Into Thin Air

The controversy of yet another celebrated and popular book, Three Cups of Tea, representing as more fancy than fact is once again demonstrating that the art of writing owes much to the imagination. Imagination and the artful embroidery of events to suit the purpose of the writer. This is, after all, what writers do.

It isn't supposed to be what writers do, in the popular imagination. Which is somewhat to science what the detailing of real-life adventure and experience is supposed to be. In science, when someone hatches a theory and convinces himself that he has to prove it through constructing experiments designed to prove the theory, this is falsification of the very essence of science.

When someone writes a book recounting his experiences upon which he bases an argument for the world at large and generous donors in particular to become seriously involved in good works and charity, readers must depend upon the veracity of his account if he is to realize their support.

Greg Mortenson's book grew a huge readership and convinced people that they must respond in assistance of providing Afghan girls with educational opportunities. His description of his experiences in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, his abduction by Taliban in Waziristan earned him respect by the U.S. military elite.

An adventurer-climber, he began with his K-2 experience, and his gratitude to villagers in a remote Afghanistan village earning his determination to provide their children with a school and learning opportunities. His commitment spread to other tribal communities, and his idea of educating girls in fundamentalist Islamic villages caught the imagination of donors.

Except that there was an expose on television that seemed to cast real doubt on Mr. Mortenson's claims when a research team discovered that schools were closed or were being used for storage, or taken over by the village itself to teach their young. And none other than mountaineer Jon Krakauer of Everest fame, a formidable adversary if actual events be fouled also cast doubts on the original village incident.

So the issue now is whether the account in Three Cups of Tea is entirely fraudulent, written to serve a specific purpose; the achievement of fame and fortune, or whether, despite some critical details having been embellished and dates reversed, the uplifting charitable venture of financing schools for Afghan children should continue.

If wealthy donors are looking for places where their charitable dollars might do some good, the financing of schools for children in Afghanistan is as good as any. Even if some of them end up as storage sheds for animal feed.

Splendid Holiday!

This one is different. Quite so. It is meant to pique the interest of the jaded traveler. Those who have been there, seen it all, done it all. Who crave bold new adventures in places where none are likely to have gone before. Places, for example, that are well-known-to-notorious as sites, but hitherto unknown as possible destinations.

This beats an ocean voyage and a cramped seat in a little submersible to dive down to the site of the Titanic. Or a long, tedious, freezing, heart-thumping, lung-bursting, brain-addling haul up Mount Everest. Nowhere near as expensive, either. Just get yourself to Ukraine, and the government tourism board will do the rest.

For a paltry $150, you too can indulge in a truly exciting, heart-palpitating day-trip to a "dead zone". A geography roasted by deadly nuclear radiation. Also featured is a side-trip to the town that held hundreds of thousands of people, workers in the USSR's nuclear industry at Chernobyl and their families, pre-nuclear-eruption.

The trip can be considered a worshipful shrine dedicated to the propensity of human beings invested with great technical professionalism tripping up, nonetheless. It's called carelessness, and the results were catastrophic. But the country's emergency situation ministry lays claim to the radiation levels having returned to normal levels.

Something on the scale of "don't worry, be happy". "The Chernobyl zone is not as scary as the world thinks. We want to work with big tour operators and attract Western tourists", a tourism ministry spokesperson expounded. No mention that 450,000 people had been affected by the big blow-up, and many have perished of radiation-related illnesses, aside from those who died instantly.

And the reactor, after all, that blew up, spewing its deadly radiation far and wide, was covered with a huge, thick cement 'sarcophagus'. Ensuring that all that nasty stuff remains inside, no longer able to contaminate the atmosphere, the ground, wildlife, flora. It's perfectly safe, see?

The guide might have other thoughts as he/she leads the tours about: "Let's leave now, it is very dangerous to be here", one of the tour guides on a recent group trip nervously advised her charges. "There are huge holes in the sarcophagus covering the reactor." It is useful, after all, to have a more intimate understanding of the situation.

Visitors anxious for a truly different kind of experience, must sign a waiver the purpose of which is to exempt the tour operator from all responsibility should they later happen to suffer some kind of malady that might be traced to radiation. Which should, actually, be enough to pick up any prospective visitors' antennae. Perhaps for some it presents as a lure.

Visitors are cautioned by their guides to take care not to touch anything. Anything, including the vegetation or the metal structures; in fact anything, ANYTHING! But go on, have a look at the four reactors. Come a little closer, you can get closer to the erupted one. And wow, listen to that Geiger counter: click, click-click, click-click-click, click-click-click-click-click.

