Original subtitles

Glory awaits Explorers Club members Robert Peary and Matthew Henson

at the top of the world.

But so did the extreme dangers of the Arctic.

Decades later, Naomi Uemura attempts to reach the North Pole solo...

[animal growling]

...before something wild ends his expedition and his life.

And fate puts the dreams of Ernest Shackleton on ice,

but ignites one of history's greatest tales of survival.

At Earth's frigid poles, human endurance is stretched to its absolute limit.

Welcome to the world famous Explorers Club.

For over 100 years,

this has been a gathering place for trailblazers.

The people who dare to venture higher...

...further...

...and faster.

As a member of this exclusive club,

I'm bringing one-of-a-kind access to its archives...

This is incredible!

...artifacts...

Oh, my word!

...and, my fellow explorers.

This is actual lunar dust.

Unbelievable.

The expeditions planned here have tested the boundaries of human possibility.

Its flag has flown on death-defying voyages into the unknown

that forever changed our world.

These are the greatest adventurers of all time.

These are...

...Tales From The Explorers Club.

120 years ago,

Earth had no greater undiscovered prize than the North Pole.

For centuries, the Arctic's deadly cold and gauntlet of ice

made it impossible to reach.

Hundreds had died trying.

Whoever finally planted a flag there

would have to be an insanely driven individual with a colossal ego.

A navy engineer named Robert Peary was one such man.

This portrait of Peary was painted

on an actual deck piece from the S.S. Roosevelt,

the ship he used on his way to becoming an Explorers Club legend.

His tale is one of obsession, courage, sacrifice, and enduring controversy.

The object of Peary's obsession isn't a piece of land,

but the point in the Arctic Ocean

where Earth's axis meets its surface.

The North Pole's latitude is 90 degrees north.

All lines of longitude meet there,

and every direction one turns is south.

Vast ice sheets cover the Arctic,

and the temperature at the Pole can plunge to 65 degrees below zero.

In the quest for firsthand knowledge at the Explorers Club,

sometimes you have to go straight to the top.

Here, even the club president takes on

some of the most inhospitable places on the planet.

Richard Garriott has been to both Poles.

The crazy cold might lead you to believe that the Arctic ice is thick, hard, and smooth,

but Garriott knows from experience

the true hazards of Arctic ice.

That entire ocean of ice is subjected to the currents

that are moving the water underneath it,

as well as the wind pushing around on top.

And the pressure is pushing these giant ridges

up these tumbled and broken chunks of ice.

And, these often are 20, 30, 40 feet tall walls.

Big walls, and often in, uh, groups.

They're huge.

You know, as tall as four-story buildings.

So, these are major obstacles that have to be overcome.

[Josh] Pressure ridges cover 25 percent of the Arctic's icy surface.

But another natural pitfall is even more daunting.

Linear cracks in the ice called leads.

They form when ice sheets diverge or splinter,

leaving channels of water ranging in width from a few feet to a mile.

One misstep into these frigid waters,

and you'll be facing certain death within minutes.

In 1886, 30 year old Robert Peary

is eager to take on these Arctic hazards,

believing destiny has chosen him to be the first to conquer the North Pole.

That year, he goes to Greenland

on a warm-up mission, practicing in Arctic conditions

to determine the best techniques for his polar assault.

He returns to America with a horde of animal pelts, looking for a buyer.

Tell the owner I have three crates of these pelts.

[Josh] In the shop of a Baltimore furrier,

he finds someone even better.

Excellent quality, sir.

Where'd you bag 'em?

-Disko Bay. -Greenland? Did you visit Nuuk?

You've been to Greenland?

No, to my regret.

I just sailed nearby.

[Josh] Though he's only 20, the store's clerk Matthew Henson

has an adventurer's resume.

He's spent all his teenage years at sea,

traveling from China to North Africa to the Black Sea.

In him, Peary finds the ideal ally

who shares his compulsion to push exploration's limits.

I could use a personal assistant, if you're interested.

