CHALLENGING THE UNFORGIVING IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN
In mid-December, four weeks into a solo, unsupported and unassisted crossing of Antarctica, British adventurer Ben Saunders began to realize it might not end as he had planned.
He was trudging in whiteouts that made navigating difficult, caused headaches, slight nausea, and brought on bouts of vertigo. He compared it to being “on a treadmill in a brightly lit freezer with a white pillowcase over my head.”
Unusually for the Antarctic summer, there were sastrugi — big windblown ridges of snow, some as tall as him — that he had to clamber up while dragging the sled carrying all of his supplies.
One day, Saunders skied straight onto “a rock-hard lump of windblasted snow about the same shape and size as a small sheep,” landing hunched over with his skis on the “sheep’s” back and his poles planted in front of him.
“There is something very humbling about Antarctica. It can be quite intimidating because it has no regard for life,” Saunders tells me via Skype from London.
The ferocious weather changed his calculations about the amount of food he had, the distance he had left to go, and the number of days it would take to cover it. Each day, Saunders became ever more conscious of being alone.
“As the daily averages (of distance covered) did not start to increase, I became more and more resigned — no, resigned is not the right word — I came to be completely at peace with my decision,” he says.
Saunders is a highly experienced polar adventurer. In 201314, he and Tarka L’Herpiniere set a world record for the longest polar journey on foot — 2,913 kilometres — from Ross Island on the eastern coast to the South Pole and back again.
After 52 days, the 40-year-old arrived at the South Pole on Dec. 28, 2017. It was decision time. Continue on and risk surviving on half-rations? Resupply and continue, although it would mean he could no longer claim to have done it unsupported? Or, quit and go home.
“I’d received a lot of supportive messages from others who have done similar things. They said, ‘It’s possible. You can do it.’ They were sitting in their armchairs by the fire with their coffee beside them,” Saunders says.
“But I just knew it wasn’t feasible ... You have a far slimmer appetite for risk when you are on your own. There is obviously less margin for error and I didn’t feel I had a sufficient safety margin.”
Two people weighed heavily on Saunders’ mind as he made the decision to end the quest after reaching the South Pole. One was his fiancée, Pip Harrison — they are getting married in June.
The other was his friend, Henry Worsley.
Saunders had intended to finish the trip that defeated and, ultimately, killed Worsley, who called for help after 70 days and only 50 kilometres from the finish.
He had waited too long. Dehydrated and malnourished, Worsley was airlifted to Union Glacier base camp, diagnosed with an infection of the abdominal lining, and flown to Chile. He died there on Jan. 24, 2016. He was 55.
Worsley, too, had set out to complete an unfinished journey — one begun a century earlier by his hero, Ernest Shackleton, who in 1915 set out to be the first to cross the continent. Coincidentally, among Shackleton’s crew was a distant relative — Frank Worsley.
What drives men like these, or someone like Felicity Aston, who in 2012 was the first woman to ski alone across Antarctica hauling two sleds? Or Cecilie Skog and partner Ryan Waters, who became the first to make an unassisted Antarctic crossing ?
Or Robert Swan, the first to have walked to both poles, and on his second walk to the South Pole was there the day before Saunders flew out in December? Swan had just successfully completed a final walk to the South Pole with his son, Barney, on the first expedition to the pole using only clean energy technologies.
Psychologist Peter Suedfeld has spent most of his career studying people in extreme environments — everyone from polar explorers to NASA astronauts.
“They’re unusual people in quite a few ways,” says the emeritus professor at the University of B.C. “But they’re not completely off the scales.”
Most of the qualities are obvious: They are more willing to take risks, are more comfortable alone, are physically tough, and more open to new experiences.
Whether astronauts or adventurers, the biggest difference between us and them is they have a high need for achievement, says Suedfeld.
“They want to do something that is outstanding, something better than what they had done before, something perceived as a victory or success. Other motives (such as exploration, scientific research) are somewhat secondary.”
But what is interesting to Suedfeld is how they react when their quest is thwarted. Some are able to redefine it as a success.
Shackleton rather ruefully acknowledged that struggle for meaning, writing to his wife, “I thought you’d rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.”
What has changed adventuring is communications.
Both Swan and Saunders were in daily contact with the outside world.
What they did each day is documented in both words and images on their blogs ( bensaunders.com/ blog and 2041.com/ blog).
Saunders says his experience deepened his respect and awe for what people like Shackleton, Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen were able to accomplish.
“They were ill-equipped, badly clothed by contemporary standards. They sailed away from home for three years, and at a time when there was no hope for rescue,” Saunders says.
“When Shackleton turned around short of the South Pole on the Nimrod Expedition (190709), he would have already been there for a year and still had 18 months of travel. It was like being on another planet.”
Yet, then as now, there was no shortage of adventurers. There were 17 major Antarctic expeditions from 10 countries between 1897 and 1922, a period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
Almost every expedition recorded a first. They climbed and named mountains that were previously unknown and crossed terrain that no one had trod before. It was thrilling, terrifying work, reflected in Shackleton’s ad looking for men to join him on the aptly named Endurance Expedition: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.”
The big prize was first to the pole, which Norway’s Amundsen accomplished on his 1910-12 expedition.
But, as Suedfeld points out, the majority of people in Antarctica aren’t lone adventurers.
They are drivers, radio operators, cooks, construction workers, nurses and scientists.
“With all credit to them, because I admire their courage and adaptability, Saunders and others like him are the whipped cream on the Antarctic cake. The cake is made up of the others (workers and scientists).”
For those others, there is not much adventure at all once they get there.
Sure, they might go out occasionally to see an ice cave or a penguin rookery.
But for the most part, Suedfeld says, their biggest challenge is the monotony of doing the same things every day with the same people.