When Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Mike Stroud ended their journey on foot across Antarctica in early 1993, they were frostbitten and close to starvation. They had made the first coast-to-coast crossing of the continent unsupported by men, animals or machines, and were too weak to continue over the floating Ross ice-shelf to open water. They had begun 95 days earlier by pulling nearly 500 lbs each of essential food and fuel on sledges, and on the way endured windchill temperatures as low as minus-85 degrees celsius. Mike Stroud, doctor, nutritionist and survival consultant to the Ministry of Defence, is no stranger to the polar regions, north and south. He was previously a member of the Swan/Mear "In the footsteps of Scott" expedition and has made several attempts with Fiennes to reach the North Pole. His account of their 1350-mile traverse at the South Pole is as moving as it is surprising, for this territory is also the no-man's land where mind and body interact, and psychological as well as physical stress provide a greater challenge than the landscape and the weather. Stroud's revelations of what happens should interest readers, when habits and fears, misconceptions and self-esteem, compassions and resentments, fortitude and physical limitations are magnified and brought into collision in a one-to-one relationship over a long period in the close proximity of death.
