The Worst Journey I've ever read

Ok, try to imagine the coldest you've ever felt. Try to imagine the absolute worst winter you've ever experienced. Perhaps you were caught out with too light a jacket. Maybe you were up in a chair lift with a bitter wind cutting at your skin. Perhaps you decided to sit out on a cold, clear night and gaze at the stars only to forget how bitterly cold those clear nights are when you are away from the warmth of the city.

Now, even at your most cold, you have only a vague understanding of how frighteningly cold Apsley Cherry-Gerrard, Edward A. Wilson and Henry Bowers felt on July 6th, 1911 during their trek across the Antarctic barrier. The noon temperature that "day" was -77 F. -77F! That's absolutely inconceivable. Gerrard writes "I will not pretend that it did not convince me that Dante was right when he placed the circles of ice below the circles of fire". As described by Susan Solomon in her book "The Coldest March", the strings they used to tie the bags of food were "like wire". Their perspiration and breath "had begun to turn their clothing into armor plate. Cherry-Garrard made the mistake one morning of raising 'my head to look round and found I could not move it back'".
If you didn't know, these three were part of the Robert Scott's tragic expedition to the South Pole. After being beaten to the pole a month before by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, Scott and four other men, including Bowers and Wilson, perished within a day's march from a supply tent. About 9 months before their fatal journey, Gerrard, Bowers and Wilson ventured across the Antarctic continent in order to find an emperor penguin's egg. Wilson hoped that this egg would be a useful key to understanding evolution. So, let me elaborate. They traveled for about a month, pulling 253 pounds per man on a sled in almost complete darkness in unfathomably cold weather for the sake of a scientific expedition that would later prove to be inconsequential to evolution. What incredible strength and bravery. Kinda makes that report you have due in two weeks a bit less scary.
This story and a vivid description of Scott's entire expedition are described brilliantly in "The Worst Journey in the World" by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. "Polar Exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised", Garrard writes.
His book is one of three polar books that I've read in the last 6th months. I'm currently on Solomon's book, which is an attempt to defend Scott, and counter many of the myths of him as a bumbler and an idiot. She spends a lot of time using modern scientific and meteorological data to show that Scott endured an unusually harsh winter, and that based on the knowledge he had, he had made pretty good decisions. Although it's quite interesting, it doesn't match the power of Gerrard's first person account. "The Worst Journey" is a book I'd recommend to anyone.
Gerrard’s most memorable words come at the end. He writes "If you are a brave man you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery." And perhaps his most famous line and words I'd like to leave you with "If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin’s egg."