Ice Cap Station
SYNOPSIS:
During the winter of 1930, a young explorer named August Courtauld volunteered to spend 149 days alone in a tent on the Greenland ice cap to save a pioneering expedition to mark out an air route between Britain and America looked doomed. Constant blizzards eventually caused him to become buried under the snow, entombed in a small, dark ice- chamber for the final 42 days.
His story was front-page news and is Arctic legend.
Inspired and captivated by his incredible story of courage and survival, his great niece Chloë Courtauld plans to retrace his steps onto the Greenland ice cap, find the site of the Ice Cap Station and bury herself to find out exactly what her great uncle went through. And how his great sacrifice changed the face of international air travel forever
Chloe has already made an initial trip to the arctic but in May 2010 she will return to try and reach both The Base Camp and the Ice Cap Station.
She is driven by a desire to tell August’s story and the achievements of the BAARE in changing the face of air travel to North America. She also wants to relive his experiences, to feel what he felt and in doing so, bring to life the incredible sacrifice that he made.
This documentary will bring to life a group of young men of the British Arctic Air Route Expedition (BAARE), tagged ‘Brideshead on Ice’. They were young graduates of the roaring 1920’s Oxbridge, with a thirst for adventure.
At a time when air travel was in its infancy in Britain, they set out on a pioneering expedition into the Arctic. Their aim was to assess the possibilities of an air route between Britain and North America by mapping the east coast of Greenland and setting up a camp in the middle of ice cap to judge whether it could be flown over at any time of the year.
The success of the mission rested in one man’s hands, August’s. When the team ran out of food to last the winter he calculated one man could survive for five months and he volunteered to take the readings that would ensure the success of the mission.
His incredible survival story has inspired his great niece Chloe Courtauld to follow in his footsteps onto the Ice Cap. She wants to discover what inspired him to undertake such a feat and to experience for herself something of what it is like to be alone in the middle of one the world’s harshest environments.
The expedition, her uncle’s dramatic survival and the historical background, will be brought to life by Chloe’s own journey onto the ice and through extensive and rarely seen archive film, stills, letters and diaries of the group.
She will also reveal a team embedded in Inuit culture and an Ice Cap shrinking at an alarming rate. August’s story in part, alone on the ice cap, will be illustrated through dramatic reconstruction.
The story arc begins and ends at the Ice Cap Station, starting with August’s isolation and re-telling the story chronologically of how he gets there, through Chloe’s own adventure.
This documentary has been developed and is ready and waiting for finance.
And for more information on the trip check out Chloe’s website http://www.icecapstation.com/