoed the words of his hero, Shackleton.
Well, today I have to inform you with some sadness
that I, too, have shot my bolt.
My journey is is at an end.
I have run out of time.
The sheer inability to slide one ski in front of the other.
My summit is just out of reach.
Henry tragically passed away two days later.
104 years earlier, a group of three polar explorers
had reached an equally dire place in their journey.
Having just been beaten to the South Pole
by the Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen,
Robert Falcon Scott was on his way back to base camp.
After two weeks, he lost his first man to a fatal accident.
Obviously, a lot of things
went seriously wrong with Captain Scott.
They were, by our standards,
woefully ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-equipped.
But then again, all of those expeditions of that era were.
Next, Lieutenant Lawrence Oates,
who, in an act of self sacrifice,
walked out of their tent into a blizzard,
uttering the words,
"I'm just going outside, and may be some time."
The three remaining men struggled on,
but on March 29, 1912, Robert Falcon Scott
recorded his final diary entry, huddled in a tent.
"I do not think we can hope for any better things now.
We shall stick it out to the end,
but we are getting weaker, of course,
and the end cannot be far."
Eight months later, a search party found the tent,
the bodies, and Scott's diary,
just 20 kilometers from a supply depot.
It's day seven of Geoff's longest
solo, unsupported expedition.
These are the coldest conditions he has ever encountered.
Yeah, it's pretty wild. Really cold, and pretty dangerous.
His first week in the Big Freeze
has been spent tacking into unfavorable winds,
which means his extremities, his hands and face,
are exposed to the icy cold and the bitter wind chill.
Little bit of concern from home
Some frost injury on my fingers.
My right hand is fine, as you can see.
Just a loss of sensation, which is normal.
The left hand, the rude finger has a pretty nasty
section of skin that's gonna die on the end.
I'll probably lose that nail.
It just means I can't risk getting cold to that degree again
and try and avoid upwind kiting in 40 below ever again.
At home on the Gold Coast,
Geoff is a veterinary surgeon, so his hands are his life.
The weather has left him with frostbite on his finger,
and he's having trouble gripping his kite handle.
Frostbite, it's one of those nasty things
that every adventurer that goes into
these extreme cold environments will at some stage feel.
Normally, it happens on your fingers or toes,
and that's also the most dangerous place to get frostbitten,
because that could easily mean
that you lose some of your body parts.
This finger's been a constant management issue.
Every time I take my gloves off,
I kinda wonder how it's gonna look.
Oh, it's looking bad now, look.
It's split on the end, and dying.
Ugh.
It's bad.
Oh, it's gone all mushy. That's a big change today.
Okay, it's all good.
Antarctica is one of the most
extreme environments on Earth.
And it's perhaps for that very reason
that it is has lured a certain kind of person
to try and endure the worst it can throw at them.
To survive here,
you have to carry all the basic human needs with you,
heat, food, and shelter.
The only thing that's in abundant supply is water,
but to drink it,
you've got to carry bottles and bottles of fuel to melt it.
There are a number of things that are paramount
to your survival out on the ice.
And, of course, you need calories.
It's the only way that you can fuel your body
to get across the ice and to combat the cold.
The only way that you can melt water
in order to reconstitute that food is to take fuel with you.
I don't think it's really possible
to identify one thing or another
as the most important thing you carry on an expedition.
The preparation of a long-distance polar expedition,
by its very nature,
means that every single item in your sled
is critical to the expedition.
Of everything in this weird little life support system
you're dragging behind you, what is most important?
Is it the tent, is it the stove, is it food, is it fuel?
You need fuel to get water.
You have to produce water every morning,
every evening, on a stove, melting snow.
So, in some ways when it comes to
how many days would you survive,
I guess fuel is more important than food.
You could go a few days without food,
but you wouldn't survive long without any water at all.
It's been a week,
and Geoff's frostbitten finger seems to be healing.
Yesterday was another brutal day.
I've actually climbed 500 meters in altitude,
so that's 1,500 feet vertically over 122K.
That brought with it another drop in temperature.
Obviously, that finger is not in a good state,
but it's supernaturally healing.
