On board was an international team of explorers led by Robert Falcon Scott, a man determined to be the first to reach the South Pole. A year and a half later, Scott and three members of his team died during a brutal blizzard. Their dream of reaching the Pole first had already been dashed by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, and now on their return trip--slowed by ill health and bad weather--Scott's party found themselves trapped in a tent without sufficient provisions, while the wind howled endlessly outside. Even in his final hours, Scott found the strength to continue the journal he'd started at the beginning of his adventures; the diary was found beside his frozen body.Scott's Last Expedition: The Journals is the explorer's detailed account of his time in Antarctica. The team's daily progress towards their final goal is recorded in Scott's vivid, personal narrative, as well as his impressions of the harsh conditions, the stark beauty of the tundra, and his own increasingly desperate ambition to beat his rivals to the Pole. Shortly before he died, Scott wrote: "Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman." Robert Falcon Scott and his men died, but their story lives on in his journals.

    The view 16-year-old Thomas Osborne first had of Muskoka was at night, trudging alone with his even younger brother along unmarked primitive roads to find their luckless father who, in 1875, had decided to make a new start for his beleaguered family on some "free land" in the bush east of the pioneer village of Huntsville, Ontario. The miracle is that Thomas lived to tell the tale.For the next five years Thomas endured starvation, falling through the ice and freezing, accidents with axes and boats, and narrow escapes from wolves and bears. Many years later, after returning to the United States, Osborne wrote down all his adventures in a graphic memoir that has become, in the words of author and journalist Roy MacGregor, "an undiscovered Canadian classic."Reluctant Pioneer provides a brooding sense of adventure and un- sentimental realism to deliver a powerful account of pioneer life where tragedies arrive as naturally as rain and where humour resides in irony.

    In an epic journey, he navigates some of the Earth’s toughest terrain, first travelling through the glittering landscape of Scandinavia, then on to the isolated islands of Iceland and Greenland, as far as the infamously treacherous Northwest Passage. His final frontier is Canada and Alaska, where his journey ends on the international dateline between the USA and Russia. His travels will form a major three-part series for ITV in autumn 2015.It’s a voyage that takes Alexander half way around the planet, experiencing many of its natural wonders and living alongside some of its more extraordinary people. Getting stuck in wherever he goes, he learns from the Marines how to survive wildly unpredictable weather and temperatures as low as minus 40°C, drives along a hair-raising 800-mile road that's a river in summer and takes a plunge in freezing Arctic waters. And that’s all before wrestling Viking-style with a sporting legend called Eva as part of a traditional Icelandic winter festival.Combining adventure and humour, Land of the Midnight Sun is an entertaining travelogue that takes readers on an exhilarating journey to this rarely seen corner of the world. It is an exploration of man's relationship with the harshest climates, set against the stunning backdrop of the Arctic landscape.

    As workers in one of the world's most dangerous - and lucrative - professions, the crewmen in Nights of Ice face a constant onslaught of roaring waves, stories-high swells, and life-stealing ice. Within seconds, a vessel such as the forty-ton Tidings can fill with icy water and slip into the depths, hurling crewmen into the freezing ocean and entombing the skipper inside its sinking hull. A ship like the Mia Dawn can run aground on a piece of submerged rock and immediately ice over, sinking steadily as her crew, battered by hypothermia and ninety-mph winds, assembles a life raft to await helicopter rescue by the U.S. Coast Guard. Tested by the elements, ravaged by their own emotions, the seamen in these extraordinary stories battle both fear and the violent unpredictability of nature. As Spike Walker's deft narration reveals, they do so with courage, instinct, and an unrelenting will to survive.

    A comprehensive guide to preparing for and hiking the Appalachian Trail

    This extraordinary classic has been variously acclaimed as one of the great books of adventure, travel, anthropology, and spiritual awakening. In the summer of 1938, the Frenchman Gontran de Poncins traveled beyond the "Barren Lands" north of the Arctic Circle to Kind William Island, an island of ten thousand square miles. The entire population of the island consisted of twenty-five Eskimos, their primitive lives untouched by the civilization of the white man. For fifteen months Gontran de Poncins lived among the Inuit people of the Arctic. He is at first appalled by their way of life: eating rotten raw fish, sleeping with each others' wives, ignoring schedules, and helping themselves to his possessions. But as de Poncins's odyssey continues, he is transformed from Kabloona, The White Man, an uncomprehending outsider, to someone who finds himself living, for a few short months, as Inuk: a man, preeminently.

