2. 职称英语
  3. Sixty days walking over ice and snow in temperature as low as -45 °C , with n

Sixty days walking over ice and snow in temperature as low as -45 °C , with n

游客2025-03-30  0
问题    Sixty days walking over ice and snow in temperature as low as -45 °C , with nothing to keep you company except the occasional polar "bear". This is no small achievement. Only a few people have ever walked to the North Pole unassisted, and if Christina Franco succeeds, she will have earned a place in the history books and met one of the few remaining challenges of exploration left to women.
   Her 480-mile journey will begin in northern Canada, dragging a sledge that weighs as much as she does. At the end of each day’s walking or skiing, she will pitch her tent in subzero temperatures, get into a sleeping bag filled with ice, and attempt to sleep to the unsettling background sounds of howling wind and cracking ice, which may or may not signal the approach of one of those polar bears. "I’ll carry a pistol to scare any bears away, " says Franco, 42. "The bears that far north won’t have had contact with humans, fortunately, so they won’t associate me with food, but they will be curious and that’s dangerous. If it uses a paw to see what you are, it could damage your tent—or your arm. I imagine I’ll have quite a few sleepless nights."
   Many of the early polar explorers suffered from disease and injuries, and while modern technology (lightweight materials, satellite phones, places on stand-by to carry out rescue missions) has lessened the dangers, it can never make such an inhospitable landscape anything approaching safe. It can take just five minutes for any uncovered skin to become frostbitten and, once the sun has risen, Franco will only be able to remove her sunglasses inside her tent, otherwise the intensity of the sunlight reflecting off the snow would cause snow blindness. Just to heighten the danger, the cold will slow down her brain functions, so it will be more difficult to make split-second decisions in the event of a sudden crisis.
   She will use about 8, 000 calories a day, losing nearly half a kilogram every 24 hours. "The problem is that the human body can only take on about 5, 500 calories a day, " she says. "So you have to fatten up before you set off or you’ll run out of energy." Franco is currently trying to put on 19 kilos. She may complain about not fitting into any of her dresses, but when Franco weighs herself in front of me and finds she’s lost one kilo rather than gained two, as she’d expected, she’s very upset. "I hope my scales are wrong because, if not, I’ve lost weight, " she says, reaching for one of many bars of chocolate lying around her kitchen. [br] The word "unsettling" (in Paragraph 2) means______.
选项 A、comforting
B、worrying
C、exciting
D、surprising
答案 B
解析 根据第二段中的“…she will pitch her tent in sub-zero temperatures，get into a sleeping bag filled with ice，and attempt to sleep to the unsettling background sounds of howling wind and cracking ice，which may or may not signal the approach of one of those polar bears．”可知，她在零度以下的野外搭帐篷，睡在一个满是冰块的睡袋中，试图在呼啸的寒风和冰块进裂的不安背景声中入睡，这些声响可能是也可能不是某只北极熊接近的信号。据此可知，unsettling意为“令人不安的”，与B项worrying(令人担心的)为同义词，因此B项正确。A项comforting：舒适的；C项exciting：令人激动的；D项surprising：令人惊讶的，不符合题意。
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