[Josh] This chance encounter is the beginning of a 23 year partnership,

that will lead both men to the top of the world.

Over the next two decades, Peary and Henson

will mount six expeditions to the Arctic.

Yet, each time, be repulsed short of the Pole.

Even so, they make history.

They discover the northern coast of Greenland, confirming it's an island,

recover three giant meteorites,

and come within 174 miles of the Pole,

closer than any other explorers to that time.

July 6th, 1908 marks the beginning of assault number seven.

Peary, Henson, and the rest of their team

sail from New York harbor aboard a state of the art icebreaker, theRoosevelt.

The same ship from which a piece of decking hangs on the Explorer Club walls.

It has a powerful steam engine,

generating 1,000 horsepower, and a wooden hull nearly three feet thick.

The design enables the ship to plow through ice instead of being crushed by it.

TheRoosevelt steams north, breaking a path toward the Pole

off the western coast of Greenland.

After a two month voyage, it reaches one of the closest points of land

to the North Pole, Cape Sheridan, on Canada's Ellesmere Island.

The Pole is 520 miles away.

Dozens of the Arctic's indigenous people, the Inuit,

help Peary prepare for a spring assault on the Pole.

Many will accompany him on the expedition.

Now 52, Peary has paid a high price for his obsession,

losing eight toes to frostbite.

This is his final shot at immortality.

He will either conquer the Pole, or die trying.

Many explorers of this time didn't lose just toes or legs,

but often crewmembers or lost the entire crew in these expeditions.

Right, these guys are really willing to risk everything for these goals.

That's exactly right, and Peary was chief among them.

The risks he was facing, literally losing body parts along the way,

-[Josh] Yeah. -Uh, you know, I'm not sure I would have the fortitude

to turn right around and go back.

[Josh] Over the years, Peary and Henson have adopted the Inuit's survival skills.

From the fur suits they wear, to the dog sledges they use to travel.

Henson not only builds the sledges the team leaders will drive,

but also teaches the less experienced

how to handle the huskies hauling them.

Henson may be one of the most interesting accomplished people

that hasn't fully gotten his due, I think.

Yeah, you know, in fact, one of the things

I'm really proud of at the Explorers Club

is we were actually one of the first international organizations

to really recognize that he was, you know,

somebody who should be seen, really, side by side with Peary...

-Right. -...on this incredible adventure.

[Josh] Peary realizes his best chance at success will come

if he fully utilizes his team.

To pave the way for his hopeful march to the Pole,

he's devised an inventive supply chain system for traversing the ice.

Fine work, my friend. Fine work.

-Thank you, sir. -Carry on.

[Josh] He will divide his team of 26 men and 133 dogs into six groups.

Five of the units will work to make the travel easier for the sixth.

The five teams will move out first, establishing the route.

At regular intervals, they'll build igloos and set up supply depots.

One by one, they'll return to the expedition's starting point.

Then, the sixth team, led by Peary and Henson,

will take advantage of the pre-stock checkpoints

without the need to carry excessive supplies.

Peary's first team begins their trek on February 28th, 1909.

The temperature when Peary and Henson set out

was a bone-chilling 50 degrees below zero.

Brandy in a bottle under Peary's deerskin coat froze solid.

Hate when that happens.

And on day one, that was just the start of Peary's headaches.

The reason is those pesky pressure ridges I mentioned earlier.

The only solution is to push the heavy sledges over them, a laborious chore.

But the delay is nothing compared to what lies ahead on day four.

An enormous lead has stopped all of Peary's teams dead in their tracks.

The water is a quarter mile wide,

and extends east and west as far as they can see.

Damn!

It's gonna take weeks for it to freeze over.

If we're lucky.

[Josh] No explorer likes playing the waiting game,

and few tortures are worse than playing it in the Arctic.

Two days pass,

then three...

...four, five.

Among the many things Peary's team members do to survive

is eat every explorer's go-to source of protein...

...pemmican.

