Into the Great Emptiness: Peril and Survival on the Greenland Ice Cap

by David Roberts

Overview

A Library Journal Best Book of 2022 in Science and Technology

“A gripping saga—and one of Roberts’s finest books.” —Jon Krakauer

The riveting story of one of the greatest but least-known sagas in the history of exploration.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324086376
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/03/2024
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

David Roberts (1943–2021) was the author of thirty books on mountaineering, exploration, and anthropology. His books have won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature and the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Competition.

Table of Contents

Prologue The Man on the Ice Cap 1

1 "He Never Discussed Anything Seriously" 15

2 Edgeøya 31

3 The Land That God Gave Cain 42

4 Gino at Home 74

5 Base Camp 86

6 "That Cat's on the Roof Again" 105

7 Autumn with the Inuit 128

Interlude The Cosmos of the East Coast Inuit 147

8 "All, All Alone": Courtauld on the Ice Cap 170

9 Winter with the Inuit 200

10 Courtauld in Purgatory 222

11 Asking for Trouble: Gino's Finale 242

Epilogue To Slip Betimes Away 275

Acknowledgments 321

Notes on Sources 329

Bibliography 337

Index 343

Editorial Reviews

"The story of Watkins’s short life, his uncanny ability as a leader and his mysterious death moves quickly, unfolding almost like a thriller."

Wall Street Journal - Bill Heavey

"Roberts writes in a smooth narrative style, peppered with white-knuckle zones."

Christian Science Monitor - Richard Horan

05/16/2022

Climber Roberts (Alone on the Ice) recounts the story of “forgotten hero” Henry George “Gino” Watkins (1907–1932) and his 1930 Greenland expedition in this gripping narrative. The 23-year-old Englishman and his 13 teammates set sail in July with ambitions to survey Greenland’s little-known east coast and interior, collect data on the ice cap, and chart an air route from western Europe to North America. But the expedition didn’t go as planned: dangerous terrain, fierce storms, and temperatures below -50 degrees Fahrenheit derailed their efforts and threatened their lives. Roberts paints a vivid and suspenseful picture of the expedition as the team scrambled to rescue teammate August Courtauld, who was trapped alone at the weather station he manned with food stores running perilously low. Despite the mishaps, Roberts argues, Watkins’s scheme was still “the most daring and fruitful British expedition to the Far North during the previous half-century,” in large part due to Watkins’s success at earning his team’s unwavering loyalty, even through exceedingly arduous circumstances. Roberts knows how to tell a good story, and he draws on firsthand accounts from team members to depict their excursions in harrowing detail. Perfect for fans of adventure stories, this one hits all the marks. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"For the subject of what turned out to be his final project, David Roberts selected a fascinating, little-known British explorer with odd charisma and an insatiable hunger for treacherous adventures. Into the Great Emptiness is a gripping saga—and one of Roberts’ finest books."

Jon Krakauer

Into the Great Emptiness is a gripping saga—and one of Roberts’s finest books.”

#1 nationally bestselling author Jon Krakauer

Julian Elfer gives voice to David Roberts in this posthumous publication by the legendary climber and adventure writer, who died in 2021. Roberts’s account accompanies Gino Watkins’s trek into the interior of Greenland in 1930, when this frozen land was even less well known than the earth’s Poles. The remarkable but little-remembered English explorer explored the area with extraordinary leadership and bravery before disappearing on a return trip in 1932. While mainly focusing on Watkins and his team, the audio includes insightful information on Inuit culture as it relates to the expedition. Elfer’s confident tone and British accent are appropriate to this story of suffering and stoicism, yet he still allows the author’s dry wit to come through. D.B. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile

★ 2022-05-06
The late, prolific adventure writer returns with a fresh account of an epic yet little-known Arctic expedition.

Polar explorers Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen, and Ernest Shackleton are household names, but Henry George “Gino” Watkins (1907-1932) rings few bells. In this fascinating biography, Roberts (1943-2021) points out that, unlike his predecessors, Watkins was neither a military man nor a seasoned traveler. Rather, he was a carefree Cambridge student fond of risky antics and mountain climbing but no expert explorer. Inspired by a Cambridge don who had traveled with Scott and Shackleton in the Antarctic, Watkins decided to explore the Arctic. Dropping out, he led a 1927 expedition to a poorly explored island in the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, and to Labrador a year later. Despite his youth, he turned out to be a good leader. Building on these successes, he organized and led the British Arctic Air Route Expedition of 1930-1931, aiming to survey the obscure east coast of Greenland and gather climate data to plan a shorter air route to North America. By this time, others had crossed the island, but no one had overwintered in Greenland’s unspeakably cold, stormy interior. Roberts devotes most of his book to a gripping account of this expedition, with equally fine asides on Greenland’s history and Indigenous inhabitants. Despite the usual mishaps, the men accomplished many of their goals. They established a weather station 140 miles inland, although reaching it proved far more difficult than anticipated, and occupants spent frightening weeks waiting for relief. One man volunteered to spend the entire winter; by spring, his tent was sealed under 20 feet of icy snow, and the relief expedition did not find it until it was nearly too late. Ultimately, everyone returned to wide acclaim. Watkins drowned during a 1932 expedition, but Roberts blames his obscurity on the fact that he left no popular writing, never sought fame, achieved no iconic discoveries, and experienced no disasters.

An outstanding account of a great expedition led by “a child prodigy who died before his full genius could flower.

Kirkus Reviews