Sunday, November 17, 2013

                           The Greatest Survival Story
                                                         Rating****

This is a story about a man named Douglas Mawson and his struggle to survive after the rest of his expedition team dies in the Antarctic.

This story started out as a 31 man expedition team to the Australasian Antarctic in 1913.  The men were split up into groups of three to explore the large area.  Mawson's group of three started out badly after one of the members died when he fell down a 100ft. crevasse.  He took with him the tent, almost all of the food and six of the dogs.  For the next three weeks Mawson and Mertz survived by eating the remaining dogs but slowly got weaker.  On January 8th Mertz died a painful death in his sleeping bag, leaving Mawson alone to survive the remaining 100 miles to base camp.  On January 16th Mawson fell down a crevasse but was tied by a rope to his sled , he managed to climb to the lip but the snow broke and he fell again dangling from his rope.On the second attempt when he reached the lip he swung his legs over, rolled to safety and passed out.With very little food left Mawson finally made it back to base camp, it took him 31 days.  Everyone thought he was dead so they were very surprised to see that he was alive.

I really enjoyed this story and i was also surprised that he survived after all the hard difficulties he had to overcome then finally making it to base camp after barely surviving.

I recommend this article to anyone who wants to read an unbelievable survival story.

Roberts,David.  The Greatest Survival Story: Backpacker Magazine, October 2013.
Article #2

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