Ever heard of pemmican?

It is a greasy mixture of rendered fat, dried meat, and berries

that lasts for decades and can provide

life-saving nutrition to explorers in the Arctic.

Now, luckily, the Explorers Club here

has a world-class kitchen, and I'm told that Chef Bill here

makes a pemmican recipe that's to die for.

Absolutely, Josh.

Does that mean it's gonna kill me?

Probably won't kill you.

Why don't you try some?

Okay. I notice you're not eating any.

-I had some before, and I feel fine. -Sure.

Sure, here we go. All right, pemmican.

-I gotta say... -Pretty good?

-It's pretty great. -All it is is beef and blueberries.

I mean, it tastes like I'm eating a... a sweet steak.

It's definitely fatty, but pretty sweet.

Pretty delicious.

You can have all of it.

Pemmican, who knew?

-Pretty great. Thank you, Josh. -Bill... amazing job.

-Thank you so much. -Thank you.

[Josh] After a one week delay on the Arctic's precarious ice,

the pemmican and Peary's patience are nearly exhausted.

But the barrier of water has finally frozen sufficiently

to allow the expedition to cross.

Advance!

[Josh] Over the next three weeks, the group makes steady progress.

And one by one, as planned, the five trailblazing teams retreat.

This leaves the Pole assault team,

Peary, Henson and four Inuit hunters 133 miles from the North Pole.

As Peary continues, his hunger for glory intensifies.

The farther north he pushes, the more possessed he becomes,

urging his team to quicken their pace.

Matthew Henson also senses that history is calling.

But this is the Arctic, where a man's fate is always on thin ice.

[Henson screaming]

[Josh] Glory may be near,

but Henson would trade it in a heartbeat for one helping hand.

[Henson grunting]

In 1909, Commander Robert Peary and his right hand man

Matthew Henson were just shy of the North Pole when a crisis struck.

[ice cracking]

[Henson grunting]

[Josh] Henson plunged through the Arctic ice,

and was fighting for his life.

On his flailing hands were sealskin mittens.

These mittens.

The fact that they are right here nearly a century later

is absolutely mind-boggling.

They are one of the club's most prized artifacts,

a tangible piece of exploration history.

And the reason they survived is because when Henson fell through that ice

and reached out for help, help was there.

Henson's rescuer is Ootah, one of the four Inuit hunters

hand-picked for the assault on the Pole.

Over the past two decades, Henson has established

a close relation with the Inuit.

And on this day, he reaps its benefits.

After Henson's close call, the dash to the Pole resumes.

On April 2nd, the six men pulled by 40 dogs

race an average of 26 miles per day.

Explorers Club archivist Lacey Flint tells me

she's got a special surprise in store that will help

better understand how Peary and his team accomplished such a feat.

Okay, so? What is it?

You're never gonna believe this.

We have the sledge that Henson and Peary took to the North Pole.

Their actual sledge?

[Lacey] Actual sledge.

Where is it?

Ah! Unbelievable, look at that!

-[Lacey] A floating sledge! -Can we bring it down?

Josh, it's 113 years old!

-Is that a no? -Hard no, we're going up.

-We're going up? -Get the ladders.

We're goin' up.

A closer look at Peary's sledge reveals a simple, but ingenious design.

Lacey, I can't help but notice a slight disparity in our ladder sizes here.

You know what, Josh? I am shorter than you.

So we had to even the scales.

[Josh] Yeah, not anymore.

First of all, for folks who don't know,

what's the difference between a sled and a sledge?

So, quite simply, it's the size.

-A sledge is bigger. -[Josh] Sledge is bigger.

What is it about the sledge that makes it the go-to vehicle for Arctic travel?

Because this is the sledge that got them to the North Pole, right?

That's right, yeah. It's this sledge in particular.

So, it's the runners, quite frankly.

And it's this new design.

The original runners on their sledges from earlier attempts,

-much more narrow, much thinner, right? -[Josh] Okay.

