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The polar regions are more hostile to life than any other part of the Earth.

Human beings have little natural protection against the

cold. So why for thousands of years have we endured the

hardships that come from living here? And what keeps us

coming back today to the farthest extremes of our planet?

Winter in the most northerly town on Earth, Longyearben.

Here, for three months of the year, the sun never rises.

Only the full moon, which never sets as far

north as this, sheds any light into the darkness.

This town was built here in Svalbard, only 700 miles from

the North Pole, to support a mine. The Arctic is rich in

coal, oil and minerals.

In Siberia, the Russian Arctic, the mineral wealth has given rise to large cities.

This is Norilsk, the coldest city on Earth.

Temperatures regularly drop to below minus 50 degrees

centigrade. Fuel freezes in the tanks of the trucks and has

to be melted in a rather alarming way.

Ships are frozen into the rivers for nine months of the

year. The ice must be cut away from their hulls because

steel becomes brittle and vulnerable to the thickening ice.

Like all Arctic cities, Norilsk depends on a power plant,

which heats everybody's home. Waste heat from the plant even

keeps a lake ice-free all winter. Even at air temperatures

of minus 50, the Norilsk Walrus Club come here every day.

There is evidence that a dip in cold water is good for

the immune system. But when the water is a degree above

freezing, it's hard to imagine that the benefits could outweigh the pain.

Today's Arctic city dwellers can lead an almost normal

existence thanks to technology. But towns and cities are

very recent arrivals in the polar landscape.

The polar regions are the least populated part of our

planet. Most of the Arctic remains empty of human beings.

In the north, the pole itself is covered by a freezing

ocean. Around it lie vast lands, of which Siberia is the

largest and coldest.

Human beings first ventured onto the Great Plains of

Siberia, the tundra, thousands of years ago, and some live

here still.

The Dalgan are one of the few tribes who still live

in much the same way as those first Arctic pioneers.

They are reindeer people. Reindeer are one of the few

animals that can endure these bitterly cold conditions,

scraping a living by nibbling tiny plants that survive beneath the snow.

Nobody has ever totally tamed reindeer, but today's animals

are docile enough to allow the Dalgan to drive them across

the tundra in an everlasting search for their food.

This is a typical Dalgan village, home to just two extended families.

Here, in the coldest part of the Arctic, the only way to get

water for nine months of the year is to melt ice from the

frozen rivers.

At least there's no problem preventing food

from decay. Outside is one big, deep freeze.

Survival is only possible because of reindeer fur. It makes

wonderfully warm clothing. Those small children still have

to be sewn into their clothes to prevent instant frostbite.

The Dalgan even use reindeer fur to insulate their huts.

This is living at its most communal. Good relations with the in-laws are essential.

Reindeer are so valuable that the people only eat them if

they have no other choice. Their favorite food is raw fish

from the frozen rivers.

Every week or so, these families have to travel

to find new feeding grounds for their herds.

First, they round up their strongest animals with lassoes, a

skill that their ancestors brought with them when they came

north from Central Asia.

And then, literally, they move house.

A whole Dalgan village can move on in just a few hours. Over

the year, they travel hundreds of miles like this across the

vast tundra.

It was the herds of reindeer wandering over the lands of

the Arctic that brought the first Dalgan here. Other people,

however, took on an even greater challenge. They left

the land and looked for their food out on the frozen sea.

Here, in the shifting world of the sea ice, they found sea mammals.

Pasha leads a group of Inuit men in Chukotka, the

northeastern corner of Russia. The men have traveled many

hours from home in the bitter cold,

fighting their way through a dangerous maze.

These hundred-ton ice floes could crush their small boats like eggshells.

The men have big families, and this is the only way they have of feeding them.

Pasha is looking for the puffs of steamy air produced by

their quarry, an animal that is bigger than many Arctic

whales,

a two-ton seal with formidable tusks,

a walrus, it's heading for open water. They must reach it before it dives.

An angry walrus could easily overturn the bonus.

The harpoon sticks firmly in the walrus's thick layer of

blubber and floats attached to it to prevent the animal from

diving.

Pasha wants to kill quickly with a single clean shot.

The hunters are exhausted after a long day, but they still

have a lot more work to do. This enormous prize will feed

everyone's family for weeks.

It will take many hours to butcher. Nothing will go to waste.

The meat is parceled up in bags made of the animal's skin.

It's midnight, but the sun is still up. Summer is almost here.

This far north, the seasons change fast. The sun is

rising higher and growing warmer with each passing day.

The transformation from winter to summer is so dramatic

that it dominates the lives of all who live here.

