THE BRITISH-AUSTRALIAN explorer leading the team attempting to recreate a famous Antarctic expedition was stranded on a plateau only hours before completing his voyage after a blizzard forced the evacuation of the majority of his support team. 
 
 Tim Jarvis and mountaineer Barry Gray “hunkered down” in a tent at Shackleton’s Gap in order to avoid the extreme weather conditions, including wind gusts of 45 knots and a mixture of rain, sleet and snow causing zero visibility. Jarvis and Gray assured their support team on Saturday that they would continue their expedition when conditions improved, ultimately completing their epic journey during a small break in the adverse weather conditions on Monday morning. 
 
 Upon arrival at former whaling station Stromness, Jarvis said: “These early explorers were iron men in wooden boats and while modern man mostly travel around in iron vessels, I hope we’ve been able to emulate some of what they achieved. There’s no doubt in my mind that everyone has a Shackleton double in them and I hope we’ve inspired a few people to find theirs.” 
 
 Jarvis’s team had been attempting to replicate the famous expedition of British adventurer Ernest Shackleton, who was shipwrecked while attempting to cross Antarctica from coast-to-coast in the 1910s. After his ship sunk after being frozen in an ice floe, Shackleton and a small crew were forced to navigate dangerous waters and trek 51 kilometres over mountainous terrain to reach a whaling station and seek help. 
 
 Shackleton was ultimately able to arrange the rescue of his crew members after they had endured almost five months of isolation in the harsh Antarctic terrain. Despite their struggle to survive, Shackleton’s team did not incur any casualties and the explorer’s intense mission to find help became a staple part of Antarctic folklore. 
 
 Jarvis’s expedition had already completed the dangerous crossing of the Southern Ocean before being stranded by the adverse weather. After resuming their voyage they faced a two-day climb through the mountainous region of South Georgia before completing their expedition. 
 
 The expedition had endeavoured to recreate Shackleton’s experience as authentically as possible, only using mountain-climbing gear and navigation equipment that the original team would have utilised in the early 1900s. Jarvis and Gray were resupplied at their position in Shackleton’s Gap over the weekend by members of their crew, who were forced to use modern equipment in order to safely access their colleagues. 
 
 Jarvis and Gray were the only remaining members of the original six-person team that set out on the journey. Several of their teammates were forced to withdraw from the expedition after contracting trench foot – a debilitating rotting of the feet – while on the 19-day sea voyage to South Georgia Island from the site of Shackleton’s shipwreck. 
 
 Jarvis, inducted as a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010, is a prominent environmental scientist that advises agencies such as the World Bank and AusAID on issues of sustainability and conservation. He recently completed another re-enactment of a historical Antarctic expedition, tracing the path of Australian explorer Sir Douglas Mawson’s ill-fated 1912 voyage across the continent. ||||| What do you think? 
 
 A team of exhausted but elated explorers successfully recreated Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic survival journey Monday, completing a three-day climb across mountains despite a treacherous blizzard. 
 
 Expedition leader Tim Jarvis and Barry Gray reached the old whaling station at Stromness early Monday (2245 GMT Sunday) after a 900-metre (2,950-foot) climb over the mountainous interior of South Georgia. 
 
 "It was epic, really epic, and we've arrived here against the odds," said Jarvis, who with Gray completed the climb using the same kind of clothing and gear that Shackleton and his men would have worn in 1916. 
 
 "The ice climb at the Tridents is a serious thing and Shackleton didn't exaggerate -- with ice at 50 degrees, with one wrong foot, we could have careened down a crevasse." 
 
 Jarvis, 46, said he and Gray, 38, had more than 20 crevasse falls up to their knees during the climb with the latter plunging into one up to his armpits, requiring their one-man support crew to help pull him free. 
 
 "These early explorers were iron men in wooden boats and while modern man mostly travel around in iron vessels, I hope we've been able to emulate some of what they achieved," he said. 
 
 "There's no doubt in my mind that everyone has a Shackleton double in them and I hope we've inspired a few people to find theirs." 
 
 The crossing follows a 12-day re-enactment of Shackleton's 800 nautical mile journey in a spartan lifeboat from Elephant Island to South Georgia, along with four other members of the British-Australian team. 
 
 Jarvis and Gray had planned to make the mountain crossing within 24 hours but were held up by an extreme storm. 
 
 They were forced to hunker down on the mountain, resorting to using a modern tent and sleeping bags to stay alive as snow and sleet and 50 knot winds pounded them on Saturday. 
 
 "We've had to adapt just as Shackleton and his men did and we had to survive," said Jarvis, adding there were times they thought they might not make it. 
 
 Shackleton's 1916 journey to raise the alarm about the sinking of his ship the Endurance is considered one of the greatest-ever survival tales. 
 
 During his third visit to the region the explorer's boat became trapped in 1915 and sank 10 months later as it was crushed by the advancing ice. 
 
 After living on the floating ice until April 1916, they set off in three small boats for Elephant Island. 
 
 From there, Shackleton and five crew made the voyage to South Georgia, reaching their destination 16 days later to face the mountainous trek to the whaling station at Stromness to raise the alarm. 
 
 All members of the Endurance were eventually rescued. 
 
 Shackleton is considered among the great Antarctic explorers, along with Norway's Roald Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911, Australian explorer Douglas Mawson and Briton Robert Falcon Scott. 
 
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 http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130210/explorers-complete-shackletons-epic-antarctic-journey
– Two explorers managed to finish their re-creation today of Ernest Shackleton's famous survival journey from the Antarctic to South Georgia Island—but only after a blizzard stranded them on a high, icy plateau for hours, reports the Australian Times. Using only period gear and food, Tim Jarvis and Barry Gray had already completed a 12-day, 800-mile sea voyage in a wooden lifeboat from the site of Shackleton's original shipwreck on Elephant Island to South Georgia Island, but tough conditions forced four members of their crew to drop out. The journey then required a 32-mile trek across the island, over mountains up to 2,950-feet high, to reach on old whaling station, which is when rain, snow, and 45-knot winds forced the men to take shelter for 12 hours in a tent—a modern tent with modern sleeping bags, notes Global Post, along with some extra food supplied by their modern support team. But today, Jarvis and Gray completed the arduous journey. "There’s no doubt in my mind that everyone has a Shackleton double in them and I hope we’ve inspired a few people to find theirs," says Jarvis. Some of Shackleton's long-lost Scotch was last month returned to Antarctica.