NEWS - EXPEDITIONS

SAT 4 APRIL BBC2 8.40 P.M. 'TIMEWATCH - 'IN SHACKLETON'S FOOTSTEPS'

LANDMARK PROGRAMME TRACKING THE SHACKLETON CENTENARY EXPEDITION

On Saturday 4 April the BBC 'Timewatch' programme will focus on Sir Ernest Shackleton and his successors.

A century ago on his Nimrod expedition, Ernest Shackleton and his team of four made an attempt on the South Pole. In January 1909, just 98 miles from their destination, they turned back - and survived. Juyst two years later Roald Amundsen, the first to reach the South Pole, completed the journey. Captain Scott and his team, who made the journey only to discover they had been pipped to the post by the Norwegians, succeeded but died on the return.

This hour-long programme produced by Sean Smith traces the efforts of a team of Nimrod party descendants a century later to cross 900 miles of frozen wastelands and reeenact and complete Shackleton, Wild, Adams and Marshall's historic journey.

Lt. Col. Henry Worsley a distant relation of Shackleton's l;ater captain Frank Worsley; Henry Adams, 33, shipping lawyer, from Snape, Suffolk, great-grandson of Jameson Boyd-Adams, Shackleton's youthful number two on the Nimrod expedition; Will Gow, 35, city worker, from Ashford, Kent, and related to Shackleton by marriage Patrick Bergel, 36, from London, Shackleton's great-grandson, who works in advertising; Tim Fright, 24, from Billingshurst, West Sussex, great-great-nephew of Frank Wild, the only explorer to accompany Shackleton on all his missions. He works as a PA to Cobra Beer founder Lord Bilimoria. David Cornell, 38, from Andover, Hampshire, a City fund manager and another great-grandson of Jameson Boyd Adams;

Henry Worsley, Will Gow and Henry Adams left the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf on 29 October, as Shackleton and his team did a century earlier.

SHACKLETON AND CLOSE COMRADE'S HEIRS LAUNCH 'SHACKLETON CENTENARY EXPEDITION 2008'

THE JAMES CAIRD SOCIETY SPONSORS SHACKLETON AND ADAMS GREAT-GRANDSONS, AS THEY CELEBRATE THE 'NIMROD' EXPEDITION 100 YEARS ON, AND SHACKLETON'S 'FURTHEST SOUTH' WORLD RECORD IN 1908-9

RECENT EXPEDITIONS : FOLLOWING IN SHACKLETON'S FOOTSTEPS

S ARIS - IRISH ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE

The Irish South Aris Expedition, of which Frank Nugent was joint leader, attempted in January 1997 to repeat Shackleton's crossing from Elephant Island to South Georgia. They were forced to scuttle their boat - christened the Tom Crean - when they ran into a sustained Force 10 storm, which capsized them three times in 30 hours. Frank Nugent went on in February l997 to complete a re-enaction of Shackleton's South Georgia traverse from King Haakon Bay to Stromness.

JCS MEMBERS EVENING AND LECTURE

FRIDAY 8TH MAY AT DULWICH: FOCUS ON HMS ENDURANCE

THE SHACKLETON MEMORIAL EXPEDITION 2001

'If you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore. If you are a brave man you will do nothing, if you are fearful you may do much...' These words from Apsley Cherry-Garrard served as a motto for the Shackleton Memorial Expedition 2001, which has also just completed a crossing of South Georgia.

Their plan was to attempt a traverse of the island retracing Shackleton's route - Peggotty Camp, Shackleton Pass, Trident Ridge, Crean Glacier, Fortuna Glacier, Fortuna Bay and Stromness. 'No man had ever penetrated a mile of coast of South Georgia at any point, and the whalers, I knew, regarded the country as inaccessible', wrote Shackleton.

Following a landing on Elephant Island, the party - Neil Laughton, Trevor Potts, Lewis McNaught, Peter Oldham, Martin Hartley and Rebecca Harris - was transported by icebreaker to South Georgia to begin the climb. Unable to put in at King Haakon Bay owing to force 10-ll gales (as ferocious as those Shackleton and Worsley faced tacking in aboard the James Caird) the expedition made for Possession Bay, round the top of the island, and launched its climb from there.

The Expedition took three and a half days to traverse South Georgia's treacherous mountain terrain. Linking from Possession Bay with Shackleton's original route from King Haakon Bay, they thereafter navigated a path through the same mountains, glaciers, and crevasses that Shackleton crossed, before reaching the now deserted whaling station at Stromness. They encountered atrocious weather and perilous climbing conditions, with blizzards and white-out for most of the time, wading through snow up to their thighs.