This sledge, with the runners you'll notice...

-Much wider. Yeah. -[Lacey] Wider, right?

Uh, and they're curved on both ends,

which means very importantly, you can go forwards and backwards.

-Otherwise you couldn't... it would totally get stuck... -[Josh] Got it.

[Lacey] ...when you're in the back up.

-So, this is the equivalent of a reverse gear. -[Lacey] Absolutely.

The other thing that's really important to note

is the actual platform, or plinth.

So, earlier sledges had one sort of singular platform

-for the cargo, for the things they were carrying. -Okay.

This, you'll notice...

-...has these slatted runners, right? -[Josh] Right.

[Lacey] The difference there is that they're bound together with sealskin leather.

[Josh] All of this is sealskin?

[Lacey] All of it is sealskin.

-[Josh] Amazing. -And at the time, it would've been really malleable,

-which means you have a built-in shock system... -[Josh] Uh-huh.

...essentially, to navigate those uneven ice floes.

This sledge can carry how much weight?

[Lacey] Up to 600 pounds, and it'd be pulled by up to eight sled dogs,

but the other important thing to note about this sledge

is it could also be manned and driven by just one person if it needed to be.

Wow, so really versatile.

Absolutely, this was cutting edge technology.

Awesome.

Along the way, Peary determines their location

using a sextant, which calculates latitude and longitude,

by measuring the angle between the sun and the horizon.

On April 6th, Peary and Henson both suspect

their party is close to the Pole,

but the sun is obscured by mist.

Peary cannot get an accurate reading.

He orders the group to construct their igloos

and retire for some much-needed sleep.

At noon the following day, the mist lifts,

and Peary is finally able to determine their location.

We're here.

[chuckles]

[excitedly] Get me Henson!

[Josh] On April 6th, 1909, Peary claims the North Pole is conquered.

He commemorates his life's crowning achievement on film.

You'd think that this moment of triumph caps off the story,

but history is rarely that neat.

Controversy hounds Peary when Matthew Henson offers the press a version of events

conflicting with his own.

Henson claims that he, not Peary,

had arrived at the Pole first while scouting a trail.

I mean, Peary must just have been furious.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

This is his seventh attempt at this.

-And yes, they're on the same team. -Yeah.

But clearly, this guy... Peary is the kind of guy

-who... wants this glory. -[Richard] Yeah.

Absolutely. This has been his life's passion for a long time.

And these two guys who have been, like,

brothers on these expeditions for 23 years.

What happens to them in the wake of this?

Well, this is basically the end of their relationship.

-I mean, Peary basically never talks to Henson again. -[Josh] Wow.

It's... He's that wounded?

Yeah, completely.

And one final layer to this intrigue...

There's a possibility that neither of them made it, right?

[Richard] Oh, absolutely true.

People who have gone back to try to reconcile the data from their expedition

about how far they traveled and what their sightings

were to determine their location...

...a lot of people believe they actually

didn't quite make it to the North Pole at all.

[Josh] Among Peary's supporters and his doubters,

there is one point of agreement.

That for decades, history neglected Matthew Henson's role

in Peary's polar exploits.

In 1937, the Explorers Club recognizes his achievements,

making him the first African American member inducted into the club.

Like North Pole explorers before and after them,

Peary and Henson faced frigid temperatures,

howling winds, unpredictable ice, and deadly waters.

But what they and their Inuit partners could always count on

throughout the journey was each other.

Then, in 1978, one Explorers Club member

decided to take the ultimate trip north to an insane new level,

by going solo.

But, as Naomi Uemura would quickly find out,

just because you're by yourself,

doesn't mean you're always alone.

The date is March 9th, 1978.

37 year old Naomi Uemura is four days

into his solo trek across the Arctic ice.

Like Peary, he travels by dog sledge.

Five foot three and 130 pounds,

Uemura says he became an explorer to cure an inferiority complex.

Nearly everywhere he goes, he goes alone...

