INTRODUCTION
FROM THE DUST COVER
Men have long dreamed of crossing the vast frozen
wastes of the Antarctic, but not since Shackleton's last
attempt to reach the Pole from the Weddell Sea in 1914
has anyone embarked on this great adventure. In turning
the dream into reality Sir Vivian Fuchs has taken his
place alongside Shackleton, Amundsen, and Scott, with a
feat of courage and endurance that has
rightly been called one of the truly heroic and
magnificent achievements of the century. On 24 November,
1957, twelve men set out from Shackleton Base equipped
with eight vehicles, sledges and two dog teams to cross
more than two thousand miles of unexplored snow and ice.
In front of them lay unknown mountain ranges and an ice
wall, there were vast areas in which innumerable
crevasses, hidden by thin layers of snow, threatened to
engulf the vehicles as the snow coverings collapsed;
there were other areas in which the winds had piled the
snow into serrated iron-hard ridges of ice
that produced a surface like a choppy sea suddenly
frozen. To these hazards was added the dangerous
phenomena of 'while-out', an atmospheric condition
producing the Antarctic equivalent of a pea-soup fog, in
which all sense of direction is lost.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Antarctic continent
Sir Edmund Hillary probed the immense Skelton Glacier
from the Ross Sea, and blazed a trail for the crossing
party to follow after they had reached the Pole. To
Hillary goes the achievement of reaching the South Pole
by land for the first time since Captain Scott planted
the British flag there forty-six
years ago.
This book is the full story told by the leader of the
Commonwealth Trans Antarctic Expedition and by Sir Edmund
Hillary, leader of the New Zealand support party.
Beginning with the landing of the advance party in
November 1955 to establish a base on the Weddell Sea
when, like Shackleton, Fuchs found his ship trapped by
ice, it tells the story of the two years
of preparation and reconnaissance that led up to the
final attempt. It includes the daring crossing by air in
a single engined aeroplane, and the subsidiary
expeditions made, during the crossing, into the mountain
ranges that rear above the surface of the ice. But, above
all, it is a thrilling story of men who set out into the
vast loneliness of the unknown to discover what lay on
and below a continent no one had ever traversed before
and, in so doing, accomplished a feat of courage and
endurance that will become a legend for succeeding
generations.
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