 
 
 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. 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. 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. 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.
– 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.