Um, better leave.

Beyond Reprehensible

They are companion animals. They most definitely, even if used as working animals and not as domesticated pets sharing our homes and our recreational outings and our companionship as close friends, are not to be thought of and abused as disposable items. They are living, breathing, caring, intelligent creatures who comfort us and teach us patience and caring for other creatures with which we share this planet.

Enough dogs are neglected and tormented and made to live miserable lives without the practical and emotional support they require to be well balanced social creatures. Not unlike the way which many children also are raised within society. People who respect and have great affection for animal companions shudder at the knowledge that people behave cruelly to dogs, dominating them violently and viciously.

There are stories about people who dedicate their lives to the well-being of animals, but who fail when their passion to protect and comfort them becomes so overwhelming that they become physically and economically incapable of adequately caring for them, so the animals end up living in squalor and misery until animal welfare authorities become involved and rescue those which can still be rescued.

And then there are those, unscrupulous and heartless businesses, who make a living from presenting dogs as working animals enjoying the challenges placed before them through traditional and now seldom-used tasks like sled pulling. Enterprises set up to entertain tourists and other people interested in having a unique experience; mushing a team of sled dogs.

But when business faltered because of poor atmospheric conditions and a slow-down in the economy, a company at Whistler, B.C. - Outdoor Adventures - through one of its subsidiaries, Howling dogs Whistler Inc., decided to cull their herd of Huskies, no longer in use, too expensive to maintain. Countless people might have been interested in assuming ownership or care of these dogs, but the most immediate solution obviously was more appealing.

And that was simply to destroy the dogs, and one hundred of the Huskies were destined to be slaughtered, as one of the employees of the company was given firmly unequivocal orders to do just that. He is now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, having applied to the WorkSafe BC program for inclusion in workers' compensation as he is no longer capable of working. Poor man.

He took his orders seriously, and in a horribly loathsome determination to follow orders set about slaughtering terrified dogs. The owners of the dog sledding enterprise deny that any such cull took place, referencing instead "euthanasia", carried out on dogs too old and ill to survive. The dogs were shot or had their throats slashed - while they fearfully struggled to survive - then were buried in a mass grave.

And the man who carried out those orders is now in ostensibly frail condition due to the psychological stress he incurred while brutally killing those animals. On the company's web site the advertising sounds quite appealing, belying the reality of unspeakable brutality, and the fact that they were considered expendable and disposable, their right to life miserably abused.

"Behind your team of energetic and loveable Alaskan Racing Huskies, get ready for an unforgettable journey and a thrilling introduction to this classic Canadian sport. Mush your own team, or have a professional guide lead the way. We are Whistler's original dog sled operator with over 63 years of experience (in dog years that is...)", it coyly expounds.

Auspicious Beginnings

Ah, those plans. It's going to be a long, hot, steamy summer. Has been thus far, and will continue. So we are informed by Environment Canada. Fancy a different kind of vacation? Well, why not see Canada? No, really. Plan to travel all over the country, seeing it with fresh eyes, re-acquainting yourself with the varied splendour of its geography, the honest appeal of its people, and savour the tastes of regional cooking.



Good planning. And off you go. How? Good question. How many will be accompanying you? Wife, check. Several MPs - oh, sure. Party staff, all right! Newspaper reporters - no kidding. Hey, with that kind of retinue you'd need to hire a - let's see, a bus? right, a bus. And while you're at it, personalize it, let everyone know who you are and you're a-comin'. Emblazon the thing "Liberal Express". Like the sound of that?

Ignatieff kicks off his summer bus tour of Canada on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Tuesday July 13, 2010.">

Feeling pretty good about it, aren't you? And why not? There's an air of triumphalism about it, this trip, going face-to-face with the voters, travelling the length and breadth of this land, this wonderful country that looks so good now that you've had the opportunity to have another gander. But you know that old saying, the best laid plans of moose and politicians, right? That other one; whatever can go wrong, will?



Good thing you're so unflappable, huh? EH? How Canadian can you get? Gee whiz, we're off! Not so fast, eh? The transmission just fell off its platform. You'll have to walk the rest of the way. No? The thought of a summer-long walking tour across this great and wonderful land doesn't have the appeal a bus tour does? What kind of Canajun adventurer are you, anyway?