...including the summits of Mont Blanc,

Mount Kilimanjaro, and Denali.

The journey so far has been arduous.

He looks forward to a good night's sleep.

[dogs barking]

[dogs howling]

[Josh] But at dawn, Uemura hears the last thing

a man alone in the Arctic wants to hear.

[dogs barking in background]

There are an estimated 20,000 polar bears

There are an estimated 20,000 polar bears in the Arctic in 1978.

One of them is just a few feet outside Uemura's tent,

devouring his supply of frozen seal and whale blubber.

Uemura fears it's only a matter of seconds

before the bear sniffs out fresher meat.

[polar bear roars]

[Josh] If so, his solo North Pole trek will come to a grizzly end

on only its fourth day.

[polar bear growls]

In 1978, Explorers Club member Naomi Uemura

was trying to do what no explorer had done before,

complete a solo journey to the North Pole.

Early on, a hungry polar bear threatened to take a bite out of that dream.

Now, taxidermied specimens like this

are no longer accepted by The Explorers Club,

but they remain as valuable educational tools from conservations past.

Calling the fight unfair is an understatement.

Uemura weighed 130 pounds.

A polar bear can weigh up to 1,300.

This is one of those moments when the only tools of survival

are guts, ingenuity and a little luck.

[polar bear roaring]

[dogs yelping]

[dogs barking]

[polar bear roars]

[roaring continues]

[polar bear sniffing]

[polar bear roars]

[Josh] If he goes for his gun, the bear will tear him apart before he can fire.

If he runs, he's easy prey on the ice.

Uemura's only chance is to remain perfectly still.

[polar bear roaring]

[Josh] This is the stuff an explorer's nightmares are made of.

After this way-too-close encounter,

for reasons known only to the polar bear, it retreats.

[sighs in relief]

[Josh] A day later, the bear reappears,

but this time, Uemura is ready.

-[rifle fires] -[polar bear roars]

[Josh] He feeds it to his hungry huskies.

The life of a solo explorer is perilous,

but for Uemura, the rewards outweigh the risks.

In 1971, two climbing adventures in the Alps and on Mount Everest

soured him on group expeditions.

He enjoyed the camaraderie, but inefficiency and infighting

caused both to unravel.

The more Uemura ventures out alone,

the more he realizes he thrives on self-reliance.

Seeking the ultimate solo trek,

he turns his focus to the North Pole.

Like Peary, he sets out from Ellesmere Island in Canada, 500 miles away.

His loaded dog sledge weighs 882 pounds

and carries a battery-driven beacon,

sending a tracking signal to a support team.

GPS as we know it is years away,

so the transmissions are picked up

by a weather satellite passing over the Pole,

then relayed to Uemura's team from a NASA tracking station in Alaska.

This allows the team to coordinate a series of air drops

to keep Uemura supplied.

He packs a 35-milimeter camera,

which he uses to take selfies the old-fashioned way...

with a tripod and a timer.

Like Peary and Henson, he must navigate his sledge

through a gauntlet of pressure ridges,

but unlike them, since he's alone,

he doesn't have the muscle to climb over the tallest ridges,

which soar as high as 30 feet.

So instead of going over the ice, he burrows through it.

An exhausting and time-consuming chore,

adding two weeks to his journey.

Beyond the pressure ridges, Uemura makes swift progress.

But on day 35 of his expedition,

he learns that the Arctic's flat expanses of ice

hold a different kind of peril.

Uemura realizes he's floating on an island of ice

just a few hundred feet across, that has broken free from the main ice sheet.

[ice creaking]

[Josh] Like Peary and Henson 70 years earlier, all he can do is wait.

But this time around, fate isn't so patient.

[ice cracking]

[ice cracking]

Uemura's tiny island is breaking apart right under his feet.

He had no time to think, just act.

And so, as Uemura rushed to his dog sledge,

he noticed that a drifting chunk of ice

had wedged itself between his disintegrating island and the main ice sheet.

It formed a tenuous bridge about three-feet wide.