The ice around the coast has almost disappeared, and gone

are the seals and walrus that Pasha and his men rely on.

They set off on another search for food.

Their destination is an island in the bay.

Their walrus skin boat has an ancient design, light enough

to carry high up the beach so it doesn't drift away.

Once again, the men will have to work as a team,

but one of them will be taking very serious risks.

The lightest man in the group, Kholia, is also the oldest.

He will trust his life to a length of old nylon rope and the

strength of his friends.

These 100 meter high cliffs are home to thousands

of gillimots, and Kholia is after their eggs.

He relies on the men above to lower him to the right pace.

Kholia is tough, but his stress is obvious.

The men lower Kholia down to the bottom of the cliff, and

from there he works his way back up the crumbling rock face.

This mission will produce no more than about 50 eggs,

but at least there's no need to carry a packed lunch.

Over the years, many men have fallen to their deaths

collecting seabird eggs. This is truly dangerous work.

These Arctic peoples can't grow crops. The frozen ground

never thaws to allow them to do so. They rely on animals for

their food, so the chance to collect a few dozen eggs

has to be taken, even if it means risking your life.

The change of season has transformed the Arctic's

coastline, and inland the difference is just as extreme.

July temperatures on the tundra can be

surprisingly high, over 30 degrees centigrade.

Reindeer now move not just to find fresh pasture, but also

to avoid the summer swarms of blood-sucking flies. To keep

their animals healthy, the local herders are driving them to

the sea. The cooler conditions on the coast bring relief to

the herds, and the chance every year for different tribes to meet.

Pasha and his hunters live close by. They've had word of the herder's arrival.

The hunters' cargo is highly prized for the winter ahead.

Fat-rich walrus meat that's been fermenting in the skin bags

for two months. Today, we'll see an exchange that has

taken place every summer for centuries. The herder's barter

reindeer skins for walrus meat. Pooling their resources

has helped these communities to survive for so long.

A fry-up of Gilimot eggs is all the better when shared with old friends.

Summer brings a brief chance for isolated peoples to meet.

This is an opportunity to exchange news, arrange weddings,

and tell the latest jokes.

By August, the summer is over. Winter arrives only too

swiftly, but the peoples of the Arctic, who came here

originally to hunt, have devised ways to deal with the

hostile and changing conditions that have stood the test of

time. Today, there's a new draw to the Arctic.

This is Greenland, a territory of Denmark now

known to be rich in oil and precious metals.

This sled team is part of the Danish Special Forces. They're

on one of the world's toughest journeys, a 2,000-mile

patrol, to maintain Denmark's claim to this valuable wilderness.

But the patrol's mission is only possible with

the help of man's oldest Arctic companion.

Rasmus and Roland have spent the summer months training and

getting to know their team of Greenland huskies. They need

to have a very close bond with every single dog. And

Armstrong, actually the oldest dog in the whole patrol, but

he's still going strong.

The men are totally dependent on the stamina of their dogs,

which will keep on running all through the bitter cold of

the winter.

This is the last time the team will see the sun for two months.

The most intelligent dogs always lead, choosing the

safest route, feeling for hidden crevasses and thin ice.

This is one of six teams that patrol the whole of northeast

Greenland, the only people in an empty wilderness that is

larger than France and Great Britain combined.

Conditions here are too extreme for current mining

technology, but someday ways will be found of digging out

the huge mineral treasures that lie hidden within these

mountains. The patrol secures Denmark's claim to do so

simply by being here.

But it's not the prospect of getting rich that makes men

sign up for this patrol. It's a chance for the journey of a

lifetime. The team travel over the ice for

six months, covering up to 40 miles in a day.

Friendship and teamwork are essential if they're to succeed.

The dogs can sleep outside no matter how cold it

gets. Rasmus and Roland have a nice cozy tent.

They have a few modern conveniences, including a radio with

which they report their position back to headquarters in

Denmark and catch up on the latest news.

Right now it's the section of money. What's new in the

economy in Denmark, the financial crisis and all the other

things that we actually don't care about out here. If you

can cope with the conditions, then winter in the Arctic can

be magical, especially when the greatest light show on Earth is overhead.

The first humans in the Arctic believed the Northern Lights,

or aurora borealis, were dancing spirits. Now we know the

lights are caused by electrically charged particles

streaming from the sun, attracted by the magnetic pull of

the Earth's poles.

A big aurora storm contains enough energy to knock out

satellite communications and power supplies across the

Northern Hemisphere, so understanding the aurora is vital.

