Antarctica: one of the coldest and most desolate locations on Earth, a desert of ice, much of it still unexplored even today. What can possibly draw people there? Yet Antarctica can also be enchanting, a land of beauty and unanticipated delight, and its siren song has always lured men and women to test themselves among its frozen wastes. It was a journey long thought impossible. The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctica Expedition of 1957/58, led by Vivian 'Bunny' Fuchs, was one of the 20th century's triumphs of exploration - a powerful expression of technological daring as much as a testament of sheer, bloody-minded human willpower. As a key member of the expedition, Everest veteran George Lowe was there to capture it all in photographs and on film. A trove of unpublished images and other rare materials from the Lowe archive are brought together here for the first time, along with others from the Fuchs family collection. There has never been a book on Antarctica quite like this. Awe-inspiring landscapes, candid portraits and action shots evoke the day-by-day moments as the expedition travelled across snow and ice, facing extraordinary challenges and dangers. The Crossing of Antarctica is a remarkable visual and personal testimony of a polar expedition that rewrote the history books and an epic journey of endurance and fellowship in the wildest of places.

Author Biography

Huw Lewis-Jones is former curator at the Scott Polar Research Institute and National Maritime Museum. Among his other books are Arctic, Ocean Portraits, In Search of the South Pole, The Conquest of Everest, which won the History Award at the 2013 Banff Mountain Festival and Mountain Heroes. George Lowe is a New Zealand-born mountaineer, explorer, film director and educator.