Every wintertime , gelid vortexesmake headline by causing blisteringly stale temperatures — so frigid , you often get a line people say , that some surface area time temperature cold than Antarctica . But that fact can be somewhat deceptive : It’ssummerin Antarctica from October to February . In the winter ( when there is 24 - minute dark for weeks ) , temperatures there canplungeto an average of -76 ° C ( nigh -105 ° F ) , a fact that twentieth century Internet Explorer Apsley Cherry - Garrard learned firsthand in 1911 , when , during a scientific mission on the continent , histeeth shatteredfrom the chill .
“A New and Bold Venture”
Cherry - Garrard was the assistant zoologist of the Terra Nova Expedition , which journey to Antarctica in 1910 and was lead by Robert Falcon Scott . Among the military expedition ’s goals were to pass the South Pole ( an aim Scott would give-up the ghost endeavor to reach ) and to regain emperor penguin ballock , which some scientists believed wouldprovethe possibility of recap — that an embryo of a creature will take the physique of its ascendent as it developed . Terra Nova ’s zoologist , Edward Wilson , was hop to use the eggs to find proof of a link between Bronx cheer and dinosaurs .
To get the evidence would postulate a more than 62 - mile journey , from the expeditiousness ’s camp on Cape Evans to the penguin nesting ground on Cape Crozier , in the punishing south-polar wintertime with nothing but the moon to fire up their way . A stumble of its kind had never before been undertaken .
“ This wintertime travel is a new and bold speculation , ” Scott spell , “ but the veracious man have gone to attempt it . ”
Cherry - Garrard would later nickname it “ the worst journey in the world . ”
“Any One Would Be A Fool Who Went Again”
emperor butterfly penguins nest in the wintertime , allowing their bird to concoct in the outflow to give them the most time to develop the feathers they need to survive Antarctica ’s chill . As Cherry - Garrard observe later , “ The emperor penguin is oblige to undertake all kinds of hardships because his children importune on develop so slowly . ”
Wilson and Cherry - Garrard , with fellow adventurer Henry “ Birdie ” Bowers , set off for Cape Crozier on June 27 , 1911 . It took 19 twenty-four hours to reach the cape . “ The horror of the 19 day it took us to trip from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier would have to be re - experient to be appreciated , ” Cherry - Garrard laterwrote , “ and any one would be a tomfool who croak again : it is not potential to describe it . … I for one had come to that point of hurt at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain . ”
They got perhaps four hour of quietus a Nox ; as they trudged through C. P. Snow and violent storm and tug their sledge out of crevasses , they breathe and sweated , which then freeze on their clothes or their sleeping bags . The temperatures were so cold that at the beginning of their solar day their clothes would freeze into position after leaving the comparatively warm tent : “ Once outside , I raised my head to look around and found I could not move it back , ” Cherry - Garrard recall . “ My clothing had freeze hard as I stood — perhaps 15 moment . For four hour I had to pull with my brain stuck up , and from that time we all take care to turn away down into a pulling positioning before being frozen in . ”
The explorers recover five eggs from the dependency — two of which cracked on the way back to the coterie on the competently titledMount Terror — and wasted no time in turn back around . Cherry - Garrard would afterwards write that “ The horror of that return journey are blurred to my storage and I know they were blurred to my torso at the time . ” He tell lie down in dormancy bags “ shaking with frigidness until our back would almost break . ”
During a pause in one mid - day Mar , he recall , “ We remain firm panting with our backs against the cragged mass of frozen gear which was our load . There was no wind , at any charge per unit no more than light airs : our breath crackled as it froze . There was no unneeded conversation : I do n’t know why our tongues never got freeze down , but all my tooth , the nerves of which had been killed , separate to pieces . ”
“The Worst Journey in the World”
Cherry - Garrard and his companions finally made it back to Cape Evans five weeks after they had initially diverge . Scottwrotethat “ They appear more weather - assume than anyone I have yet seen … Cherry - Garrard is slightly tumid in the cheek and still look worn . It is unmistakable that he has suffered most gravely — but Wilson tell apart me that his feel never wavered for a present moment . ”
They had contend to bring back three eggs , each encase in alcohol with a little window cut into the shell to reveal the embryo inside . The eggs are now in the collection of theNatural History Museum at Tring .
Bowers and Wilson would later go on a summer journeying to the South Pole with Scott , Edgar Evans , and Lawrence Oates . When they turn over the Pole , they discovered that Norwegian explorerRoald Amundsenhad ticktack them to it . All five workforce would die endeavor to get back to Cape Evans .
Cherry - Garrard would ultimately come through his trip to Antarctica , though it leave its mark — both physical and mental — on him . He would go on to write an account of the expedition titledThe unsound Journey in the World , after the winter journey .
“ Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most stranded way of having a bad sentence which has been devised , ” he wrote in its introduction . “ It is the only form of escapade in which you put on your apparel at Michaelmas and keep them on until Christmas , and , save for a layer of the raw soil of the physical structure , come up them as clean as though they were new . It is more solitary than London , more secluded than any monastery , and the postal service comes but once a twelvemonth . … Take it all in all , I do not consider anybody on Earth has a worse time than an emperor penguin . ”
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A edition of this story operate in 2019 ; it has been update for 2024 .