He raced his dogs over it to safety.

Uemura must have felt at home in the Arctic

because he had ice in his veins.

Like Peary in 1909, Uemura sets a scorching pace

in his journey's final phase.

He travels 25 miles in one day, 37 in another.

The date is now April 29th, 1978.

Uemura takes the last of many sextant readings to confirm his location.

At last, he is sure.

After 57 harrowing days...

he's at the top of the world.

[laughs happily]

[Josh] The first man to reach the North Pole alone across the frozen Arctic.

-[laughing] -[Josh] In celebration,

he gets busy doing what any elated explorer does at a moment like this...

hoisting the flags of the nations that lent their support.

Something Uemura has kept close to himself on his entire journey

is another type of flag, not tied to a sovereign nation.

Explorers Club Flag number 193.

The Explorers Club Flag is only reserved for select expeditions.

Only a small percentage are granted one.

Six years later, the perils of Uemura's daring type of exploration

catch up with him.

On his 43rd birthday, he completes the first solo winter ascent

of Mount McKinley, now known as Denali.

During his descent, he vanishes without a trace.

He dies as he loved to explore...

alone.

A change in poles means a change in wildlife.

So we transition from the towering polar bear to the mighty penguin.

And while the penguin may seem friendlier than the bear,

as we'll see, the dangers of the Antarctic are just as lethal.

And just as Naomi Uemura and Robert Peary

couldn't resist the allure of the North Pole,

other explorers were obsessed with conquering its twin to the south.

Explorers Club member Roald Amundsen won the race to the South Pole in 1911.

This photo was taken a year later.

That's Amundsen on the left, standing next to Robert Peary.

The two polar champions.

Notice that the globe is angled

so the poles they conquered are facing each of them.

But it's the Explorers Club member in the middle who really intrigues me...

a British adventurer who lost out to Amundsen...

and it turns out failure is a powerful motivator.

He vowed to compensate for his defeat

with a wildly monumental achievement.

Fate had different plans, but it couldn't stop Ernest Shackleton

from becoming a legend.

The place is South Georgia Island in the Atlantic Ocean...

1,200 miles east of the lower tip of South America.

Few locations on Earth are more isolated.

Ernest Shackleton and his two companions

have long been given up for dead.

The last anyone saw of them, and 25 others, was 17 months ago.

They had been hopelessly trapped in an ice flow,

lost at sea and have traversed inhospitable frigid terrain.

But if they don't find help now,

their journey will come to an end for good.

The story Ernest Shackleton had to tell

when he stumbled into an island whaling outpost

was unlike any in the history of exploration.

It started in 1914, when he put an ad in a British newspaper

that sounds a lot like a job posting for one of my shows.

[Josh reading]

"Honor and recognition in case of success."

That last part doesn't sound like me, but the rest of it...

Amazingly, 27 men responded. Shackleton had his team.

The ad, of course, didn't specify the expedition's objective,

which was ambitious to the point of insanity.

Shackleton's plan is to outdo Amundsen's conquest of the South Pole.

His team will sail from England to Antarctica,

travel by dog sledge to the Pole,

then continue to the opposite coast over unmapped territory.

The total transcontinental crossing is 1,800 miles,

un unprecedented Antarctic journey.

On August 1st, 1914, Shackleton and his team set sail aboard the Endurance,

named after his family's motto, "By endurance, we conquer."

Three months later, they drop anchor for provisions

at South Georgia, the same island

where Shackleton will find himself desperate and starving

a year and a half later.

He could have avoided that fate if he'd heeded the warning

of South Georgia's whalers.

They told him the ice surrounding Antarctica that season

was worse than they'd ever seen it and cautioned him not to go...

but he sailed on.

With every mile, the Endurance advanced slower and slower,

then came to a screeching halt 93 miles from the Antarctic mainland.

For the next 10 months, the Endurance drifts slowly north.

Shackleton bolsters his men's morale by organizing everything from sing-alongs

to soccer matches.