Listen, if you got yourself a good pair of hiking boots from Mountain Equipment Co-Op or Bushtukah, a nice waterproof tent, some snuggy undies and rainproof gear, you could just hoof it. Think of the adulation and acclaim you'd garner, a Canadian original. You want to be thought of as authentically Canadian, don't you? You're imbued with a sense of adventure, aren't you? Why else venture out on this kind of journey, if you aren't?



Well, take it away. Take it the whole way. Do it the Canadian way, chum. Hoof it. See the country in a more genuine way. Want peoples' respect? That's the way to do it. Trust me. Because, auld sod, that's the way to "do politics differently".

Through Canada's Arctic Islands

At dusk we made fast to a heavy floe, each boat having its painter fastened to a separate hummock in order to avoid collisions in the swell. We landed the blubber-stove, boiled some water in order to provide hot milk, and served cold rations. I also landed the dome tents and stripped the coverings from the hoops. Our experience of the previous day in the open sea had shown us that the tents must be packed tightly. The spray had dashed over the bows and turned to ice on the cloth, which had soon grown dangerously heavy. Other articles of our scanty equipment had to go that night. We were carrying only the things that had seemed essential, but we stripped now to the barest limit of safety. We had hoped for a quiet night, but presently we were forced to cast off, since pieces of loose ice began to work round the floe. Drift-ice is always attracted to the lee side of a heavy floe, where it bumps and presses under the influence of the current. I had determined not to risk a repetition of the last night's experience and so had not pulled the boats up. We spent the hours of darkness keeping an offing from the main line of pack under the lee of the smaller pieces. Constant rain and snow-squalls blotted out the stars and soaked us through, and at times it was only by shouting to each other that we managed to keep the boats together. There was no sleep for anybody owing to the severe cold, and we dare not pull fast enough to keep ourselves warm since we were unable to see more than a few yards ahead. Occasionally the ghostly shadows of silver, snow, and fulmar petrels flashed close to us, and all around we could hear the killers blowing their short, sharp hisses sounding like sudden escapes of steam. The killers were a source of anxiety for a boat could easily have been capsized by one of them coming up to blow. They would throw aside in a nonchalant fashion pieces of ice much bigger than our boats when they rose to the surface,and we had an uneasy feeling that the white bottoms of the boats would look like ice from below. Shipwrecked mariners drifting in the Antarctic seas would be things not dreamed of in the killers' philosophy, and might appear on closer examination to be tasty substitutes for seal and pengiun. We certainly regarded the killers with misgivings. Sir Ernest Shackleton, 1912

What, again? Right now? What possesses people? Ah, they are simply possessed. Of a fever that will not be extinguished until they are. "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages and bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful." Yes, and who would respond to such an advertisement for hands on board to set out on a modern-day row-boat expedition through Canada's Arctic Islands to the North Magnetic Pole?

Demented souls, that's who. Obviously. Obviously people with a thirst for danger and adventure of a kind that cannot be imagined, that must be experienced first-hand to fully understand. And, having experienced that first-hand kind of adventure, if one survives, one may exult, and then plan the next improbable, life-enhancing/endangering adventure, and then another. To silence that desperate inner urge to a quiescent murmur of satisfaction.

I'm just going outside', I said, 'and may be some time'.
There was a blizzard blowing. I was in my stocking feet, yet I didn't feel the cold. I had only struggled a few yards, the snow driving against me, when I heard voices. I waved my hand in front of me, as though I was wiping a mirror, and then I saw Boy Charger, skittering backwards and forwards in the drift.
'Be so good as to restrain him, Mr. Brown', a voice said.
'I'm holding back the dawn', said Mr. Brown. "Captain Oates approaches'.
I only had to crawl a few yards; the pelting snow rained down like music.
'Happy Birthday' sang the man holding the bridle. And oh, how warm it was. Titus Oates' departure: Beryl Bainbridge: the doomed Scott Terra Nova expedition.

A modern-day adventure, a proposed voyage described as "one of the world's last great firsts" in polar exploration, to be embarked upon with Scottish sailor Jock Wishart who intends to captain a six-person rowing crew on a 2011 journey through ice-choked waters. In a search for the ever-moving magnetic pole, currently north of Ellef Ringnes Island, off Nunavut. Does that not sound romantic, alluring, irresistible?

It will be, presumably, for five hardy individuals aside from leader Jock Wishart. Adventurous individuals will respond to the advertisement, perhaps with some trepidation, but also with a huge amount of enthusiasm, no doubt. This "Row to the Pole" will be quite the adventure. Its website explains that the sailors "will face dramatic, icebound coastlines and shifting sea ice barriers on their voyage and their haul of the boat over land, which is necessary to complete the voyage."

