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Into the Great Emptiness

Peril and Survival on the Greenland Ice Cap

Audiobook
1 of 2 copies available
1 of 2 copies available

The riveting story of one of the greatest but least-known sagas in the history of exploration from David Roberts, the "dean of adventure writing"

By 1930, no place in the world was less well explored than Greenland. The native Inuit had occupied the relatively accessible west coast for centuries. The east coast, however, was another story. In August 1930, Henry George Watkins (nicknamed "Gino"), a twenty-three-year-old British explorer, led thirteen scientists and explorers on an ambitious expedition to the east coast of Greenland and into its vast and forbidding interior to set up a permanent meteorological base on the ice cap, 8,200 feet above sea level. The Ice Cap Station was to be the anchor of a transpolar route of air travel from Europe to North America.

The weather on the ice cap was appalling. Fierce storms. Temperatures plunging lower than negative fifty degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. Watkins's scheme called for rotating teams of two men each to monitor the station for two months at a time. No one had ever tried to winter over in that hostile landscape, let alone manage a weather station through twelve continuous months. Watkins was younger than anyone under his command, but he had several daring trips to the Arctic under his belt and no one doubted his judgement.

The first crisis came in the fall when a snowstorm stranded a resupply mission halfway to the top for many weeks. When they arrived at the ice cap, there were not enough provisions and fuel for another two-man shift, so the station would have to be abandoned. Then team member August Courtauld made an astonishing offer. To enable the mission to go forward, he would monitor the station solo through the winter. When a team went up in March to relieve Courtauld, after weeks of brutal effort to make the 130-mile journey, they could find no trace of him or the station. By the end of March, Courtauld's situation was desperate. He was buried under an immovable load of frozen snow and was disastrously short on supplies. On April 21, four months after Courtauld began his solitary vigil, Gino Watkins set out inland with two companions to find and rescue him.

David Roberts draws on firsthand accounts and archival materials to tell the story of this daring expedition and of the epic survival ordeal that ensued.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 16, 2022
      Climber Roberts (Alone on the Ice) recounts the story of “forgotten hero” Henry George “Gino” Watkins (1907–1932) and his 1930 Greenland expedition in this gripping narrative. The 23-year-old Englishman and his 13 teammates set sail in July with ambitions to survey Greenland’s little-known east coast and interior, collect data on the ice cap, and chart an air route from western Europe to North America. But the expedition didn’t go as planned: dangerous terrain, fierce storms, and temperatures below -50 degrees Fahrenheit derailed their efforts and threatened their lives. Roberts paints a vivid and suspenseful picture of the expedition as the team scrambled to rescue teammate August Courtauld, who was trapped alone at the weather station he manned with food stores running perilously low. Despite the mishaps, Roberts argues, Watkins’s scheme was still “the most daring and fruitful British expedition to the Far North during the previous half-century,” in large part due to Watkins’s success at earning his team’s unwavering loyalty, even through exceedingly arduous circumstances. Roberts knows how to tell a good story, and he draws on firsthand accounts from team members to depict their excursions in harrowing detail. Perfect for fans of adventure stories, this one hits all the marks.

    • Library Journal

      March 1, 2023

      The last published work of the late mountaineer and author Roberts (The Mountain of My Fear and Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative) examines the intriguing, abbreviated life and career of Arctic explorer Henry George "Gino" Watkins. During the winter of 1930-31, the 24-year-old Watkins led a team of similarly young expeditioners on a mission to survey and record weather conditions on the forbidding eastern coast of Greenland. Julian Elfer's narration balances the calm self-assurance Gino was known for with the hints of playful high spirits relayed by the men who chronicled their journey together. Elfer creates palpable tension as the winter weather closes in on the expedition, leaving Augustine Courtauld as the sole observer at the Ice Cap Station for months. Roberts draws heavily on the published books and contemporary diaries of the team members, giving a personal feel to both the description of the expedition and the evaluation of Watkins as a person and a leader. Listeners can judge Roberts's hypothesis that Watkins could have become a big name like Robert Falcon Scott or Ernest Shackleton had he not disappeared in 1932, presumed drowned among icy fjords at age 25. VERDICT Recommended for fans of Jon Krakauer or the Polar explorer biographies of Roland Huntford.--Natalie Marshall

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Julian Elfer gives voice to David Roberts in this posthumous publication by the legendary climber and adventure writer, who died in 2021. Roberts's account accompanies Gino Watkins's trek into the interior of Greenland in 1930, when this frozen land was even less well known than the earth's Poles. The remarkable but little-remembered English explorer explored the area with extraordinary leadership and bravery before disappearing on a return trip in 1932. While mainly focusing on Watkins and his team, the audio includes insightful information on Inuit culture as it relates to the expedition. Elfer's confident tone and British accent are appropriate to this story of suffering and stoicism, yet he still allows the author's dry wit to come through. D.B. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

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