I've never, ever heard of frostbite actually healing.
It's rock hard.
I was expecting to have to do
a self-amputation of that first digit,
and I'd prepared myself to do that in the tent, mentally.
It was the one massive miracle on this journey
that I kept that finger,
and could put the veterinary tools away,
and not do a self-amputation, which was a great relief.
But what Antarctica gives with one hand,
it takes away with another.
A leaking fuel canister has spilled fuel through his sled,
and eaten into Geoff's fuel reserves.
The lid's vibrated loose, and all the feel has spilled out.
Luckily, most of my food is separately packed,
so it didn't get damaged,
but some of the food tastes a little bit like fuel.
This granola this morning has got a fuel undertone.
I need the calories. I can't afford to throw it out.
Yet more polar challenges. What more could go wrong?
As an unsupported expedition,
Geoff must carry all his fuel and food with him.
He has estimated the time he will spend on the ice,
and calculated how much food and fuel
he will need to achieve his goals.
Now he's lost five days worth of fuel,
he has some life-threatening number-crunching to do.
You can't create water without fuel,
and you can't cook without fuel.
Food and fuel are absolutely critical,
and if you get those balances wrong,
then death is the result.
And if you look at Scott's return journey,
he got them wrong just by a fraction.
11 nautical miles, I think it was, from his next depot,
where he had food and fuel in abundance.
He only missed it by a small amount,
and he met a similar storm
to what I met on the Antarctic Plateau,
and it locked him down for too many days,
and they ran out of fuel, ran out of food,
and then died of exposure.
He was found his hand on his best mate's chest.
It's an incredible image.
I never really understood how that happened,
until that fuel broke, and you realize,
you can prep and prepare, and things just happen.
Over the a 100-plus years since his death,
debate has continued over Robert Falcon Scott's
rightful place in history.
Was he a noble hero carrying on to the bitter end,
or a miscalculating risk-taker,
who led the polar team to failure and death?
In 1912, there was certainly incredible pressure to succeed,
coming from the home front.
Leonard Darwin, president of the Royal Geographical Society,
and son of Charles Darwin, said in a speech at the time,
"They mean to do or die.
That is the spirit in which they are going to the Antarctic.
Captain Scott is going to prove once again
that the manhood of the nation is not dead."
But more recently, a completely different line of inquiry
has been opened up regarding Scott's failed expedition,
and one man whose actions have been called into question,
his second-in-command, Lieutenant Edward "Teddy" Evans.
There've been dubious decisions
made by polar leaders over the millennia,
and Scott did likewise.
He held back from his team who the final party would be
skiing to the South Pole.
That had a serious impact on his plans.
Scott's race for the pole
began with a crew of 16 in November, 1911,
but as they drew closer to the pole,
small groups of men peeled off and returned to base.
Just who would be included in the final
history-making team to reach the pole
was a secret Scott appears to have kept to himself.
Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen,
their race to the pole is, of course,
one of the most iconic stories in polar history,
with two very different outcomes.
The Scott story is tragic,
and he often gets painted as being a disorganized fool,
and he should've known better, and all that kind of thing.
Second-in-charge, Teddy Evans, was furious,
when just a few hundred kilometers from their goal
Scott announced the final four men that would accompany him,
and Evans was overlooked.
"Captain Scott took one of my people, Bowers,
to make his hauling easier, thus having five men
to do what I was expected to accomplish with three."
It was no secret that Scott and Evans didn't see eye to eye,
but Scott's dismissal of his second-in-charge
may have been too much for Evans.
After Scott reached the pole and began his run home,
he notes in his diary on a number of occasions
that food that he expects to find is not there.
"I've come to the conclusion
that private Antarctic expeditions are a public fraud."
Professor Chris Turney
has researched the history of Scott's expedition,
and discovered previously-unnoticed documents
in the British Library.
What became really clear very quickly was,
it contradicted the classic story of what happened to Scott.
And effectively, what it claimed,
was that the second-in-command, Lieutenant Teddy Evans,
had removed and consumed
more than his fair share of food from the depots
as the teams had returned back from South Pole,
back towards the base.