    

    These compelling profiles of 22 adventurous¿yet unlucky¿climbers chronicle more than a century of exploration, recreation, and tragedy in New Hampshire¿s Presidential Range.

    Plagued by doubts and cold, group tension and a crevasse tragedy, the expedition tackled McKinley in minimal hours of daylight and fierce storms. They were trapped at three different camps above 14,000 feet during a six-day blizzard and faced the ultimate low temperature of 148 F.Minus 148 is Art Davidson's stunning personal narrative, supplemented by diary excerpts from team members George Wichman, John Edwards, Dave Johnston, and Greg Blomberg. Davidson retells the team's fears and frictions and ultimate triumph with an honesty that has made this gripping survival story a mountaineering classic for over 40 years.

    Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs — these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek — from Florida's Fountain of Youth to Plymouth's sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges, Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.

    He also ventures to find a Caspian tiger in Turkey and giant centipedes in the Congo. Cahill is one of the last great intrepid journalists, and his thirty wildly entertaining essays display sparkling wit and unstinting curiosity. When not on the move, he debunks hoary notions of the kindness of dolphins and ruminates on religion, death and the perplexing phenomenon of yoga. Charming, incisive and absolutely fearless, Cahill is the perfect travel companion.

    Despite having only a third-grade education, Slocum rose through the nautical ranks at a mercurial pace; just a decade later he was commander of his own ship. His subsequent journeys took him nearly everywhere: Liverpool, China, Japan, Cape Horn, the Dutch East Indies, Manila, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, San Francisco, and Australia—where he met and married his first wife, Virginia, who would sail along with him for the rest of her life, bearing and raising their children at sea. He commanded eight vessels and owned four, enduring hurricanes, shipwrecks, pirate attacks, cholera, smallpox, a mutiny, and the death of his wife and three of his children. Yet his ultimate adventure and crowning glory was still to come.In 1895 Slocum set sail from Gloucester, Massachusetts—by himself—in the Spray, a small sloop of thirty-seven feet. More than three years and forty-six thousand miles later, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo, a feat that wouldn’t be replicated until 1925. His account of that voyage, Sailing Alone Around the World, soon made him internationally famous. He met President Theodore Roosevelt on several occasions and became a presence on the lecture circuit, selling his sea-saga books whenever and wherever he could. But scandal soon followed, and a decade later, with his finances failing, he set off alone once more—and was never seen again.Geoffrey Wolff captures this singular life and its flamboyant times—from the Golden Age of Sail to a shockingly different new century—in vivid, fascinating detail.

    A brilliant story chronicling the unsung heroes of North American history.

    The book also explores aspects of the wreck today and salvage operations.Although the main events of the Titanic disaster are well known, significant facts and tidbits remain obscure. Who were the thousands of men who built the giant ship? How were the bodies of the victims collected and buried? What were the conclusions of the investigative hearings into her sinking? Answers to these and hundreds of other questions are presented in this useful, easy-to-read volume.Lee W. Merideth is the author of several Civil War reference books and a longtime Titanic buff. He lives in northern California.

    Several explorers attempted to find a route to the North Pole, but none succeeded. Bound by Ice follows the journey of George Washington De Long and the crew of the USSJeannette, who departed San Francisco in the summer of 1879 hoping to find a route to the North Pole. However, in mid-September the ship became locked in ice north of Siberia and drifted for nearly two years before it was crushed by ice and sank. De Long and his men escaped the ship and began a treacherous journey in extreme polar conditions in an attempt to reach civilization. Many--including De Long--did not survive. A riveting true-life adventure, Bound by Ice includes excerpts from De Long's extensive journals, which were recovered with his body; newspapers from the time; and photos and sketches by the men on the expedition. The title also includes an epilogue, author's note, bibliography, source notes, and index.