In Alaska, rockets are used to study the lights.

A hundred miles up at the edge of outer space, the rockets

release a cloud of glowing smoke that's visible from Earth.

The smoke is blown by fierce winds which are generated by the aurora.

Mapping the movement of the smoke helps scientists to

understand how this unearthly spectacle affects our

atmosphere.

They constantly monitor the aurora to help protect us from

its effects, so the rest of us can simply enjoy the magic,

just as the Arctic's first people must have done thousands of years ago.

For all the many peoples of the Arctic, the aurora is a

reminder of the sun's presence throughout the dark days of

winter.

But when the sun is below the horizon in the north,

it's above it at the southern end of our planet.

Here, humanity's history has been very different.

Antarctica is far colder than the Arctic, and 99% of its

land is permanently blanketed by ice. Antarctica is so

utterly remote and inhospitable that no people ever settled here.

It was only 200 years ago that the first

human beings even glimpsed the vast continent.

The first people who crossed the Southern Ocean did so for

the same reason that the first people went to the Arctic

Ocean, to hunt sea mammals.

The populations of whales and seals are only now

beginning to recover from 150 years of intensive hunting.

But none of those hunters ever tried to venture into the

frigid interior of the Antarctic continent. The first

successful attempt to do that was made only 100 years ago.

This hut was the base for one of the most famous expeditions

in polar history.

It was from here, in 1911, that Captain Scott and his team

launched their attempt to be the first people to reach the

South Pole.

The cold, dry conditions have preserved the interior of

the hut almost exactly as the expedition members left it.

Expedition photographer Herbert Ponting

captured the spirit of the age of exploration.

These first explorers borrowed the techniques of the Arctic

peoples. They wore fur gloves and boots and burned seal

blubber to keep warm. They built sleds based on a traditional Inuit design.

They even made their sleeping bags from reindeer hide.

Scott and his men sought the glory of discovery in an

untouched wilderness and died in the attempt. But he and

those who followed him were the first to reveal the

splendor of Antarctica to the rest of the world.

The lure of adventure still draws intrepid travelers today.

Like the first explorers, most modern visitors come during

the brief summer when the cold relents enough for the

toughest icebreakers to reach the edge of the continent. But

most still need a helicopter to go further.

The scenery in Antarctica is magnificent and dramatic,

but what really attracts people here is the wildlife.

An emperor penguin colony is a particular highlight.

Because human beings didn't arrive in the Antarctic until

the part of the world. In the last few centuries, the

animals have never developed a fear of man.

But very strict regulations govern how close people can

approach any wildlife. And when visitors leave, they must

take every trace of their visit away with them.

Since 1959, the whole of Antarctica has been protected by an

international treaty. The nations of the world have agreed

that no country can claim Antarctica or prospect for its oil or minerals.

The only significant human activities allowed here

are those that extend our scientific knowledge.

But unlocking Antarctica's secrets requires some unusual tools.

This brand new robot submarine has been designed

to go far beyond the limits of any human.

Today, this diver is putting the sub through its paces on

one of its very first dives. It's designed to be small and

nimble enough to explore the Antarctic seabed without damaging it.

The submarine's mission, as it journeys into the unknown,

is to map the seafloor and look for species new to science.

The seawater here is a degree below zero, so even

the toughest human diver can't stay down for long.

The submarine will explore deeper under the ice than anyone has gone before.

From the depths of the ocean to the highest peaks of the

land, new discoveries are being made, even in places which

were first visited over a century ago.

Mount Erebus was an irresistible draw to the legendary

explorer Ernest Shackleton. In 1908, his men became the

first to climb this active volcano. They soon discovered

that this is the coldest place on the Antarctic coast.

Today's explorers still have to guard against frostbite in

the height of summer, when temperatures rarely creep above

minus 30 degrees centigrade.

Shackleton's men had no idea of the extraordinary

spectacle that lay beneath their feet.

Under the ice and snow is a network of caves which only

a handful of expert cavers have ever dared to enter.

This is the first scientific expedition to explore them in detail.

Here, there are ice formations that occur nowhere else on Earth.

Each cave contains its own unique collection of structures.

The team is mapping the caves to see how their shape changes over the years.

That's 126.8 degrees to the angle. The steam leaking from

vents in the side of the volcano is constantly sculpting

this labyrinth that extends deep under the ice. When the hot

breath of the volcano hits the icy walls, the moisture in

the air freezes into beautiful shapes.

Some of the crystals are so unusual that the cavers are

investigating a remote but tantalizing possibility about

their formation.

