As polar exploration reached its zenith, and in the same month that Captain Robert Falcon Scott perished in Antarctica, four young scientists from Zurich took ship for Greenland. Though they had little previous experience of arctic travel, their ambition was to achieve the first west-to-east crossing of the northern hemisphere’s largest ice cap, making scientific observations along the way. Few outside Switzerland have heard of this expedition or its leader, the meteorologist Alfred de Quervain, in spite of its success. In thirty-one days in the summer of 1912, the party sledded across 640 kilometres of untracked snow and ice. Nobody died or fell into a crevasse, although there were some near misses. The voyage was more than a well-executed feat of arctic travel: de Quervain and his colleagues collected data still used today by scientists researching the effects of climate change on Greenland’s ice cap. De Quervain’s popular account of his adventures, published in German in 1914, is both a minor classic of exploration literature and a sympathetic portrayal of life in Greenland’s remote coastal settlements in the early twentieth century. Published to coincide with the expedition’s 110th anniversary, Across Greenland’s Ice Cap includes the explorer’s original text, translated into English by his daughter and son-in-law; a historical and biographical introduction by Martin Hood; reflections on the journey’s scientific legacy by the geographers Andreas Vieli and Martin Lüthi; and a treasure trove of hand-tinted lantern slides reproduced in full colour.

A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change “Jon Gertner takes readers to spots few journalists or even explorers have visited. The result is a gripping and important book.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The Christian Science Monitor • Library Journal Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland—at first hoping that it would serve as a gateway to the North Pole, and later coming to realize that it contained essential information about our climate. Locked within this vast and frozen white desert are some of the most profound secrets about our planet and its future. Greenland’s ice doesn’t just tell us where we’ve been. More urgently, it tells us where we’re headed. In The Ice at the End of the World, Jon Gertner explains how Greenland has evolved from one of earth’s last frontiers to its largest scientific laboratory. The history of Greenland’s ice begins with the explorers who arrived here at the turn of the twentieth century—first on foot, then on skis, then on crude, motorized sleds—and embarked on grueling expeditions that took as long as a year and often ended in frostbitten tragedy. Their original goal was simple: to conquer Greenland’s seemingly infinite interior. Yet their efforts eventually gave way to scientists who built lonely encampments out on the ice and began drilling—one mile, two miles down. Their aim was to pull up ice cores that could reveal the deepest mysteries of earth’s past, going back hundreds of thousands of years. Today, scientists from all over the world are deploying every technological tool available to uncover the secrets of this frozen island before it’s too late. As Greenland’s ice melts and runs off into the sea, it not only threatens to affect hundreds of millions of people who live in coastal areas. It will also have drastic effects on ocean currents, weather systems, economies, and migration patterns. Gertner chronicles the unfathomable hardships, amazing discoveries, and scientific achievements of the Arctic’s explorers and researchers with a transporting, deeply intelligent style—and a keen sense of what this work means for the rest of us. The melting ice sheet in Greenland is, in a way, an analog for time. It contains the past. It reflects the present. It can also tell us how much time we might have left.

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In the summer of 1912, four young scientists sledded across 640km of untracked snow and ice, crossing central Greenland from west to east for the first time. This minor classic of exploration literature by the expedition's leader, Alfred de Quervain, is a sympathetic portrayal of life in remote coastal settlements in the early twentieth century.

Surveys atmospheric, oceanic and cryospheric processes, present and past conditions, and changes in polar environments.

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 icecap, 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 –50° 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, “veteran mountain climber and chronicler of adventures” (Washington Post), draws on firsthand accounts and archival materials to tell the story of this daring expedition and of the epic survival ordeal that ensued.

At just over 100 miles long, and taking 7 to 10 days to complete, the Arctic Circle Trail crosses the largest ice-free patch of West Greenland. This splendid trekking route, lying 25-30 miles north of the Arctic Circle runs from Kangerlussuaq to Sisimiut (both of which have airport access). The trail traverses remote, empty, silent and stunningly scenic arctic tundra, and is mostly gently graded with just a few short, steep and rocky slopes. However, the landscape between the two towns of Kangerlussuaq and Sisimiut is extremely remote and those who choose to take on this route must be competely self-sufficient. The book includes plenty of practical information on what to take with you and when to go, as well as on safety, travel and accommodation. Fully illustrated with a variety of photographs and its route is highlighted on continuous trekking maps. The guide also includes an optional extension to the Greenlandic ice cap.