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Chargement... Into the Great Emptiness: Peril and Survival on the Greenland Ice Cap (2022)par David Roberts
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Henry George (Gino) Walker should be recognized among the great arctic explorers, this author asserts, if only he'd survived a tragic accident at 25. A mediocre student with a quest for adventure, it turned out he was an excellent and likable leader of expeditions into the heart of Greenland and established a manned station in Greenland for a year to track weather trends for potential flights to shorten the trip from the USA to Europe. Most of the book focuses on the fierce conditions of the expeditions, for the men manning the station, and efforts to relieve them in somewhat regular intervals--all close to impossible. This was an interesting study of some of the last true explorers (in early 1930s), and especially of an individual, Gino, with unique talents and mindset. ( ) Account of the life of a lesser-known explorer, Henry “Gino” Watkins, who, at age twenty-three in 1930, led a fourteen-month exploration of the Greenland ice cap. This book covers his life, including his early expeditions and a daring rescue of a teammate buried under the ice at a meteorological base. This major set piece is a gripping account. The author cites examples of Watkins’s leadership qualities. He also explains why he is not better known. It is well researched and well written. Recommended to fans of adventures or explorations in the extreme cold. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
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HTML: The riveting story of one of the greatest but least-known sagas in the history of exploration from David Roberts, the "dean of adventure writing" 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 ice cap, 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 negative fifty degrees 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 draws on firsthand accounts and archival materials to tell the story of this daring expedition and of the epic survival ordeal that ensued. .Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)919.8History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in Australasia, Pacific Ocean islands, Atlantic Ocean islands, Arctic islands, Antarctica and on extraterrestrial worlds Polar regionsClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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