Prince Harry: "Antarctica Jumped Up and Bit Me on the Ass"

Royal reveals he fell ill with severe altitude sickness as well as exhaustion, which forced him to rest for 36 hours

Prince Harry may have been in high spirits upon completing the 208-mile charity trek to the South Pole in December, but new footage captured during the expedition shows the journey was anything but smooth sailing.

During the Walking With the Wounded fundraising trek, which Harry participated in with injured servicemen and women, the redheaded royal fell ill with severe altitude sickness as well as exhaustion, which forced him to rest for 36 hours.

In a video taken during the journey across the Antarctic, Harry is seen looking worse for wear while saying, 'If you show a weakness to Antarctica, I think it exploits it. And I think it will slowly grind you down until you have the utmost respect for it, which I now have."

A medic checks Harry for frostbite as the 29-year-old Brit wails in pain before admitting, "I thought I could just come out here and just crack on and see it through without any issues, make sure I'm here for the guys when they need me. But yeah, I'm frustrated and disappointed in myself. It really does prove quite how mentally and physically tough these guys are," he said of his fellow South Pole voyagers, which included amputees.

And in a documentary on the expedition, which aired Sunday on Britain's ITV, Harry admitted, "Antarctica jumped up and bit me on the ass."

Ah, there's the royal we know and love.

Harry and a team of 12 injured service members completed the 208-mile journey in December on lucky Friday the 13th. Three teams—Soldier On (Australia and Canada), Soldiers to Summit (United States of America) and Walking With the Wounded (United Kingdom), which was led by Prince Harry—took part in the charity event.

Originally, the American, British and Commonwealth teams were competing against each other, but the expedition director later announced that the event would no longer be a race and the teams would instead be going at their own pace due to weather conditions.

Upon arriving at the South Pole, The Wire's Dominic West, who completed the journey with the Canadian-Australian team, revealed that Harry and others celebrated by drinking champagne out of prosthetic legs. "There was a lot of liqueur drunk. We all drank champagne out of Duncan's favorite prosthetic legs," he said, referring to Duncan Slater, who lost both his legs in Afghanistan in 2009 and also completed the charity trek.

He also shared that Harry told "eye-wateringly rude jokes" to keep the participant's spirits high in the unbearably cold temperatures, proving the royal with a penchant for partying indeed did his part in boosting the moral of the team.

Team Harry!