Who could resist such an invitation to glorious adventure, seeing nature at her rawest, most inconveniently but dreadfully exciting, exhilarating fiercest; snow, sleet, ice, cold, inclement weather. Will any of the five souls who apply for the adventure have read about previous such adventures? There will be daily Web updates for the hordes of armchair adventurers who prefer to pursue their risk-taking at a distinct remove.

Mr. Wishart is proud of the fact that his will be the first polar voyage to row boats, emulating the adventure experienced by British explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew who desperately manned lifeboats in an attempt to reach safety after the loss of the flagship Endurance, leaving them stranded in the ill-fated Antarctic expedition they had embarked upon a century earlier. Sir Ernest had no computer, no GPS, no modern high-tech gear and clothing and food.

The climate-change-blamed break-up of the sea ice making navigating more potentially easier is a boost. Reaching the magnetic pole may be problematical, it is said to be moving easterly at about 64 km a year, away from Canada toward the central Arctic Ocean. Closer to Russia. Mr. Wishart is preparing to embark on the greatest adventure of his life. And he has experienced some fairly remarkable adventuring.

Good luck.

Arctic Treks: Polar Explorations

Polar exploration continues to enthrall bold adventurers enraptured by the vision that through their determination and hard-earned knowledge of the icy reaches of the Planet, they can still achieve new exploration firsts. And one such individual is modern-day explorer Jim McNeill, who was set to take his British team to trek from the edge of Arctic Canada to the most remote place in the Arctic Ocean - the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility.

British explorers have a long and respected tradition of exploration for science and adventure. They were matched by American, Russian and Norwegian adventurers, all of whom were fascinated with the far reaches of ice-bound North and South poles exploration. Everyone wanted to be there first, to plant their respective national flags, and to bring to themselves national acclaim and international reputations.

Their determination to succeed cost many of them dearly. The treks were arduous beyond the comprehension of any who had never attempted them. The inclemency of severe weather conditions, the vast, isolated geography, the geological and weather-bound features of the areas they sought to explore, to arrive at their distant and severely-difficult-to-attain destinations caused the eventual grievous surrender of life and limb of too many intrepid explorers.

The swell increased that night and the movement of the ice became more pronounced. Occasionally a neighbouring floe would hammer against the ice on which we were camped, and the lesson of these blows was plain to read. We must get solid ground under our feet quickly. When the vibration ceased after a heavy surge, my thoughts flew round to the problem ahead. If the party had not numbered more than six men a solution would not have been so hard to find; but obviously the transportation of the whole party to a place of safety, with the limited means at our disposal, was going to be a matter of extreme difficulty. There were twenty-eight men on our floating cake of ice, which was steadily dwindling under the influence of wind, weather, charging floes, and heavy swell. *

Despite the hardships and the misery and the unbelievable pain suffered by North and South Pole adventurers, they kept returning time and again, and incapable of tempering their enthusiasm, met the forces of nature head on with often predictable results that destroyed their frailty, but ennobled the enterprise.

Now this British team planning to trek from the edge of Arctic Canada to the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility - who ever even heard of such a destination, it is considered to be the most remote place in the Arctic Ocean - has had to re-think their plans, on the brink of departure into their adventure from Ellef Ringnes Island, Nunavut. For modern-day adventurer-explorers, hoping to burnish their reputations and aid science in the process, have tools at their disposal that earlier such enterprising men of outstanding courage and determination had not.

Environment Canada forewarned this hardy troupe that the High Arctic is currently in the "worst conditions" for winter ice cover in decades. So their leader, Jim McNeill, has been forced of necessity to postpone for the third time his desire to trek the 1,100-kilometre journey in the recognition of its foolhardiness that would "endanger lives unnecessarily".

The sun was shining in the blue sky on the following morning (April 8). Clarence Island showed clearly on the horizon, and Elephant Island could also be distinguished. The single snow-clad peak of Clarence Island stood up as a beacon of safety, though the most optimistic imagination could not make an easy path of the ice and ocean that separated us from that giant white and austere (peak). "The pack was much looser this morning, and the long rolling swell from the north-east is more pronounced than it was yesterday. The floes rise and fall with the surge of the sea. We evidently are drifting with the surface current, for all the heavier masses of floe, bergs, and hummocks are being left behind. *

The Northern Pole of Inaccessibility exists roughly 400 kilometres farther out to sea than the North Pole itself, therefore it is defined as the most difficult place on the Planet to arrive at, on the Polar ice cap. It was first discovered in 1927 when a pioneering aviator over flew it, while a Russian ice-breaker is thought to have passed close by it in the 1950s. Yet no human has ever yet successfully completed a crossing by foot over the expanses of heaving ice and murderously icy water leading to the centre of the Arctic Ocean's beyond.