Could it be that some of these extraordinary crystal shapes

are formed by highly specialized bacteria living in the ice?

Nobody yet knows the answer. This is just one of the many

strange mysteries that draw people to work in a place that

is so hostile to human life.

While some scientists come to Erebus to explore its bizarre

ice caves, others visit the volcano to study the innermost

workings of our planet.

Erebus is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, but

even so, volcanologists work on the very rim of its crater.

They stand in the bitter cold, while 100 meters below them

is a lava lake where temperatures are over 1,000 degrees

centigrade.

This is a rare glimpse of the molten rock that lies beneath the Earth's crust.

But research here is looking up as well as down, measuring

how the gases that bubble out of the volcano influence the

makeup of the air we breathe.

Antarctica is the best place to measure any changes in our

atmosphere because it has the least polluted air on Earth.

It's also the perfect place to launch more outward-looking missions.

This balloon, made of material no thicker than cling

film, will eventually grow to be 300 meters tall.

It will carry a device for detecting cosmic rays, tiny

particles from the beginning of time that are only now

reaching Earth.

The balloon will travel to the very edge of outer space

to gather clues about the formation of the universe.

Even today, very few people have ever been able to find

out about the formation of the universe. Who ever make the

journey inland from the coast? We still know

remarkably little about the interior of the continent.

The people on this plane are trying to answer one of the

fundamental questions. How much ice is there in Antarctica?

They measure the depth of the ice sheet, which is over 4,000

meters in places, using radar. Their work will enable us to

see how the volume of Antarctica's ice changes in the

future. It also makes it possible to map a hidden landscape.

This plane is following the same route through the Trans

-Antarctic Mountains that Captain Scott took a hundred years

ago. His team hauled their sleds over a hundred miles up

this glacier, the Beardmoor. The Earth's surface is now

covered in ice.

Skirting seemingly endless crevasses with no map to guide

them and no idea of what lay ahead, it was a journey of

extraordinary suffering.

Their target lay beyond the mountains, over 3,000

meters above sea level, on the Antarctic Plateau.

An unbroken sheet of ice larger than Western Europe, this is

the coldest, the windiest, the most lifeless place on Earth.

Rowald Amundsen's team narrowly defeated Scots to become

the first people to reach the South Pole on the 14th of

December, 1911. Nobody else successfully completed

the journey for nearly 50 years after that.

But since 1957, there's been a permanent base at the

South Pole. You could even land a plane on the ice runway.

The early explorers would be astounded by the facilities at the South Pole today.

Construction work isn't easy when the average summer

temperature is minus 25 degrees centigrade. But despite the

difficulties, the most high-tech scientific research

station ever built was unveiled here in 2006.

The brand new Amundsen-Scots South Pole station is designed

to cope with the world's most extreme conditions. The

building's sloping edge deflects the prevailing wind.

Beneath, there are stilts that can raise the whole building

a further eight meters to keep it above the accumulating snow.

Living inside is as close to being on a space station as you

can find on Earth. This space is totally self-sufficient.

The people are completely cut off from the outside

world for more than half the year over winter.

The total darkness makes this the perfect place to study the night sky.

The group of stargazers will be the most isolated community

on our planet, but they will have all their needs catered

for.

There is even a greenhouse where fresh vegetables grow under

artificial light all through the darkest, coldest winter

anywhere.

The sun sets in March at the South Pole, and won't rise again for six months.

For a few days at this time of year, high altitudes are

expected to rise. The remote clouds of ice crystals continue

to catch the sunlight even when the sun itself is far below the horizon.

But soon, all trace of the sun disappears, and today's

overwintering scientists remember the first explorers.

These men, who endured the winter in flimsy wooden huts,

borrowed knowledge from the Arctic pioneers before them. But

they came here to study and explore, rather than to hunt or

exploit. They embodied the human spirit that has enabled us

to survive at the poles.

Here, we are pushed to our limits, but in being pushed,

humanity has achieved the extraordinary and opened up the

last frontier.

To tell the story of how we survive at the poles, Frozen

Planet travelled to Siberia, the far north of Russia, where

most of the Arctic's people live.

The team got to know many extraordinary people.

But one group of men above all really opened their eyes to

what it means to live off the land in the most unforgiving

environment on Earth. Men who take their life in

their hands every day just to find their food.

Producer Dan Rees led the Frozen Planet team on their

longest journey in the Arctic. Their mission was to film

walrus hunters in Russia's most remote region, Chukotka, the

closest point to their old enemy, the United States, 4000

miles and nine time zones east of Moscow. It's still a

sensitive region, and the team soon learned that the border

guards remain twitchy about foreigners with cameras.