February 7th. "First panic.
Certainly, that biscuit box was short.
The shortage is a full day's allowance."
10th of March.
"Shortage on our allowance all round.
I don't know that anyone is to blame,
but generosity and thoughtfulness have not been abundant."
Piecing together rediscovered letters and notes
taken by the Royal Geographical Society from the time,
Professor Turney's research
suggests an alternative reading of history.
And this is dynamite,
because you would imagine, at the time,
here is this classic story, it's everywhere.
This was one of the defining moments of the Edwardian age.
It was the Edwardian equivalent of space travel.
Resentful of Scott's decision
to leave him out of the polar team,
Professor Turney has found evidence
that suggests Teddy Evans may have removed
more than his fair share of food from the supply depots.
Scott actually wrote at to his expedition manager.
"Teddy Evans is a thoroughly well-meaning little man,
but on closer acquaintance, proves to be a bit of a duffer."
It's just extraordinary. They really didn't get on.
There have also been questions asked
about Evans' failure to communicate
orders from Scott to the rest of the crew,
a failure that meant that a dog team
was never sent to rescue the ailing polar team.
It looks like that when they were sending Teddy Evans back
he sent back the order with Teddy Evans
for the dog sledging teams to race back
across the Ross Ice Shelf and bring 'em home,
'cause they had to get back to the ship to tell the news,
whatever happened, if beaten Amundsen or not.
Extraordinary thing is, when you look at Scott's diaries,
when he gets down to bottom of the Beardmore Glacier,
there's about two or three entries where he says,
"We're always hungry. We're looking for food.
We daren't break it out yet. And where are the dogs?
Where are the dogs? We keep looking for the dogs."
It's incredible, because it doesn't look
like those orders were properly relayed.
We know that from various different sources.
While it's unlikely Lieutenant Evans
intended any serious harm,
and Scott may have simply miscalculated, or been unlucky,
the tragic result was the heroic
polar team lost their lives.
Scott's always waiting, poised with the team,
looking on the horizon.
He cannot see the dogs, cannot see the dogs,
and they never came.
And I think that's the tragedy of his story, actually.
There's been questions about his leadership, unfairly so,
and it seems an incredible shame, actually,
these amazingly brave men died,
and the stories became completely mixed up
with what actually happened there on the ice.
Okay, had a major stress last night.
After hammering through really bad sastrugi,
the smell of fuel,
and one of the major fuel bottles
had vibrated the top completely open.
I'm already critically low,
because I lost two bottles in the first week.
There's a tough choice to be made.
A supply drop will end Geoff's attempt
at the longest unsupported solo journey across Antarctica.
Every day there's some new stress, but this is a big one.
This is really, it could end the expedition.
British Antarctic explorers,
Scott and Shackleton,
have received much of the attention over the years
since their respective expeditions.
But it was Norwegian, Roald Amundsen,
who was the first to reach the South Pole,
famously beating Scott's team by five weeks.
I don't think competition was such an important part
of Amundsen's expedition.
I think the reason he went to the South Pole
was that the South Pole was still up for grabs,
and North Pole was not.
A career explorer,
Amundsen's first experience in Antarctica
was as a member of the 1897 Belgica Expedition.
They were the first team to spend a winter on the ice.
More than 10 years later,
Amundsen was absorbed in plans
to become the first to reach the North Pole by ship.
But when news broke that an American team
had reached the North Pole,
"I decided on my change of front,
to turn to the right about, and face to the South."
Amundsen landed on the Ross Ice Shelf in January, 1911,
and set off for the pole in September.
But the conditions they faced
so early in the season were horrific.
Four days in, he proclaimed in his diary
that they must abandoned the expedition until spring.
"To risk men and animals
by continuing stubbornly once we have set off
is something I couldn't consider.
If we are to win the game,
the pieces must be moved properly.
A false move, and everything could be lost."
Amundsen's ability to recognize
when to turn back and when to push on
has been hailed as one reason
that he succeeded where others failed,
along with meticulous planning and testing of his equipment,
a wealth of experience with sled dogs,
and an attitude to exploration
that was famously Scandinavian.
