Antarctic Crossing

At a time when man was looking to the dawn of travel into space, one great journey of discovery was not yet completed on his own planet.

– From the narration

But you can’t be careful and quick. It was monotonous, back-breaking and agonisingly slow, but it was better to probe for 10 hours than to spend 20 digging out a [snow] cat.

– From the narration, on finding a route through crevasses

We are the embodiment of helpless futility and can only look impotently on...

– Frank Hurley marooned after their ship Endurance was trapped in pack ice, 1915

Wider, deeper and harder to detect [than any I’d encountered before].

– George Lowe’s assessment of the crevasses they faced on the expedition

Over the lip of the [Skelton] glacier and south, into the midnight sun and the teeth of the blizzards that sweep incessantly over the polar plateau.

– From the narration, on Hillary’s tractor progress

From the Ross Sea, three great travellers: Amundsen, Scott and Hillary has reached the South Pole. Now Fuchs had pioneered the way from the Weddell Sea: the unknown side.

– From the narration, on Hillary’s tractor progress

The signs were minute - an almost invisible crack winding its way across the hard surface - but investigation with the ice axe soon opened up a hole and we could look down into some vast cavernous tomb...

– Sir Edmund Hillary in his 1999 memoir View from the Summit, page 214