Polar attack

In 1995, Richard Weber and Mikhail Malakhov set out on skis from Ward Hunt Island in the permanent night of an Arctic February. They carried with them, in sleds and in backpacks, all the food and equipment they would require for four months of lonely travel, determined to be the first in history to complete the 1,500-kilometre unsupported journey from land to the North Pole and back. They had tried it before, with a third man, an American, on the team, and their brave expedition made international news as a spectacular failure. Now, unable to call it quits, they headed out into the total darkness with renewed determination, defying the experts who claimed that such a journey was simply impossible. Out on the frozen Arctic Ocean, they would encounter the most severe weather conditions imaginable: repeated blizzards, jagged and shifting ice, treacherous open water, and temperatures as low as -58° C (-72° F). With the aid of new navigation technology, Weber and Malakhov were able to confirm that they had reached the precise North Pole. Yet achieving the Pole was only the first task to be accomplished. For the expection to succeed, they had to make the equally arduous journey back to land, still without any help from outside. The final week of this extraordinary expedition would become a frightening race against time. It was early June, and the temperature was rising, melting the snow and breaking up the ice. Progress was painfully slow, and Weber and Malakhov knew that they were in grave danger of being stranded beyond the reach of help. In a last bid for success and for life itself, they would have to use up all their remaining resources of energy and abandon every scrap of equipment not immediately essential to survival -- often having to leap from floe to floe in their attempt to gain dry land and secure their place in history.