[men's voices chattering]

Frank Worsley, the Endurance's captain,

said that Shackleton had a genius for keeping his men in high spirits.

Worsley said he loved Shackleton like a brother.

The crew affectionately called him "the Boss."

In October, the Boss and his men face a new crisis,

when rising temperatures fracture the ice encasing the ship.

Its timbers groan and snap from the strain...

forcing Shackleton to order the Endurance abandoned.

A month later, she sinks.

Shackleton and his men are now shipless and drifting.

As April approaches, food isn't the only thing rapidly vanishing.

So is the ice beneath their feet.

The only refuge for the men is three 23-foot lifeboats salvaged from the Endurance,

but at least now there's open water and the chance for escape.

On April 9th, they row north on the stormy sea,

not knowing when, or if, they will see land again.

Six days later, they reach uninhabited Elephant Island,

a 20-mile chunk of desolation in the Drake passage,

the waterway separating South America from Antarctica.

None of us know, until put to the test, what we can really endure.

He decided the only chance he had to get his 27 men back to civilization

was to cross more ocean.

Of all the challenges they'd faced over the past 17 months,

this, by far, would be the toughest.

On April 24th, Shackleton and five others sail for South Georgia

to get help, the island where they'd stopped for supplies

on the eve of their ordeal.

The odds of success are as low as the Arctic temperature.

South Georgia is a tiny dot 800 miles away,

roughly the distance from St. Louis to Houston.

Without pinpoint navigation, they'll miss their mark

and be lost in the vast South Atlantic.

That's my cue to navigate my way

to Explorers Club archivist Lacey Flint,

guardian of the indispensable tools Shackleton relied on during the voyage.

Okay.

I'm, like, afraid to ask because I feel like I'm gonna freak out.

What is this?

You might freak out.

These are Ernest Shackleton's actual tools.

I know. This is his sextant

and this is the compass that they had with them on the Endurance.

They used it aboard the James Caird to sail

to South Georgia Island, with that compass.

-That actual compass? -This actual compass.

From what is one of the most harrowing...

survival stories and incredible accomplishments.

-It's iconic, yeah. -Yeah, I mean...

-That's insane. -This story is referenced all the time

because of leadership, because of survival,

because of teamwork, all of that.

This is one of the tools that helped them get there.

And one of the most remarkable parts of this story

is the fact that these guys have to travel,

like, 800 miles in frigid open water

and they have to reach this tiny spec of land at South Georgia

and if they're off even a little,

they're gonna miss it completely.

Absolutely. The conditions are terrible, weather is bad.

There's little-to-no visibility.

The seas are really choppy.

So, Frank Worsley, captain of the James Caird,

would have used a sextant just like this

aboard the lifeboat, figuring out where they need to go.

Now, what you have to realize about these things is they're incredibly delicate...

and so, any bad weather, choppy seas,

you're not gonna be able to get what you need out of this thing.

It took them 16 days to make this crossing

and in that time, Worsley was only able to get four readings.

-Unbelievable. -Mmm-hmm.

[Josh] Day after day passes on the roughest waters on Earth.

Ice five-inches thick forms on the boat,

forcing the men to hack off the ice to keep them from sinking.

But on their 17th day at sea, they sight South Georgia.

Worsley's navigation has been perfect.

The island is rimmed mostly by steep cliffs, making landing a nightmare.

They finally reach shore, but discover they still have one big problem.

They're on the wrong side of the island.

Nearly 30 miles of snow-covered mountains loom between them

and the whaling outposts on South Georgia's northern shore.

No one has ever crossed them.

Three of the men were too exhausted to continue,

so Shackleton and the others set off into the island's foreboding interior.

They climbed 3,000 feet, through hip-deep snow,

to the mountain range's summit.

By then, the sun was setting and the temperature was plummeting.

Shackleton realized if they waited until morning to descend,

they'd freeze to death,

but climbing down in the dark would be equally fatal.