At 9:30 p.m. a particularly heavy shock went through our floe. The watchman and other members of the party made an immediate inspection and found a crack right under the James Caird and between the other two boats and the main camp. Within five minutes the boats were over the crack and close to the tents. The trouble was not caused by a blow from another floe. We could see that the piece of ice we occupied had slewed and now presented its long axis towards the oncoming swell. The floe, therefore, was pitching in the manner of a ship, and it had cracked across when the swell lifted the centre, leaving the two ends comparatively unsupported. We were now on a triangular raft of ice, the three sides measuring, roughly, 90, 100 and 120 yards. *

Last week's advisory by Environment Canada came hard on the heels of a Canadian study highlighting unprecedented expanses of open water in the Polar sea; resulting in a fairly reasonable prediction of ice-free summers in the central Arctic Ocean; an occurrence much accelerated from previous forecasts.

"The risks of early failure, of cold injury and of needing to be rescued are too high to justify settingout", 49-year old Jim McNeill reluctantly admitted.

At 7:00 a.m. lanes of water and leads could be seen on the horizon to the west. The ice separating us from the lanes was loose, but did not appear to be workable for the boats. The long swell from the north-west was coming in more freely than on the previous day and was driving the floes together in the utmost confusion. The loose brash between the masses of ice was being churned to mudlike consistency, and no boat could have lived in the channels that opened and closed around us. *

Mr. McNeill, a former firefighter, has changed professions; now organizing endurance trekking tours through his Ice Warrior enterprise. On a previous occasion with the intention of mounting the same trajectory in 2003, he suffered a bout of flesh-eating disease in his ankle, effectively putting a stop to that trip.

Three years later, a second attempt to reach the Northern Pole of Inaccessibility was cancelled as a result of disintegrating ice conditions, and problems encountered with the group's equipment.

Soon after breakfast the ice closed again. We were standing by, with our preparations as complete as they could be made, when at 11 a.m. our floe suddenly split right across under the boats. We rushed our gear on to the larger of the two pieces and watched with strained attention for the next development. The crack had cut through the site of my tent. I stood on the edge of the new fracture, and, looking across the widening channel of water, could see the spot where for many months my head and shoulders had rested when I was in my sleeping-bag. *

The lead scientist associated with Ice Warrior made note of the fact that an Environment Canada meteorologist had advised against the planned journey given the "horrible" deterioration of the ice cover. The disappointment of the group must be vast, given their recently-completed four weeks of training on the Svalbard Islands, Norway.

The three boats were a mile away from our floe home at 2 p.m. We had made our way through the channels and had entered the big pool when we saw a rush of foam-clad water and tossing ice approaching us, like the tidal bore of a river. The pack was being impelled to the east by a tide-rip, and two huge masses of ice were driving down upon us on converging courses. *

Nothing can truly deter the stalwart-determined, and Jim McNeill and his expedition crew are prepared to launch yet another attempt - if ice conditions permit - in 2011.

Man proposes, Nature disposes.

* 1912 - from South, Sir Ernest Shackleton; Antarctica

Dauntless Spirits, Great Adventures

Those people who willingly, eagerly venture into unknown territory, geology- or weather-hostile regions of the Globe present as a puzzling anomaly in basic human psyche for Nature has genetically hard-wired us with an irresistible urgency to survive. Yet these dauntless - some might venture - deliberately heedless adventurers, seek out danger, defy fear in the intent to confront their inner daemons opposing inherited existential caution.

How many among us is willing to expose ourselves to extremes of danger, privation, disease and the vagaries of chance and happenstance? Do they value life any less than we do? Or has nature tricked them into the belief that some spiritual power, within themselves or beyond, hovers protectively over them?

What irresistible siren of compulsion calls them to their destiny? What indomitable will and iron-strength of purpose propels them to forge on in the very face of Grim Death in defiance of their biological imperative?

They embark on their search for meaning and purpose, meeting head on the capricious neutrality of their maker; Divine Nature. Some live on to marvel at their escape from the uneven contest, some write inspiring narratives of conquest and the majesty of nature; the curious needs of humankind fulfilled.

