Shackleton reluctantly agreed to look for winter quarters at either the Barrier Inlet—which Discovery had briefly visited in 1902—or King Edward VII Land.

By 17 March, their ice camp was within 60 miles (97km) of Paulet Island; [95] however, separated by impassable ice, they were unable to reach it. And so Shackleton, Worsley and Tom Crean set off to reach it by foot—climbing over mountains and sliding down glaciers, forging a path that no human being had ever forged before, until, after 36 hours of desperate hiking, they staggered into the station at Stromness.In 2001, the Athy Heritage Centre-Museum (now the Shackleton Museum), Athy, County Kildare, Ireland, established the Ernest Shackleton Autumn School, which is held annually, to honour the memory of Ernest Shackleton. Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and finally sank in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica on 21 November 1915.

During the Antarctic winter of 1902, in the confines of the iced-in Discovery, Shackleton edited the expedition's magazine the South Polar Times. The port side of the Endurance, pictured October 19, 1915, shortly before the ship was crushed by pack ice and sank. During the expedition, his team climbed Mount Erebus, made many important scientific discoveries and set a record by coming even closer to the South Pole than before. Crew memberThomas Orde-Lees and cook Charles Green, their faces black with smoke from a blubber stove, prepare a meal in a makeshift galley on the ice, during the ill-fated march from Ocean Camp to Patience Camp. This expedition was made into a documentary film, [161] screening as Chasing Shackleton on PBS in the US, and Shackleton: Death or Glory elsewhere on the Discovery Channel.They found that the Barrier Inlet had expanded to form a large bay, in which were hundreds of whales, which led to the immediate christening of the area as the Bay of Whales. He also assisted in the equipping of the Argentine Uruguay, which was being fitted out for the relief of the stranded Swedish Antarctic Expedition under Otto Nordenskjöld.

On 9 January 1909, Shackleton and three companions—Wild, Eric Marshall and Jameson Adams—reached a new Farthest South latitude of 88°23'S, a point only 112 miles (180km) from the Pole. According to Macklin's own account, Macklin told him he had been overdoing things and should try to "lead a more regular life", to which Shackleton answered: "You are always wanting me to give up things, what is it I ought to give up? In 1901, Shackleton was chosen to go on the Antarctic expedition led by British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott on the ship 'Discovery'. He had been in discussions with Douglas Mawson about a scientific expedition to the Antarctic coast between Cape Adare and Gaussberg, and had written to the RGS about this in February 1910.The reality was that the expedition had left Shackleton deeply in debt, unable to meet the financial guarantees he had given to backers. The initial plan was to march across the ice toward land, but that was abandoned after the men managed just seven and a half miles in seven days.