It appears to me that Amundsen
was quite ruthless in his methodology.
Ruthless in that, of course,
he had a whole swag of dogs at his disposal
that he could slaughter from time to time
and feed to the other dogs.
And this was a technique
that was commonly used back in that era.
Unlike the British romantic hero,
born out of suffering, in Amundsen's eyes,
the hero was the last man standing, the survivor.
Amundsen famously took dogs as well,
and did it in record time.
In fact, they actually put on weight,
the Norwegian expedition.
They beat Scott a month beforehand.
He was also incredibly meticulous about his planning,
in ways that that Scott and Shackleton perhaps weren't.
It's no wonder, it's no mistake,
that he arrived at the South Pole
almost a month before Scott's team did.
The Norwegian team reached the South Pole
on December 14, 1911,
and on the spot they reckoned
was the most southerly point on Earth,
raised a tent, a flag,
and left a note for Scott to take back,
confirming their claim.
I think easily the biggest development
between historic expeditions and modern-day expeditions,
in terms of technology and our ability to move efficiently
and accurately across these environments,
is the development of GPS technology.
Back in the day, explorers had to use sextants and charts,
and take sun sites,
and it was time-consuming and complicated,
and their ability to be accurate was highly compromised.
Okay, Pole of Inaccessibility is 35 kilometers that way,
but the wind is so strong,
and with the sled so heavy, I'm getting pushed off the mark,
so I'm not gonna make it with the weight I've got.
So, I've set up a case
which is everything I don't need for the next few days,
fuel, food,
extra skis, all of that.
I've set that up here, and I've GPS marked it.
So, I'll come back in a couple of days and pick that up.
So, that's the story for today.
To become the first unsupported and solo Aussie
to reach the Pole of Inaccessibility,
Geoff needs to cache one of his 100-kilo sleds.
But leaving half his supplies on the ice is a risky move.
Well, I remember looking at the GPS,
and it's saying it's two kilometers out,
and I couldn't see anything,
and then you start to doubt your navigation.
And then suddenly you see what looks like a man,
and then you realize he's not moving,
and it's Lenin with no arms.
But he's life size,
and your eyes are desperate to see something human
that it's convincing you that there's a human there,
and you're excited to see someone.
Then you get in and realize it's this bronze bust of Lenin,
in the most bleak, isolated part of the planet.
It's just crazy.
Oh, massive day.
First Australian in our 200-year polar history
to make it to this point.
It's pretty amazing, I don't know, when you think about it.
Ah, that was a phenomenal feeling, 'cause that leg,
there were multiple times during that leg
where I felt like I wasn't gonna make it,
and then, if I did make it,
that that would be my only goal.
I'd be happy with just the POI,
because I felt I made mistakes earlier,
nothing had gone to plan.
Considering it's taken 200 years to get an Aussie here,
I don't think I'll be back to see Lenny anytime soon.
While he is at the Pole of Inaccessibility,
Geoff is the most isolated person on the planet.
He is closer to the space station astronauts,
orbiting 400 kilometers above the planet,
than he is to anyone else on Earth.
I've been talking to Lenny over here.
He agrees with me, not a good idea to separate your gear.
So, the job today is to get back to that.
See you, Lenny.
Back at the cache,
Geoff talks to his support crew at home,
and makes a tough call about his fuel loss.
Looks like I will not continue this way to the pole.
I'm gonna divert, and go straight for Dome Argus.
So, no more fuel loss, longest journey continues,
But there will be an angle change tomorrow.
Perhaps the most compelling feat of navigation
undertaken in Antarctica is the story
of Sir Ernest Shackleton's dramatic
and determined recovery mission in 1916.
I'm fascinated by how he led that team,
specifically, the Trans-Antarctic Expedition,
and how he kinda kept them motivated.
Like, their boats crushed by the ice, gone.
That was your only way home. "We've gotta figure this out.
We're gonna crack on over the sea ice, that way.
Right, follow me, lads."
It's an incredible story of leadership.
