To the End of the Earth
Our Epic Journey to the North Pole and the Legend of Peary and Henson
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
To the End of the Earth tells thrilling true adventure of a deadly trek to the North Pole, a 100 year old mystery and an inspiring tale of polar exploration
April 2009 is the one-hundredth anniversary of perhaps the greatest controversy in the history of exploration. Did U.S. Naval Commander Robert Peary and his team dogsled to the North Pole in thirty-seven days in 1909? Or, as has been challenged, was this speed impossible, and was he a cheat? In 2005, polar explorer Tom Avery and his team set out to recreate this 100-year-old journey, using the same equipment as Peary, to prove that Peary had indeed done what he had claimed and discovered the North Pole.
Navigating treacherous pressure ridges, deadly channels of open water, bitterly cold temperatures, and traveling in a similar style to Peary's with dog teams and replica wooden sledges bound together with cord, Avery tells the story of how his team covered 413 nautical miles to the North Pole in thirty-six days and twenty-two hours—some four hours faster than Peary. Weaving fascinating polar exploration history with thrilling extreme adventure, this is Avery's story of how he and his team nearly gave their lives proving Peary told the truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Epic journeys ain't what they used to be, to judge by this sparkling adventure saga. In recreating Robert E. Peary's storied (and disputed) 1909 trek to the Pole, explorer Avery, four human companions and 16 sled dogs had GPS systems, Internet uplinks, freeze-dried entr es and stand-by air transport; they avoided the death marches and cannibalism that grace Avery's recaps of past arctic expeditions and were greeted at the Pole by a Russian tour guide descending from a helicopter with champagne. Still, there's excitement aplenty in their crossing of what is literally an ocean storm frozen solid, hard as rock yet unstable as the sea. With their alternately heroic and mutinous dogs, Avery's team braves lethal cold, towering ice ridges and heart-stopping traversals of open water via flimsy ice pontoons. The author's chipper prose lacks Peary's ringing mixture of stoicism and bombast ("A few toes aren't much to give to achieve the Pole," he quotes the frost-bitten old trooper). But Avery offers a strong defense of Peary's achievements against critics who say he faked them and a captivating homage to a polar frontier that's melting into history. Photos.
