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Scott and his final team of five arrived at the South Pole in 1912 January to find they had been beaten to it by a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen,who rode on dogsled.
1912年一月，斯科特和他的五人小分隊 到達了南極點。但不巧，他們發現由挪威人羅爾德阿蒙森領頭的小隊，已然領先。
Scott's team ended up on foot.
斯科特及隊員們徒步前行。
And for more than a century this journey has remained unfinished.
然而，已經過了一個世紀， 漫漫旅途無果而終。
Scott's team of five died on the return journey.
斯科特的五人小分隊， 死于歸途。
And for the last decade,I've been asking myself why that is.
過去十年來，我不斷自問：為何？
How come this has remained the high-water mark?
何以它仍為人類巔?
Scott's team covered 1,600 miles on foot.
斯科特的團隊共計步行 1600英里。
No one's come close to that ever since.
前無古人，后無來者。
So this is the high-water mark of human endurance,human endeavor, human athletic achievement in arguably the harshest climate on Earth.
這是人類耐力頂峰，人們共同努力的結晶。 人類極限運動的巔峰。況且，四目所及，天寒地坼。
It was as if the marathon record has remained unbroken since 1912.
就好比馬拉松記錄，自1912年以來都不曾被打破似的。
And of course some strange and predictable combination of curiosity,stubbornness, and probably hubris led me to thinking I might be the man to try to finish the job.
好奇，混雜著第六感，隨風而來。固執，可能還有些許傲慢，讓我躍躍欲試。
Unlike Scott's expedition, there were just two of us,and we set off from the coast of Antarctica in October last year,dragging everything ourselves,a process Scott called "man-hauling."
不同于斯科特， 我們相伴二人行。自去年10月，我們從南極洲海岸出發,荷重前行。即斯科特所謂的“人拖”。
When I say it was like walking from here to San Francisco and back,I actually mean it was like dragging something that weighs a shade more than the heaviest ever NFL player.
我剛才說，這就像 從這兒到舊金山的往返路程。實際上，還要再拖個 比美式橄欖球運動員稍微重點的東西。
Our sledges weighed 200 kilos,or 440 pounds each at the start,the same weights that the weakest of Scott's ponies pulled.
我們的行李大約200公斤重,或者說，剛開始，每人負荷是440磅。這是斯科特團隊中最瘦弱 的種馬拉的貨物重量。
Early on, we averaged 0.5 miles per hour.
起先，我們平均一小時行進0.5英里，
Perhaps the reason no one had attempted this journey until now,in more than a century,was that no one had been quite stupid enough to try.
也許， 超過一世紀，人們惶而畏之因，是真沒有這么傻的人會嘗試啊。
And while I can't claim we were exploring in the genuine Edwardian sense of the word a we weren't naming any mountains or mapping any uncharted valleys a I think we were stepping into uncharted territory in a human sense.
雖然我們不能像愛德華時代的探索家那樣,我們不是在為山命名，或是標出任何未知的峽谷,但我想我們踏入了一種人性的新區域。
Certainly, if in the future we learn there is an area of the human brain that lights up when one curses oneself,I won't be at all surprised.
誠然，如果未來，我們得知人在賭咒時大腦一塊區域會被激活，對我來說，這沒什么好驚訝的。
You've heard that the average American spends 90 percent of their time indoors.
你們己經知道美國人平均花90%在室內，
We didn't go indoors for nearly four months.
我們會幾乎四個月不出門。
We didn't see a sunset either.
我們當然也看不到日落。
It was 24-hour daylight.
極點是24小時極晝，
Living conditions were quite spartan.
生存條件惡劣。
I changed my underwear three times in 105 days and Tarka and I shared 30 square feet on the canvas.
在105天里，我換了3次內衣我和隊友共享30平方英尺的空間。
Though we did have some technology that Scott could never have imagined.
確實我們有斯科特團隊想都想不到的技術。
And we blogged live every evening from the tent via a laptop and a custom-made satellite transmitter,all of which were solar-powered:
而且我們每晚都會通過筆記本電腦及簡易制作的衛星信號轉換器發博客來證明我們還活著。一切都是太陽能驅動的，
we had a flexible photovoltaic panel over the tent.
在帳篷上，我們有可靈活移動的攝像頭。
And the writing was important to me.
寫下經歷對我來說也很重要。
As a kid, I was inspired by the literature of adventure and exploration,and I think we've all seen here this week the importance and the power of storytelling.
孩提時，我被冒險和探索小說鼓舞了，我想，這周，我們已經看到敘述故事的重要性及其力量。
So we had some 21st-century gear,but the reality is that the challenges that Scott faced were the same that we faced:
綜上所述，我們有21世紀的現代化設備，但現實是，斯科特團隊面臨的挑戰于我們而言，同樣存在：
those of the weather and of what Scott called glide,the amount of friction between the sledges and the snow.
天氣惡劣，以及雪橇及雪之間大量的摩擦產生的 斯科特稱之為“滑動”的作用力。
The lowest wind chill we experienced was in the-70s,and we had zero visibility, what's called white-out,for much of our journey.
風力最低也是70mps，伸手不見五指 這就是所謂的白茫茫一片。我們旅程大多數時候都是這樣的。
We traveled up and down one of the largest and most dangerous glaciers in the world, the Beardmore glacier.
我們穿行在世界上最大，也是最危險的冰川之一，比爾德莫爾冰川之上。
It's 110 miles long; most of its surface is what's called blue ice.
它長達110米，表層大部分由一種叫 藍冰的物質覆蓋。
You can see it's a beautiful, shimmering steel-hard blue surface covered with thousands and thousands of crevasses,these deep cracks in the glacial ice up to 200 feet deep.
你們可以看到， 它是美麗卻難以使車輪前行的光滑冰川它由數以千計的溶洞覆蓋，最深處可達200英尺深。
Planes can't land here,so we were at the most risk,technically, when we had the slimmest chance of being rescued.
飛機無法著陸，所以我們的生命岌岌可危，我們生還的幾率近乎為零。
We got to the South Pole after 61 days on foot,with one day off for bad weather, and I'm sad to say, it was something of an anticlimax.
除了有一天因為天氣狀況太糟糕而停止行進再去南極點的路上 在徒步走了61天后,我要說，這確實難于上青天。
There's a permanent American base,the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at the South Pole.
這里有個永久的美國基地，在南極點的阿姆森-斯科特極點考察站。