He arrived in Antarctica in 1915,
late in the year for an expedition, and by October,
his ship, the Endurance, was trapped in the sea ice.
Forced to make the ship their camp,
they planned to wait it out until summer.
But as the winter wore on, the Endurance was slowly crushed
by the enormous pressures of the ice,
and Shackleton soon needed a plan B.
The crew manhauled their lifeboat over the ice
to Elephant Island, and made camp.
Shackleton had no other choice
but to leave his team on Elephant Island,
because they didn't have a vessel
big enough to take them all out.
Shackleton selected a small crew
to go for help.
In a remarkable feat of navigation,
and with gritty determination, over 17 stormy days,
Shackleton's captain, Frank Worsley,
navigated the seven-meter boat
across 1,500 kilometers of rough seas,
until they reached a whaling station
on the remote island of South Georgia.
Frank Worsley was a ship's captain.
Anyone that spends a lot of time at sea
lives and breathes navigation.
So, of course, it was his task to take that boat
across that Southern Ocean to South Georgia,
and he was really the only person
on the team that could do it.
He had the skills, he had the knowledge,
he had the sense of mind, and boy, he pulled it off,
one of the most incredible navigation feats ever.
After four unsuccessful attempts,
Shackleton finally rescued
his stranded crew on Elephant Island,
saving every last one of them
from what many considered to be a certain death.
I think for a lot of people, the most difficult thing
to deal with mentally on an expedition
is being away from loved ones for long periods of time.
In historic days,
when the early expeditions
were first encountering these places,
they would be away from home and families
for as much as three years at a time.
And today, it's only probably three months at a time.
There are times when,
certainly early on on these big expeditions,
where the goal seems so far away,
and so hard to reach that it's,
it almost becomes demotivating.
It's very difficult for people to adjust to the slow,
unforgiving, relentless emptiness
and quiet of a polar landscape,
and to exist within it.
I do reflect into the universe when I'm on an expedition,
because you do feel closer to the universe,
and you also feel closer to both the nature here on Earth,
and also the universe,
where maybe 1,000 kilometers from there is people.
And it's a great feeling.
Okay, it's a big morning this morning. It's day 33.
Dome Argus is that way.
The wind's allowing me to go that way.
We're 301 kilometers out.
So, with a really solid day today,
we'll be within striking distance of the Dome,
which is pretty momentous, really.
No one's ever crossed this ice before.
Yeah, it's pretty wild. Amazing thought.
This wind's meant to hold all day,
so we should get a good 100, 150, maybe even 200K out of it.
It's pretty exciting.
To the Dome!
Geoff is navigating a path over the ice
that nobody has ever crossed before.
He's hoping for wind,
but knows that a favorable wind is unlikely,
and if he is forced to tack,
he will need to make sure that he doesn't drift off course.
When Geoff was planning his expedition, I said to him,
"There's no way that you're going to be able
to kite up onto dome Argus."
The wind doesn't exist there,
and in fact, his wind maps told him that.
Probably my favorite part of the day
is getting in, getting the GPS, working out my lat and long.
It's an incredible feature,
in that it's where all of the ice
for Antarctica gets generated from.
All of the warm air from the tropics gets dumped
on Dome A, B, and C, Dome A being the highest,
and then it works its way to the coast
through the fringe mountains.
You imagine that point being where all the wind comes from,
to try and get to the top of it using wind power
was completely thought to be impossible.
One of the greatest stories of survival alone
against impossible odds is the story of Sir Douglas Mawson.
As the head of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition,
and a leading geologist,
Mawson's task was to ensure valuable scientific specimens
were collected and brought home for analysis.
Mawson and his two companions,
Xavier Mertz and Lieutenant Belgrave Ninnis
left their base camp in Commonwealth Bay
on a survey mission in January, 1912.
The survey went according to plan, but on the return trip,
Ninnis, his sled, and full dog team were swallowed up
by one of Antarctica's most deadly features, a crevasse.
I've been in situations
where I've lowered people down into crevasses,
and peered down into them, and they are black.
And you know that if one were to plunge in there,
that there would be no returning.
