阅读理解。
In 1997, a group of twenty British women made history. Working
in five teams with four women in each team,they walked to the
North Pole. Apart from one experienced female guide, the other
women were all ordinary people who had never done anything like
this in their lives before. They managed to survive in an environment
and defeated several very experienced men during the same
period.
Once on the ice, each woman had to ski along while dragging a
sledge (雪橇) weighing over 50 kilos. The Arctic ice was pushed up
into huge piles two or three meters high, and the sledges had to be
pulled up one side and carefully let down the other all on the rough
surface so that they didn't become damaged. The temperature was
always below the freezing point and sometimes strong winds made
walking while pulling so much weight almost impossible. It was also
very difficult for them to put up their tents when they stopped each
night.
In such conditions ,'the women were making good progress if
they covered fourteen or fifteen kilometers a day. However, part of
the journey was across a frozen sea with moving water underneath
the ice and at some points the team would drift(漂流) back more
than five kilometers during the night. That meant that after walking
in these very severe conditions for ten hours on one day, they had to
spend part of the next day covering the same ground again.
So,how did they manage to succeed? They realized that they
were part of a team. If any one of them didn't pull her sledge or get
her job done, she would endanger the success of the whole expedition.
Any form of selfishness could result in the efforts of everyone
else being completely wasted, so personal feelings had to be put to
one side. At the end of their journey, the women agreed that it was
mental effort far more than physical fitness that got them to the
North Pole.
1. The expedition was extraordinary because________.
A. there was no one to lead it
B. the women did not have any men with them
C. it was a new experience for most of the women
D. the women had not met one another before
2. On the expedition, the women had to be particularly careful to avoid_______.
A. falling over on the ice
B. being left behind
C. damaging the sledges
D. getting too cold at night
3. The women could not cover 15 kilometers a day mainly because______.
A. they got too tired
B. the ice was moving
C. they kept getting lost
D. the temperatures were too low
4. The passage seems to tell us that_________.
A. motivation and teamwork achieve goals
B. women can do anything they want
C. it is good to experience difficult conditions
D. the Arctic conditions are very severe
