Alone and on Foot in Antarctica

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2018

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Henry Worsley was a husband, father, and an officer of an élite British commando unit; also a tapestry weaver, amateur boxer, photographer, and collector of rare books, maps, and fossils. But his true obsession was exploration. Worsley revered the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and he had led a 2009 expedition to the South Pole. But Worsley planned an even greater challenge. At fifty-five, he set out to trek alone to ski from one side of the Antarctic continent to the other, hauling more than three hundred pounds of gear and posting an audio diary by satellite phone. The New Yorker staff writer David Grann wrote about Worsley’s quest, and spoke with his widow, Joanna Worsley, about the painful choice she made to support her husband in a mortally dangerous endeavor.

Transcript

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0:00.0	These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent.
0:09.0	I think it's interesting to really try to unravel what his ties.
0:13.0	There's this sort of country city divide for their own convenient, and then it's not clear where it goes next.
0:20.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production
0:24.6	of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:29.6	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:32.6	Good evening. So, on the way at last, about 100 miles from the Antarctic landmass.
0:40.5	In 2015, a British Army veteran named Henry Worsley set out to become the first person to cross Antarctica on foot, alone and unaided.
0:50.7	3.9, 4 north of miles over over 3.5 hours travel was bleeding.
0:58.5	Having great spirits.
0:59.8	It's so wonderful to be back on the snow, heading south.
1:04.4	Good night.
1:05.9	Worsley went on skis, pulling a sled loaded with more than 300 pounds of equipment,
1:10.5	and he would pass the
1:11.9	South Pole and then continue on to the other side of Antarctica.
1:17.4	Well, pilot journeys are all about how fit and strong your mind and will are.
1:23.6	Hours in the gym cannot prepare you for that moment.
1:32.2	And the sign of the airplane that has just dropped you off at your starboard fades.
1:38.5	Or from then on, this beguiling continent will strip you bear.
1:45.1	It was about as difficult a journey as a human being could voluntarily undertake.
1:50.4	Staff writer David Gran brings us the story of Henry Worsley.
2:03.1	Henry had been to the South Pole twice before, but this would be his first solo expedition,
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