For one member of the five-man climbing team, Trevor Potts, the expedition represents the second leg of an amazing journey. In 1994, keeping touch with Harding Dunnett, Alexandra Shackleton and the publicity team at the London Boat Show at Earl's Court - the Shackleton event which provided the spur to the formation of the James Caird Society - Trevor and his three companions completed the 800 mile sea-crossing from Elephant Island to South Georgia - the first expedition to do so - in his boat the Sir Ernest Shackleton, an exact replica built by McNulty's shipyard on Tyneside of the original 23 foot James Caird. The Sir Ernest Shackleton was flown down to the Falkland Islands by the Royal Air Force specially for the Expedition.

The Shackleton Memorial Expedition's climb over South Georgia has enabled Trevor at last to fulfil his long-held dream of recreating both the sea and land sections of Shackleton's heroic journey.

With the James Caird Society's President, the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton, as Patron, it also raised money for two important charities - The UK Antarctic Heritage Trust and The Shackleton Scholarship Fund. Any donations would be most welcome to : The Shackleton Memorial Expedition, Wades Cottage, Slindon, West Sussex, U.K., BN18 ORA.

SHACKLETON'S STEPS EXPEDITION 2000

Three climbers, Jock Wishart, Duncan Nicoll and Jonathan Chastney, set out in November-December 2000 to retrace the route across South Georgia taken by Shackleton, Worsley and Crean in l9l6. Members of the Shackleton's Steps Expedition wore replicas of Shackleton's original Burberry gabardine clothing as they sought to rechart his treacherous route over ice-bound peaks, glaciers and snowfields They recorded film footage for the TV production company Tiger Aspects, which is developing a documentary about the crossing for global broadcasting.

Wishart was previously a member of the first team to walk unsupported to the Geomagnetic North Pole in 1992, and in 1996 made a televised trek to the Magnetic North Pole. Chastney, an accomplished mountaineer, sailor and explorer, was a member of the team that made the first ascent of Mount Katherine-Jane on Smith Island, Antarctica, in l995. Nicoll, six times UK national champion in quads, doubles and single sculls, set a world record rowing from London to Paris in l999, and in l997 rowed across the Atlantic in 60 days in a 24ft open rowing boat - roughly the same length as the James Caird.

Although they succeeded in reaching the Shackleton Gap, the Murray Snowfield, and all four passes of the Trident Ridge, the three climbers were thwarted at every stage by bad weather (low pressure, gale force winds and a dangerous build up of avalanching snow above the descent to the Crean Glacier). Their experience of such severe conditions brings to mind those that must have threatened Shackleton and his two intrepid colleagues, Frank Worsley and Tom Crean.

WGBH NOVA EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA

Conrad Anker, Reinhold Messner and Stephen Venables reconstructed Shackleton, Worsley and Crean's crossing of South Georgia for inclusion in the WGBH/Nova/White Mountain Films IMAX film Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure. It was Anker, who has climbed in Alaska, Antarctica, Russia and Patagonia, who discovered George Mallory's body on Everest shortly before mounting has own attempt on the summit.

Messner was the first to conquer Everest solo, and without oxygen. In l989-90, inspired by Shackleton, he effected a crossing on foot of the Antarctic continent. He was also the first to climb all the world's 8,000-metre peaks (those over 26,400 feet).

Stephen Venables is a mountaineer and writer, best known for his part in the Anglo-American-Canadian Everest expedition (up the Kangshung face of Everest), when he was also the first Briton to reach the summit of Everest without oxygen. During 14 visits to the Himalayas, he has made many first ascents including Kishtwar Shivling, the Solu Tower and Panch Chuli V, a remote peak on the borders of India, Nepal and Tibet, where he sustained a nearly fatal fall. He started climbing whilst reading English at New College, Oxford. His first book, Painted Mountains, won the Boardman-Tasker Prize for mountain literature; Everest - Alone at the Summit was runner-up in 1989 while the most recent, Himalaya Alpine Style, a seminal work on modern Himalayan climbing, won the Banff Mountain Literature Festival Grand Award. Everest Kangshung Face told the story of the 1988 expedition.

Venables has increasingly been drawn to the mountains of the far south : The Andes, Antarctica, South Georgia and Tierra del Fuego, where he climbed a new route on Monte Sarmiento. He earns his living as a writer and lecturer, living with his wife and two children in Bath. His most recent book, A Slender Thread, is shortlisted for this year's mountain literature award and the Boardman-Tasker Prize. His latest excursion was a climb of the Matterhorn in tweed suit and nailed boots for a BBC documentary about the first ascent.

