Into the Great Emptiness
Peril and Survival on the Greenland Ice Cap
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A Library Journal Best Book of 2022 in Science and Technology
“A gripping saga—and one of Roberts’s finest books.” —Jon Krakauer
The riveting story of one of the greatest but least-known sagas in the history of exploration.
By 1930, no place in the world was less well explored than Greenland. The native Inuit had occupied the relatively accessible west coast for centuries. The east coast, however, was another story. In August 1930, Henry George Watkins (nicknamed “Gino”), a twenty-three-year-old British explorer, led thirteen scientists and explorers on an ambitious expedition to the east coast of Greenland and into its vast and forbidding interior to set up a permanent meteorological base on the icecap, 8,200 feet above sea level. The Ice Cap Station was to be the anchor of a transpolar route of air travel from Europe to North America.
The weather on the ice cap was appalling. Fierce storms. Temperatures plunging lower than –50° Fahrenheit in the winter. Watkins’s scheme called for rotating teams of two men each to monitor the station for two months at a time. No one had ever tried to winter over in that hostile landscape, let alone manage a weather station through twelve continuous months. Watkins was younger than anyone under his command. But he had several daring trips to the Arctic under his belt and no one doubted his judgement.
The first crisis came in the fall when a snowstorm stranded a resupply mission halfway to the top for many weeks. When they arrived at the ice cap, there were not enough provisions and fuel for another two-man shift, so the station would have to be abandoned. Then team member August Courtauld made an astonishing offer. To enable the mission to go forward, he would monitor the station solo through the winter. When a team went up in March to relieve Courtauld, after weeks of brutal effort to make the 130-mile journey, they could find no trace of him or the station. By the end of March, Courtauld’s situation was desperate. He was buried under an immovable load of frozen snow and was disastrously short on supplies. On April 21, four months after Courtauld began his solitary vigil, Gino Watkins set out inland with two companions to find and rescue him.
David Roberts, “veteran mountain climber and chronicler of adventures” (Washington Post), draws on firsthand accounts and archival materials to tell the story of this daring expedition and of the epic survival ordeal that ensued.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Climber Roberts (Alone on the Ice) recounts the story of "forgotten hero" Henry George "Gino" Watkins (1907–1932) and his 1930 Greenland expedition in this gripping narrative. The 23-year-old Englishman and his 13 teammates set sail in July with ambitions to survey Greenland's little-known east coast and interior, collect data on the ice cap, and chart an air route from western Europe to North America. But the expedition didn't go as planned: dangerous terrain, fierce storms, and temperatures below -50 degrees Fahrenheit derailed their efforts and threatened their lives. Roberts paints a vivid and suspenseful picture of the expedition as the team scrambled to rescue teammate August Courtauld, who was trapped alone at the weather station he manned with food stores running perilously low. Despite the mishaps, Roberts argues, Watkins's scheme was still "the most daring and fruitful British expedition to the Far North during the previous half-century," in large part due to Watkins's success at earning his team's unwavering loyalty, even through exceedingly arduous circumstances. Roberts knows how to tell a good story, and he draws on firsthand accounts from team members to depict their excursions in harrowing detail. Perfect for fans of adventure stories, this one hits all the marks.
Customer Reviews
Fantastic read
This is one of the best looks at a little known British Polar Explorer. Dave Roberts cuts through the stiff upper lip biographies of Gino Watkins from the past and paints a more well rounded view of a man who achieved a tremendous amount of success in a short period of time and with little resources