Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration

Painting a realistic portrait of Aussie explorer Douglas Mawson and his arduous trek through some of the most treacherous icy Antarctic terrain, Roberts (The Mountain of Fear) gives the reader a very close look at the huge risks and preparations of the nearly impossible feat. The author fleshes out Mawson, the 30-year-old lecturer in mineralogy and petrology at the University of Adelaide in South Australia, earning his stripes during a hazardous 1907–1909 Shackleton expedition to the frigid continent. With a superb collection of Frank Hurley’s celebrated Antarctic photographs, Roberts parallels the courageous achievements of Mawson’s team on the 1911–1913 journey along the previously uncharted regions of the landscape with those of his acclaimed peers, Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen, battling the bitter cold, starvation, and peril to the limits of human endurance. Roberts sums up the dangers Mawson and his crew were up against: “No region on earth possesses deeper or more treacherous crevasses than Antarctica.” And what wreaks havoc with every team of explorers that tries to traverse its unforgiving wastes is the fact that crevasses there are not confined to the glaciers. Harrowing, exciting and brutally real, Roberts provides a chilling backstory to polar explorer Mawson’s bold solitary survival tale. (Jan.)