'When I first came to South Georgia,' says Venables, 'we were exploring the southern end of the island and making first ascents of the large peaks towards the southern tip; so I hadn't actually been on the terrain of Shackleton's traverse at the northern end. But I've experienced the island and its incredible blizzards that just seem to hit you from nowhere. That reinforced my respect for what Shackleton, Worsley and Crean achieved. But I understood too that sense of Providence which they mentioned in their accounts : Providence for once smiling on them and giving them thirty-six hours of clear weather - the only clear weather break that entire winter - which enabled them to make their crossing safely. It was a combination of incredible determination, experience, leadership and that vital bit of luck at the crucial moment.

'We covered the entire route Shackleton's party took in May l9l6, except for allowing ourselves one short cut - we omitted part of Breakwind Ridge. Our sequence is just a small part of the film, which covers all of the Endurance expedition : NOVA/WGBH have done a remarkable job seamlessly incorporating Hurley's original film into wonderful new colour footage, and using some stunning aerial photography, shot by helicopter, which add a whole new dimension.

'The climb up to the first big transverse ridge was longer than I expected, the crevasses bigger and more threatening than I had ever imagined. But it was thrilling to see the four notches in the ridge, described so precisely by Frank Worsley all those years ago, and the huge windscoop at the side of the glacier, which he said would easily swallow up two battle cruisers. Unlike Shackleton, we chose the third, not the fourth notch, and set off down the east side. It must have been nearly 1,000 feet down to the Crean Glacier. As Reinhold Messner pointed out, 'we were effectively trapped'.

'Later, after we had sniffed out a descent, looking back up at the slope which Shackleton and his companions had glissaded down, we knew that if we had tried to slide the same way, all three of us would have been killed. Even allowing for the fact that glacial recession has made the slope much more fractured, we were still amazed by Shackleton's boldness in 1916, launching himself with Worsley and Crean down that huge slope, without being able to see the bottom.'

Stephen Venables' striking account of the mountain crossing can be read in the catalogue of the Dulwich Exhibition Shackleton, the Antarctic and Endurance.

NORWEGIAN AND AMERICAN WOMEN SKI ACROSS ANTARCTICA

In February 2001 Norwegian polar traveller Liv Arneson and her colleague, American Ann Bancroft, successfully completed their attempt to become the first woman's team to ski across Antarctica.

They hauled 250lb (112 kg) sleds 2,400 miles (3,860 km) across the frozen wastes, enduring temperatures averaging 30 degrees below zero and minus 35 degree winds (gusting up to 100 miles per hour), and ascending to 11,000 feet (3,300 metres). When conditions permitted, the pair sped up their journey by 'sailing' across the ice on skis, attached by harness to a flying kite-sail.

Liv Arneson (47), born near Oslo, is no stranger to difficult climes and terrain. In l993 she led the first unsupported women's crossing of the Greenland Ice Cap. In 1994 she became the first woman to ski solo and unsupported to the South Pole, following which she wrote Snille piker går ikke til Sydpolen (Good Girls do not Ski to the South Pole), a book about her expedition (1995). She subsequently attempted the north face of Everest. Minnesota-born Ann Bancroft (45) has comparable polar experience : in l986 she drove a dog sled from Canada to the North Pole as the only female member of the Steger International Polar Expedition. In 1993, she led the American Women's Expedition to the South Pole, becoming the first woman to reach both poles.

Both explorers had dreamed of travelling to Antarctica since they were 12, and were inspired by Alfred Lansing's book Endurance about Shackleton's 1914 attempt to lead the first transantarctic crossing. Both have previously been to the North and South poles.

The pair reached the South Pole (9,300 ft, 2835m) on Tuesday Jan 16th. Having ascended the Titan Dome (9,856 ft), by Jan 20th they were l00 miles (160 kilometers) from the start of their descent of the Shackleton Glacier - a river of ice cutting through the Transantarctic Mountains - to the Ross Ice Shelf, which lies at the bottom of the glacier and marks the formal completion of their crossing, a distance of about 132 kilometers (82 miles). The courageous pair reached McMurdo, their destination (a further 488m/782km) on February 11 2001, completing their Antarctic Odyssey four days ahead of schedule.

SHACKLETON'S NIMROD PARTY DESCENDANTS REACH SOUTH POLE

SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF 900-MILE SHACKLETON CENTENARY EXPEDITION