Not only did Mawson and Mertz
lose their companion to the abyss,
but a full sled containing their tent, tools,
and most of their rations went with him.
Hundreds of kilometers from safety,
they had no option but to leave Ninnis behind and push on.
When Mawson and Mertz needed to make that decision
to leave Ninnis inside that crevasse,
and then to move away from that situation,
would've been absolutely heartbreaking,
and spelled kind of the end of the expedition,
or at least, the emotional side of the expedition.
With no rations for themselves
or their huskies,
the men were forced to begin killing their dogs for food.
Mertz could only stomach the softer parts of the dog,
leaving Mawson the tougher meat.
A reason that huskies are able to survive
such cold conditions is their ability to store
huge amounts of vitamin A in their livers.
So, as Mertz chewed through the tender liver meat,
he was unknowingly poisoning himself
with an overdose of vitamin A.
He soon fell ill, and collapsed into fits.
When Mertz collapsed for the final time,
Mawson was left to face the ice alone.
Isolated and exposed,
Mawson trudged on through the snow and ice.
The skin on the soles of his feet literally fell away.
For 300 kilometers, Mawson pushed on,
until it last, a month later, he stumbled into base
just in time to witness his ship, the Aurora,
steaming over the horizon on its way back home to Australia.
A small group had been left behind
in the hope he would return.
Mawson overwintered in Antarctica,
his physical wounds healed,
and by spring, he was able to return home to Australia.
Going up Dome Argus, it's just a long, slow progression
over hundreds of kilometers.
It's not like a mountain, per se. It's more like a dome.
It's a tough one.
You don't feel like you're doing anything,
but you feel shortness of breath.
When you're breathing,
it feels like someone's sitting on your chest,
and you can get panicky quite easily.
It's day 34, and fatigue is really starting to kick in.
The other thing that's making it really difficult is,
there's obviously been fresh snowfall up here,
and this is all fresh powder.
It's all soft powder,
so it's bogged the sleds to the point
where I've had to put 'em in tandem, one behind the other,
so that they're going in each other's tracks.
But yeah, let's pack up and get going.
Yeah, we've been married for, oh,
28 years, together 32.
Yeah, he's love of my life.
Honestly, absolute love of my life.
I think it's really true that he's inherently selfish,
by the standards and the rules
that we're told we need to live by.
But what would be more selfish, I think,
would be to rob myself and the kids
of the person that he actually is.
But it's not easy. Yeah, it's getting worse and worse.
The older he gets, the more hysterical people get about it.
It's very isolating, actually, yeah.
Geoff has hit his lowest point.
The wind is gone, and he's been forced to spend day 35
relaying one slide at a time through fresh-fallen snow.
He realized that the wind had stopped completely,
and that he'd gone off course.
I don't think it was a huge amount off course,
but it was like 30 or 40 kilometers.
He'd spent that day doing two kilometers, I believe,
over I don't know how many hours it was.
He's 120 kilometers short of his goal,
the summit of Dome Argus,
in the heart of the most inhospitable place on Earth.
Geoff is off course, exhausted,
and owing to the high altitude,
an emergency airlift would be virtually impossible.
He just rang, and just, he was like just in tears.
I remember I was, and I just burst into tears,
and we both just sat and sobbed for a bit.
It was hysterical, actually, just trying to talk him
into getting out the tent, and keep moving.
I've pretty grim slog,
but let's see what I can do.
Over the next three days,
Geoff logs only 14 kilometers,
manhauling his two sleds across the powdery snow one by one.
I'd actually said to her that I was done.
I needed, I can't do anymore.
It was, "Okay, I can tell you're nearly done,
but let's just sleep on it, double your calories tonight,
get eight hours sleep, and let's talk in the morning."
I do not feel regenerated. I'm smashed.
It was finite.
He either did it, or he didn't,
and the chances of him coming out alive were pretty slim.
Yeah.
I tell ya, that is absolutely knackering.
I take my hat off to anyone who does a manhauling trip.
I miss the wind. We need the wind.
Ah, there's just too much gear.
I don't remember how this went.
I don't think he told me about the wind.
He'd got off the phone, and then it started flapping.