There are solemn, respectful obituaries recognizing the mortal fallibility of aspirants. And account after revelation of those consumed by their need, who wander from ascent and encounter one after another as though awaiting and inviting the inevitable, leaving mourning loved ones behind, their supra-human exploits their legacy.

This bespeaks an urge of conquest vastly dissimilar to that which took Europeans to horizon-less oceanic stretches fearful to the imagination, in search of wealth and adventure: land, natural resources and the capture of people they thought of as sub-human, in a campaign to enrich their nations by the enslavement of others, through the creation of empire-building.

Leading inevitably to wars and massive blood-letting of both indigenous peoples of those conquered and devastated lands, and competing armies of ascendancy-determined conquerors.
In these searches for discovery and adventure into the great frozen places of the Earth, there is rare intention to discover sources of material wealth, but rather perhaps for some the achievement of fame.

Onlookers, awed by the trials and tribulations facing those resolute souls who venture into those isolated, weather-hostile places wonder who, in their right minds would deliberately seek to inflict excesses of physical misery upon themselves, let alone the psychical torment involved in achieving goals that sometimes elude, sometimes succeed, only to result too often in broken spirits and occasionally death.

Mountaineers face the potential of succumbing to acute mountain sickness which can be morbid depending on the depth of their symptoms, requiring immediate descent. Retinal haemorrhage can result from prolonged high altitude exposure. Diarrhoea related to food poisoning, giardia, amoebic dysentery can be problematic.

Pole trekkers can be exposed to snow blindness, frostbite, boils, bedbugs, fleas, scabies, leaches and blisters, which at extremely low temperatures can be quite different than otherwise. Modern-day mountaineers and pole trekkers have high-tech communication devices and gear and clothing to aid them, but this was not always so.

Douglas Mawson, 1912 expedition to the Antarctic: The awful truth was a blanket of cold fear, invisible, but falling over his entire world, filling the tent, flooding his mind with the terrible, haunting fact. He was alone. All that was human in this accursed place, all that had been alive - friends and dogs - were dead and gone. Loneliness was in the vast wasted land outside in the soughing wind, in the corners of his mind, in his anguish and in the fear for this own safety. He was himself sick, famished and so weak he might collapse at any moment; and he lay stretched out on this floor of snow with the heart-rending truth pinning down his body and his mind. Mertz was dead.
What would he do? What chance had he of living? Very little, he decided. This spot was some 100 miles direct to the hut; ahead ranged the heaving wind-swept-plateau ice, the great, broadly-fractured bed of the glacier, many miles of wicked winding crevasses, and then the long grinding, backbreaking climbs up the steep slopes and ice ramparts to the escarpment near The Crater - to be in sight of Aurora Peak, to leave some record there where they might come seeking his missing party. Yet he was so emaciated that the bitten, snow-clad peak seemed a million miles away. Lennard Bickel

Apsley Cherry-Garrard, June 1911: The horror of the nineteen days it took us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier would have to be re-experienced to be appreciated; and any one would be a fool who went again: it is not possible to describe it. The weeks which followed them were comparative bliss, not because later our conditions were better - they were far worse - but because we were callous. I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the heroism of the dying - they little know - it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on ...
It was the darkness that did it. I don't believe minus seventy temperatures would be bad in daylight, not comparatively bad, when you could see where you were going, where you were stepping, where the sledge straps were, the cooker, the primus, the food; could see your footsteps lately trodden deep into the soft snow that you might find your way back to the rest of your load; could see the lashings of the food bags; could read a compass without striking three or four different boxes to find one dry match; could read your watch to see if the blissful moment of getting out of your bag was come without groping in the snow all about; when it would not take you five minutes to lash up the door of the tent, and five hours to get started in the morning...
But in these days we were never less than four hours from the moment when Bill cried "Time to get up" to the time when we got into our harness. It took two men to get one man into his harness, and was all they could do, for the canvas was frozen and our clothes were frozen until sometimes not even two men could bend them into the required shape. From: The Worst Journey in the World

