ADVENTURER EYES PEAK
Antarctica his next charity goal
He climbed Everest without supplemental oxygen. Crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a record 53 days in a rowboat. Climbed the tallest mountain on six of Earth’s seven continents.
That means there’s one that Calgarian Laval St. Germain, 49, hasn’t summited and he’s looking to complete the Seven Summit scorecard by climbing Mount Vinson, Antarctica’s highest peak, in November.
“Vinson isn’t a difficult climb, most of these big mountains aren’t, actually, the seven summits,” says St. Germain.
Perhaps that’s why he added a detour to his journey. His stay in Antarctica starts with a ski from sea level to the South Pole, a journey expected to take 50 days.
Then, a plane will pick him up and carry him the 1,200 kilometres to Mount Vinson, where he will climb to its peak 4,892 metres above sea level in two weeks.
It’s a trip he’s undertaken not only as a summit completionist but as a means to settle unfinished business. When he rowed across the North Atlantic in a custombuilt rowboat in 2016, he had a goal of raising $200,000 for the Alberta Cancer Foundation.
He raised $60,000; this time he’s hoping to raise the rest.
Though St. Germain has been undertaking epic adventures all his life, the Atlantic Ocean crossing was the first to have a fundraising element. He has described his early expeditions as selfish.
He came to that realization “not because of some epiphany, like, ‘Oh I have to give back.’ It’s because all of a sudden a 40-yearold fellow airline captain of mine had a persistent cough and it turned into lung cancer,” says St. Germain, who is a pilot with Canadian North when he’s not climbing mountains or crossing oceans.
“The next thing I know, I was in the hospital with him and he was getting a biopsy. I was in the planning stages of this solo row, and I thought, ‘You know what? I need to do something.’ ”
LOVE OF THE OUTDOORS
St. Germain was born in Morinville, Alta., an “island” of French north of Edmonton.
“My dad wanted me to read; my mom wanted me to stay fit,” says St. Germain.
The two directives blended into a love of the outdoors.
“I grew up on things like the Hardy Boys and Tarzan, Farley Mowat, and of course we — still do — had a National Geographic subscription. That was what really got me dreaming about faraway places.”
The family would go on multiday canoe trips on the Pembina and Athabasca rivers.
Once, when St. Germain was seven or eight, he climbed the bank of the Pembina River “with a piece of driftwood pretending I was (Edmund) Hillary on Everest. With my rubber boots on, getting maybe not even as high as (this),” he says, gesturing about three-and-a-half metres above his head, “and getting scared. My dad had to come up to get me.”
The youthful fear didn’t deter him. In 1991, he travelled to Bolivia to climb its highest mountain, Nevado Sajama. Physiologically, he was unprepared for the altitude.
“My buddy and I went from Miami to the summit (6,542 metres above sea level) in less than seven days, which was really stupid because I suffered,” he says. “At the summit, I barely remember it. I was snow-blind. I had the early signs of cerebral edema, losing my ability to stand and talk properly. I was very sick. But, it sounds ridiculous, I really enjoyed it. Maybe not the sickness part. But I really enjoyed that exposure to altitude and I like the feeling of it.
“It’s hard to explain unless you’ve been there. You’re up on a mountain on the edge of the Atacama Desert at 21,500 feet and the stars are the clearest you’ll ever see. It was something else. I got hooked.”
COLD-WEATHER PREPARATION
Mount Vinson, reiterates St. Germain, is “not difficult a climb at all.” He’ll be using alpine-touring skis, with bindings that allow for the heel to life up “so I can walk uphill, with skins on the bottom” and crampons for when it’s too steep to ski.
“It’s just cold,” he says. Mount Vinson’s average temperature is minus-30 C in November; the South Pole’s is minus-37 C. Antarctica is dry and windy. Cold air flows from the top of the South Pole toward the coast.
When you trek to the South Pole, you’re operating into a headwind.
Your face, and your thighs, are vulnerable to frostbite.
“It’s actually called polar thigh — your clothing is compressed by the wind against your leg and you get these big frostbite areas on your thighs,” St. Germain says.
He’s aware of the dangers of frostbite; he lost the tips of three fingers during his climb of Everest.
“I don’t need them any shorter. Though I guess it wouldn’t make much of a difference if they were any shorter. I only type with two fingers anyways,” he deadpans.
It’s hard to explain ... You’re up on a mountain on the edge of the Atacama Desert at 21,500 feet and the stars are the clearest you’ll ever see.
Some traditional gear will help. An elder in the Dene village of Déline, N.W.T. is making him mitts that he hopes will be finished in time for his expedition.
“Caribou or beaver, super warm, gauntlet-style with some Dene beadwork on them. I want to wear those on the expedition,” he says.
His connection to the remote Northwest Territories village was created through tragedy: his son Richard drowned while canoeing the Mackenzie River in 2014.
“I travelled up there and I wanted to confront it by canoeing the river with my youngest boy.”
They flew into Déline, where he discovered how the Dene dealt with death.
“They have a thing called the spirit house, which is this log house on the shores of Great Bear Lake. It’s basically almost a place of pilgrimage for them. Myself and this elder sat and had this conversation about death,” he says. “It was about the continuation of life and this is part of it, their beliefs that Richard’s still there. It was an interesting way to keep Richard alive, to use nature, to use exercise as medicine, or in this case, an antidepressant. I got a lot out of it. It was valuable.”
His gear is sponsored, but he’s paying $125,000 out of pocket for the flights.
“It’s an expensive trip,” he says. “I’m not complaining about it. I put myself in these positions.”
He’s also familiar with the financial outlay for these expeditions: he spent $100,000 on the custombuilt rowboat for his trip across the North Atlantic. He recouped “a large chunk” by selling the boat to a woman in England who is planning to row from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, but he won’t be able to do the same for the leftovers of his trip to the South Pole.
“All I can sell when I come back from this is some stories, I guess,” he says. “But it’s for a good cause. I don’t spend my money on other things. I spend my money on outdoor sports, outdoor gear and travelling. I don’t have a big motorboat; I don’t have a big motorcycle. I think it’s worthwhile. Life is short. I know that especially — I’ve always known that but, boy, it really hits you when your 21-yearold son gets the chop.”
PUSHING THE LIMITS
What’s next after reaching the peak of Antarctica? He’s got some ideas, including a human-powered trek across a desert that has never been crossed that way before (“I don’t want to let it slip what desert I’m looking at,” he says.)
It’s not in St. Germain’s nature to stop wanting to push himself, to stay idle while there are still peaks to climb and oceans to cross.
“I think that’s something that’s in our nature: we want to know what happens to the climber that disappears high up over the ridge into the clouds, we want to know what happens up there.”
You can donate to the Alberta Cancer Foundation through St. Germain’s site at albertacancer. ca/southpole.