Antarctica Both Heaven and Hell

* This narrative conveys Messner's achievements and personal philosophies

Undertaking what was once called the last possible land journey on earth, Arved Fuchs and Reinhold Messner completed a dramatic traverse of the Antarctic continent in February 1990, after a 92-day, 2800-kilometer trek on skis. Through temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius, and blizzards with winds measuring up to 150 kilometers per hour, they journeyed across the Thiel mountains to the South Pole, and from there to McMurdo Sound on the Ross Sea. Reinhold Messner did it not as a conquest in the classic, geographical sense. He had simply looked for an adventure -- as a man who had known many -- and he had found it.

In the white infinity of that great wilderness south pole, Messner and Fuchs found something else -- another perception of time and space than he had found on the great mountains that had previously been his goal. On the long march across Antarctica Messner he sensed that 'Heaven' and 'Hell' are not human inventions but rather that they are inseparable halves in the nature of the world, which man should not seek to separate from one another. A remarkable story of hardship, courage, and determination, this is Messner's account of yet another incredible adventure in a life that has already known so many.