Science meets adventure -- an Arctic expedition is caught in the grip of the ice it has come to study. In the Last Ice Area, 500 nautical miles from the North Pole, a scientific team is on a rare mission to measure the world's oldest ice floes. Tiny specks in a vast ocean wilderness, they are alone. And they're in trouble. Jumbled slabs of sea ice are closing in from every corner. Hauling loaded kayaks, the team struggles to follow a route that had been navigable only years earlier. Trapped in a frozen maelstrom -- caught in the grip of the floes they came to study -- something has to give. The science is scuttled: bearing witness to Earth's most pressing existential threat, what matters now is survival. They must escape the chaos by traversing a narrow channel between Canada and Greenland -- the most formidable passage of the polar north.