Viscount Milton and Walter Butler Cheadle, 1839: Masses of ice, the size of a man's fist, formed on Cheadle's beard and moustache - the only ones in the company - from the moisture of the breath freezing as it passed through the hair. The oil froze in the pipes we carried about our persons, so that it was necessary to thaw them at the fire before they could be made to draw. The hands could hardly be exposed for a moment, except when close to the fire. A bare finger laid upon iron stuck to it as if glued, from the instantaneous freezing of its moisture. The snow melted only close to the fire, which formed a trench for itself, in which it slowly sank to the level of the ground. The steam rose in clouds, and in the coldest, clearest weather, it almost shrouded the fire from view. The snow was light and powdery, and did not melt beneath the warmth of the foot, so that our moccasins were as dry on a journey as if we had walked through sawdust instead of snow. The parchment windows of our little hut were so small and opaque that we could hardly see even to eat by their light alone, and were generally obliged to have the door open; and then, although the room was very small, and the fire-place very large, a crust of ice formed over the tea in our tin cups, as we sat within a yard of the roaring fire. One effect of the cold was to give a most ravenous appetite for fat. Many a time have we eaten great lumps of lard grease - rancid tallow, used for making candles - without bread or anything to modify it.
Before sleeping, however, it was necessary to secure out of reach of the dogs not only provisions, but snow-shoes, harness, and everything with any skin or leather about it. An Indian dog will devour almost anything of animal origin, and invariably eats his own harness, or his master's snow-shoes, if left within his reach. From: The North-West Passage by Land

Jon Krakauer, 1997: From The Balcony I descended a few hundred feet down a broad, gentle snow gully without incident, but then things began to get sketchy. The route meandered through outcroppings of broken shale blanketed with six inches of fresh snow. Negotiating the puzzling, infirm terrain demanded unceasing concentration, an all but impossible feat in my punch-drunk state.
Because the wind had erased the tracks of the climbers who'd gone down before me, I had difficulty determining the correct route. In 1993, Mike Groom's partner - Lopsang Tshering Bhutia, a skilled Himalayan climber who was a nephew of Tenzing Norgay's - had taken a wrong turn in this area and fallen to his death. Fighting to maintain a grip on reality, I started talking to myself out loud. "Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together," I chanted over and over, mantra-like. "You can't afford to fuck things up here. This is way serious. Keep it together."
I sat down to rest on a broad, sloping ledge, but after a few minutes a deafening BOOM! frightened me back to my feet. Enough new snow had accumulated that I feared a massive slab avalanche had released on the slopes above, but when I spun around to look I saw nothing. Then there was another BOOM! accompanied by a flash that momentarily lit up the sky, and I realized I was hearing the crash of thunder. From: Into Thin Air

Hugh Brody, 1987: Do Inuit live in snow houses? Do they travel by dog team? Do they hunt seals with harpoons? Do they move about, from camp to camp, in a round of seasonal activities? Do they eat raw meat? Do they dry fish in the sun? Do they make igunaaq, "high" meat? Do they wear caribou-skin clothing? Do they speak of weather as the presence of Sila, the air spirit? Do the Dene track moose through the woods on foot? Do they use snares and deadfalls? Do they believe and follow a shamanistic spirituality? Do they think that muskrat played an important role in the creation of the earth? Do Naskapi follow the caribou herds, far inland? Do they dream their way through time? Do they travel in dreams? Do they have summer gathering grounds? Do the Cree move on to winter trapping grounds each year? Do they rely on snowshoes to move through the bush? Do they make hunting cabins each season, and lay spruce boughs as mattresses? Do they make medicines from herbs and roots? Do they use medicine power in spiritual life? Do they trap beaver under the winter ice? Do Innu prepare skins on stretcher frames and boards? Do they depend on the fur trade? Do they wear moccasins? Do they prepare dry meat each autumn as a supply of concentrated protein for the coming seasons? Are children seen as elders reborn?
A simple answer to all these questions is yes. From: Living Arctic; Hunters of the Canadian North

Dr. Jerri Nielsen, 2001: After a few stabbing gulps of thin air I was quickly reminded that I had gained almost two miles in altitude during the three-hour flight from McMurdo. While the plateau was flat as a griddle, it was also as high as the Austrian Alps. The South Pole station rests on a nine-thousand-foot thick slab of ice soaring ninety-three hundred feet above sea level.
...The temperature on the plateau was plummeting. By now it was minus 90 F. and falling, a new record for mid-March. One night I was watching a video with a friend when we heard the most horrible booming noise.
"What's that?" I said.
He said, Oh, it's just the building settling."
It sounded more like the building collapsing. We heard more of these ungodly booms over the next few days as the ice heaved in great cracks under the Dome. People were having more trouble sleeping. Sometimes it sounded like the roof was falling in or the floor was caving or people were stamping their feet overhead. Sometimes it sounded like guns or cannons.
The ice was breaking around us everywhere. Large cracks ran from the front of the galley and then spider-webbed out to the Dome perimeters There was a foot-wide crack over the ice road and a crevasse split what was left of the skiway. From: Icebound

