An intrepid British explorer narrowly escaped death in one of the remotest and most beautiful places on earth.
Leo Houlding, 37, was kite-skiing across the Antartic wilderness in temperatures as low as -37C when a snow bridge collapsed and his 26 stone sledge fell down a crevasse, pulling him behind it.
The sheer weight of the load meant Leo was unable to do anything to stop it as it hurtled down the gaping chasm in the ice.
But the sledge got caught on the way down and he was pulled out of the hole by expedition team mates Jean Burgun and Mark Sedon.
Leo said: “Thankfully it got stuck on the way down. Those crevasses can be hundreds of meters deep, I hate to think what could’ve happened."
"There would have been no means of rescue. The closest hospital in 2500 miles away. They are the most extreme conditions imaginable."
"You cannot overstate how remote that place is," added Leo, who at 18 became the first Briton to free climb El Capitan in the Yosemite Valley, USA.
Back home after an epic 51-day, 1700 km journey to climb the 2020m (6627-ft) high Spectre, a peak in the continent's Gothic Mountains, Leo can say he lived to tell the tale of an epic adventure, the first to combine kite-sking with mountaineering in Antartica.
Leo, who lives in the Lake District, Cumbria, with GP wife Jessica, 38, their son Jackson, 15 months, and Freya, four, described the Antartic winds as 'your best friend and your worst enemy'. "We needed it to kite ski, and it meant we could cover upto 200km a day with a 200 kg load," he said.
"But at -40 C, with a 50mph wind there is a brutality about the place. The sledge is a pig to pull, but you have to take it everywhere. Without it’s contents, in those conditions you won’t for survive long.
"It is the harshest environment, the most remote place on Earth."
Leo described it as '21st Century exploration". "One hundred years ago, skiing to the South pole or climbing Everest was the cutting edge of adventure. Nowadays they are adventure tourism. Spectre Expedition was cutting edge, one hell of an adventure."
It took five years to raise the £300,000 needed for the trip. The goal was to climb the Spectre, an 'incredible' mountain in the middle of the Antartic wilderness. They also made a film of the trip, to be released in the autumn.
Houlding, Burgun and Sedon completed the climb in 20 hours. "If the Spectre was in Europe, it would be a national park and be very famous, it is like a Shark's tooth, a giant crystal rising into the sky.
"Spectre means 'something widely feared as a possible unpleasant or dangerous occurrence.’ and in one way our expedition was.
"But it is also an incredibly beautiful, awesome place, it is the biblical definition of that word. It has only ever been seen by a handful of people. Being there and climbing it was a very powerful experience.
”When kiting you are dressed like a Spaceman in an insulated suit, helmet, goggles and face mask, which is fitting as it feels like being on another planet."
The only living thing that they saw on their trip to Spectre was a 'lost' sea bird called a southern polar Skua. "It was bizarre, it was 86 degrees south, there should not be birds there. It played around the kites and looked as if to say 'what are you doing here?'
Leo, who completed the expedition last month with Frenchman Jean, 37, and New Zealander Mark, 48, added: "We ended in really good shape and after 51 days could happily have done it all again, which was a great place to be."
He thanked sponsors Berghaus, the Mount Everest Foundation and the Wally Herbert Award for supporting the trip, which re-affirmed his desire to protect our natural environment.
"You are so vulnerable out there, it is complete self reliance," he said. "There is no bus, ambulance, shops. Wonder is the word to describe it.
"It is awe and wonder just to be out there. The 24 hour sun reflects off the ice like a sea of diamonds. It is magical. We have a responsibility to protect these places, not just exploit them."