They need a quick way down and the resourceful Shackleton finds it.

Coil the rope!

[man] I don't understand?

We won't climb down!

We'll slide!

[man] What about the rocks?

We'll have to chance it.

To support and showcase new scientific achievement,

Discovery has pledged nearly two million dollars

to fund Explorers Club expeditions.

Geophysicist Jamin Greenbaum recently returned from one such endeavor

in Antarctica.

On the western coast, he studied the Thwaites Glacier,

a massive slab of ice the size of Florida.

Thwaites is worrying scientists worldwide

because it's thawing faster than expected.

Many warn that if it completely melts,

global sea levels could rise more than two feet,

the effects of which would be catastrophic.

Greenbaum used helicopters to drop sensors into the water surrounding the glacier

to measure its temperature and salinity,

trying to determine if freshwater, hidden deep beneath the mass of ice,

might be accelerating the process.

Greenbaum's work reminds us that Antarctica,

one of the coldest places on Earth,

continues to be a global hotspot in climate research.

Ernest Shackleton and his men find themselves in a do-or-die situation.

Either they descend the rugged terrain rapidly, threatening life and limb,

or they risk freezing to death in the extreme Antarctic temperatures.

Shackleton decides that making camp is not an option.

Coil the rope!

-[man] I don't understand? -We won't climb down.

We'll slide!

[man] What about the rocks?

We'll have to chance it.

We can do this, lads!

Let's go!

Shackleton and the others planned to slide down this mountain?

-It sounds nuts. -It is.

It's shockingly unsafe.

What they did is they basically took a long length of rope that they had

and coiled it up to make, basically, a big toboggan

that they could all sit on and slide from these mountain tops...

down into the valleys, into the mists, hoping not to go over a cliff,

you know, in order to get down quickly

and make it back to civilization.

This seems like a really good way to, you know, break a limb, die.

Yeah, but in this case, they had no choice.

They had no camping gear.

They couldn't have spent the night, you know, out, exposed like that

and so, they just did what they had to do.

[Josh] The previous 17 months have been a nightmare.

The next two minutes will be an adrenaline junkie's dream.

Ready?

One...

Two...

Three!

[men all yelling]

[Josh] On the steepest part of their descent,

the men slide at nearly 60 miles per hour.

Overall, they plummet 3,000 feet

and travel one mile for an average speed of 30

and, miraculously, they hit no obstacles and reach the bottom safely.

Like, all parts of the Shackleton story...

this guy just keeps going.

Like, he's unstoppable.

There's parts of it where it seems to be good planning.

-Yeah. -You know, he, on one expedition

with Scott, he turned back just 100 miles short of the South Pole

because, by calculations, they would run out of food and they made it out.

Scott went back later without him, ran out of food and they all died.

Right.

But there's also these moments

-where they were just damn lucky. -Right.

Like getting down off that mountain, you know...

Modern explorers today would never face that risk.

[Josh] Exhaustion slows Shackleton and his men as they continue their march,

but deliverance is closer than they think.

[ship whistles]

The whistle from one of the island's whaling stations

is their first encounter with civilization in a year and a half.

Their comrades on the other side of South Georgia

will be rescued the next day...

and though it takes four months to break through the pack ice...

Shackleton leads a rescue mission back to Elephant Island.

Not a single man is lost.

The sunken Endurance remains hidden

in its watery grave for 106 years...

...then is found in 2022...

10,000 feet beneath the icy Weddell Sea.

The same bitter cold that sank her also kept her remarkably well-preserved.

The recovery expedition is led by Explorers Club member Mensun Bound,

carrying flag number 35.

The Endurance's watery grave reminds us of humanity's limits

in Earth's most hostile environments.

So why have the poles, the most inhospitable places on Earth,

been such an irresistible lure for members of the Explorers Club?

Perhaps it's because the higher we set the bar,

the harder we push ourselves to clear it.

Ernest Shackleton himself summed it up best,

"When things are easy, I hate it."