Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and trans-Atlantic airship aviation. Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac. Instead he was a courageous innovator. Dr. Frederick Cook was the first to claim he made it to the North Pole in 1908. A year later, so did Robert Peary, but both their claims had been seriously questioned. There was enough doubt that Norwegian explorer extraordinaire Roald Amundsen picked up where Walter Wellman left off, attempting to fly to the North Pole by airship. He would go in the Norge, designed by Umberto Nobile. However, the engineer Nobile felt slighted by Amundsen. Two years later, Nobile returned. The journey ended in disaster, death and accusations of cannibalism, launching one of the great rescue operations the world had ever seen.

In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett, considered the world’s greatest living ice navigator. The expedition’s visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who was hungry for fame. Just six weeks after the Karluk departed, giant ice floes closed in around her. As the ship became icebound, Stefansson disembarked with five companions and struck out on what he claimed was a 10-day caribou hunting trip. Most on board would never see him again. Captain Bartlett now made a difficult and courageous decision. He would take one of the young Inuit hunters and attempt a 1,000-mile journey to save the shipwrecked survivors. It was their only hope.

In July 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Greely and his men confronted every possible challenge --- vicious wolves, sub-zero temperatures and months of total darkness --- as they set about exploring one of the most remote, unrelenting environments on the planet. LABYRINTH OF ICE tells the true story of the heroic lives and deaths of these voyagers hell-bent on fame and fortune --- at any cost --- and how their journey changed the world.