To get permission to film, the crew relied on anthropologist

Naomi Thompson, one of the few Westerners to have worked

with the people here.

But even Naomi finds a lot of doors closed to him. I

have experienced a level of red tape I never could have

anticipated. We've got our Russian visas in our passports.

That's fine, but that's just the beginning. Here is the

special permission given by the security services to be

in the region of Chukotka. The special permission to be in

every one of the population centers we will visit on our

trip. Permission to shoot with a telephoto lens. Permission

to shoot from a helicopter. Permission to shoot in a natural

reserve. But we still don't have our migration cards. I'm

trying to get them. And if we don't get them by the end of

the day, we're going to be deported back to Alaska. It'll

take three months to get new ones. Naomi's paper chase takes

two days, but finally the team is allowed to begin their

journey to the hunters' camp. With no roads, sometimes the

only possible route is over the fast melting surfaces of the

lakes.

OK.

They need to be prepared for a quick exit.

The next day, the crew finally reach the coast. The hunting

camp is now just 30 miles away across a bay, but the

crossing could be risky. The frozen sea is melting fast in the spring sunshine.

I'm confident it's safe. It's not going to break underneath

us. 50-50. 50-50. 50-50. The locals employ several

generations of Arctic transport, from the ancient to the merely antique.

With the sea ice cracking up beneath them, Dan has to trust

the crew and a ton of filming gear to the experience of the

locals. Even by their standards, this was fast becoming a risky journey.

Where the first sleds crossed just minutes before is now impossible.

It's broken right up. We can't cross the leads in the ice

here, so we need to get on some boats and the ice is just

breaking up too fast for us at the moment. Fortunately, the

hunters from the camp turn up in the nick of time to rescue

the crew for the final leg of the journey.

6 days and 5,000 miles from home, the crew finally arrive

at the place that will be their home for the next month.

This is an active hunting camp, and that evening the team

are introduced to the realities of what it's like to be a

part of this. It's no offending for yourself in the Arctic.

We've just seen a walrus hunt out here in the waters of the

Bering Sea. All the meat will be eaten, they eat an awful

lot of the internal organs as well, they use the skin, they

use the sinews, they use the stomach for making drums. So it

will get used very heavily and it is completely free range,

wild caught animal. You can't grow any vegetables up here,

but sea mammal meat contains all the nutrients the hunters

need and is very low in cholesterol. Dan is keen to try some

of Collier's health food. Well this is yesterday's seal, and

a chunk of flesh there, behind it is some intestine.

We should try a bit. That's seal intestine.

It's quite fishy, fishy rubber. That's not too bad, I

thought it was going to be more disgusting than it actually

is. The salt helps. Would you like to try what we eat?

Chicken korma? No? I don't blame you, yours is much better.

That's what I thought.

As well as providing food, the animals here traditionally

provided transport. Collier and Pasha, the oldest hunters,

keep alive the skill of building walrus skin boats. You

don't need a welding torch to repair this boat, just a juicy

lump of seal fat to bung any holes. By living amongst them,

the crew had really begun to get to know the hunters. But

there was one big part of their lives which remained a mystery.

As spring turns to summer, the hunters head out to an island

to gather seabird eggs. The crew had heard stories of this,

but had little idea of what it was going to involve. That's

where they climb, those are impressive heights. It's quite

something.

For cameraman Ted Giffords, this was the first

sight of the rock face he was about to work on.

These cliffs can be treacherous as Collier,

the expert egg collector, knows only too well.

Ted will rely on steel stakes for anchors and an array of

climbing gear and ropes. Collier preferred to stick with the

simpler method that has served him well for many years.

The crew can't quite believe what they're seeing.

If you fell on that, that would be absolutely horrendous. Horrendous.

It's a bit sketchy and the rope is only about that thick.

It's an interesting method. The limestone cliff is loose and

crumbling because of hundreds of years of freezing and

thawing. Even for a highly trained professional climber like

Ted, it's a dangerous descent.

Collier has been climbing here for four decades, but this

is the first time he's had company and sometimes he forgets

that Ted is just below him.

Climbing supervisor Adam Scott holds his breath as he

watches. A fall to the rocks 100 metres below would almost

certainly be fatal.

This is the most hardcore thing I've ever seen.

It was when the team returned to the boat to finish filming

that they got their most spectacular view of the lengths

Collier was going to, to get his dinner.

This shot sent the team home with a fresh perspective and a

deep respect for these people who still live off the land in

the Arctic. A way of life for which there is no safety net.

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