Apsley Cherry-Garrard · 1922 · survival

Apsley Cherry-Garrard's 1922 account of Scott's last expedition. The title refers not to the polar march but to a midwinter sledge journey to Cape Crozier for penguin eggs, made in perpetual darkness at temperatures below minus seventy. He came back from that one. The five men who went on to the Pole did not, and he was in the search party that found them.

1. 1
   Cape Evans

   The expedition hut at Cape Evans on Ross Island is the base for everything - the winter quarters where the science is done, the sledges are packed, and where those who come back come back to.

2. 2
   Cape Crozier

   In the midwinter dark, three men haul to Cape Crozier for emperor penguin eggs at seventy below, their teeth shattering with the cold and the tent blown away - five weeks that Cherry-Garrard called the worst journey in the world.

3. 3
   The Beardmore Glacier

   In the spring the polar march sets out across the Barrier and up the Beardmore Glacier, the supporting parties turning back one by one, until Scott takes five men on for the last stage instead of the four he had planned for.

4. 4
   The South Pole

   They reach the Pole in January 1912 to find Amundsen's tent and a note already there - beaten by a month, with eight hundred miles to walk back and the season closing behind them.

5. 5
   One Ton Depot

   They die on the Barrier eleven miles short of One Ton Depot, and the next spring the search party finds the tent, the diaries and the geological specimens they had hauled to the end - and builds a cairn over them.