The story about how British explorer Henry Worsley trekked across Antarctica in 30-below temperatures while lugging 300 pounds of supplies for his ill-fated, solo trip will soon make the journey to movie screens.
Worsley, “one of the greatest polar explorers of our time,” was first immortalized in a 2015 book about his journey by New Yorker writer David Grann. The story, entitled The White Darkness, has now been optioned to become a movie.
The 55-year-old retired British Army officer first set out on his more than 1,000-mile-long, coast-to-coast tour without assistance or even sled dogs on Nov. 13, 2015. He expected to make the trip in about two and a half months but sadly, Worsley fell victim to the Antarctic‘s punishing elements after 71 days.
“It was a real physical battle with fatigue,” Worsley wrote in his own diary, “I was stopping literally every minute or so to catch my breath or just get ready for the next exertion required.”
He eventually made it to the South Pole on Jan. 2, where he ignored offers of help made by fellow explorers and carried on. He eventually called off his journey 20 days later, deploying a rescue mission that rushed him to a hospital in Punta Arenas in southern Chile. It was, however, too late.
When he arrived at the hospital, Worsley’s liver and kidneys were failing and he eventually died from exposure.
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