And he just packed and went as quick as he could.
I was with friends the next morning,
and I got a call at a really weird time,
and he said, "You'll never believe where I am,"
and it was really cool.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was really cool.
Yeah.
Ugh, this is just amazing.
This place has been the toughest I've ever tried to cross.
It's just mentally taxing.
In a place with no wind and no hope,
Geoff somehow finds both,
and skis onto the summit of Dome Argus,
and into the record books.
Well, against all odds, made it today on a zephyr of wind.
You can see the flags are moving.
I've just made it to Kunlun Station
right at the top of Dome Argus.
No one's ever climbed or skied
to the top of Dome Argus before.
It's quite amazing to be here.
It is close to minus 40, really cold, 14,000 feet,
and the base is abandoned.
I've set my tent, go have a hot meal, and get some sleep.
After a rest day
on the highest point in Antarctica,
Geoff is beginning to feel the effects of altitude,
and keen to harness the winds blowing off Dome Argus
to ski back to Novo Station as fast as he can.
I'm getting a bit of Khumbu cough,
which is extreme called damaging the alveoli, so,
the sooner we get off altitude, the better.
Just beautiful. I am alone.
In the 200 years
since Russian and British ships spotted Antarctica,
nobody has ever called it home.
It is dramatic and vast, beautiful and epic,
but it is hopelessly inhospitable,
and to journey across it is to put your life in jeopardy.
It is a place of constant danger and tantalizing reward.
For Scott, it was where he met his end,
for Mawson, it is where he made his name,
for Amundsen, it was a swift victory,
and for Shackleton, it was a place where he snatched victory
from the jaws of defeat.
And since that Heroic Age of Exploration,
many more have felt compelled to measure their worth
against the Big Freeze.
So, as Geoff begins his final leg,
he is aware that he's standing on the shoulders
of modern adventurers as well as historic giants.
From the first solo and unsupported crossing in 1997,
and the longest solo Antarctic journey ever made,
to the use of innovation,
and the first woman to reach the pole solo,
a special mention must be made to the accomplishments
of the late Henry Worsley.
Okay, so, she's pretty wild and wooly out here.
Phenomenal wind that's carried me
1,300 kilometers in a week.
And tomorrow's as a big day.
We break Rune Gjeldnes' record, 4,814 kilometers,
for the longest solo,
unsupported polar journey in our history.
Now that Geoff is pointing towards the coast,
he can take advantage of the katabatic winds
that blow out of Dome Argus.
780K to go. I'm coming home, Sarah and the kids, woo-hoo!
Winds that will propel Geoff
at phenomenal speeds towards Novo Station, and home.
That's the backside of Thor's Hammer.
I've just pulled through the gap.
The wind is easterly, but it's coming up this hill,
so I'm gonna use a novel approach
to get to the bottom of the hill.
I always get a sense of sadness and loss
at the idea that this experience
that is so extraordinary, so unique, is about to end.
Okay, we're 20 out, 20K out from Novo.
Finally, Novo Station ceases to be a dream,
and appears on the horizon.
Reaching the destination
is somewhat of a letdown sometimes,
because you are so focused and so in the moment
on every day of a journey that suddenly,
that, for all to be over is like, well, what now?
Why do I do what I do?
That's always the hardest question to answer, actually.
I think for me, it's,
it's passion.
So hard to believe after so many miles.
To be outside of that fence, to go into the wild,
and to live, and to be close to nature,
and also to be close to myself, ultimately, it's passion.
Geoff has completed the longest
unsupported solo expedition ever undertaken.
Have a look at that sun on the mountains.
He is the first Australian
to reach the Pole of Inaccessibility unsupported,
and the first to summit Dome Argus,
all in one little outing of 5,300 kilometers in 58 days.
The why is something I really struggle to answer.
And I think it lies within the core of who we are.
And if we have to ask why, it's been said before,
then maybe we shouldn't be going.
Some people are just born for really, really big things.
I'm privileged that I get to be on the same journey.
It's really, really hard,
but I am happy to be on the journey with him, yeah.
And just like that, I'm back at Novo.
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