G7, 2010: Canada's great frozen north: Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States will join their host for the February 2010 G7 conference in the Arctic, specifically Iqaluit, a town of roughly six thousand souls, accessible by air or sea, where inclement weather can fray the most exact travel plans, and thick fog often envelopes the area of ice and snow. But this venue was selected and proudly, by Canada's Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, eager to show his international counterparts the "pristine and gorgeous" landscape. And all will be invited to enjoy a dog-sledding adventure! Logistical nightmare? Not one bit: transcendentally lovely dreamscape...

People Die Out Here

I stepped out into a blinding light, into the whitest world under an impossibly blue sky. The naked sun seared me right through my polarized goggles. The next thing that hit was a cold so deep and complete it was surreal. My first breaths torched my throat and chilled my lungs. It was cold from another dimension, from an ice planet in a distant galaxy. And this was summer in the Southern Hemisphere. *

She's an achiever, little doubt about that. Meagan McGrath on a year's leave from the Canadian Forces where she is a major, is now in Chile, awaiting a flight home to Canada. She has, on her own, managed to ski to her destination, the South Pole. When she had started out on her trip from Hercules Inlet on the coast of Antarctica in early December she had fallen into a crevasse, and was unable to extricate herself without assistance. After her rescue by a team from Patriot Hills, she took time off for introspection, to determine whether she felt herself prepared to continue.

Finally, the conclusion she reached was that she would go on. She completed her Antarctic Odyssey of 28 kilometres on January 15th 2010, having set off on her original trek on December 1st of 2009. It was, in fact, on her second day out that she had fallen into the crevasse. Her confidence in her ability to resume her odyssey led her to set out again. "I shut out the world for a few days and tried to make my own decision about whether I wanted to carry on. And I carried on, and it seemed to be the right decision."

She finally caught sight of the South Pole base roughly six kilometres distance over the horizon on her penultimate day of solo skiing. Having arrived, she was congratulated and treated to a hot cup of tea and cookies. The day she arrived at her destination the temperature stood at -36-degrees, with a whipping wind. This determined women demonstrated to herself and the watching world that she was able to surmount loneliness, fatigue, extreme cold and the literal unknown on her way to achieving yet another life-time goal.

Ms. McGrath pulled two sleds, each weighing roughly 200 pounds, while carrying about 40 pounds of fuel and supplies on her back. She skied about ten to twelve hours each day. Some of the challenges she faced included white-outs and diminished battery charge due to the lack of sunlight. She was in limited contact throughout with the South Pole Expedition Agency, Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions, reporting her status. A slight cold slightly hampered her progress as she made the final push for the Geographic South Pole, crossing the 89th Degree.

After a few stabbing gulps of thin air I was quickly reminded that I had gained almost two miles in altitude during the three-hour flight from McMurdo. While the plateau was flat as a griddle, it was also as high as the Austrian Alps. The South Pole Station rests on a nine-thousand-foot thick slab of ice soaring ninety-three hundred feet above sea level. I immediately felt light-headed, lead-footed, and slightly nauseated, but I still had to drag my bags and the cooler of vaccines to the Dome. I forced my body to move, even though it felt like I could not.*

"I have shown I'm able, quite capable and knowledgeable about how to function in a polar environment. So I was really happy with that side of things", she said. She also mentioned that the hardships she had faced and overcome had reminded her of the struggles of Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and other early Antarctica explorers. "When I think of these guys, I think, 'What drove them to want to do this so badly?' Because back then, of course, it was so much more difficult. They challenges they must have faced. Holy crap, you know? People die out here."

And they did. They hadn't the space-age technology available to them back then that modern-day adventurers do now. The high-tech gear, the warm clothing, the speciality foods. They attempted to estimate where they were, they had no GPS devices, no satellite telephones, no way where they could conceivably communicate their status, and their dire situations, requiring emergency assistance. None of which takes away from this woman's feat of courage and strength and creative ability.

The effects of chronic hypoxia, a syndrome caused by oxygen starvation, and hypothermia at the Pole have never been adequately studied. Since enzymes and coenzymes work properly only at certain temperatures, it would be interesting to find out what happens to the chemical reactions in our bodies when our core temperature never rises above ninety-seven degrees, as seems to be the case here.

The history books call the times of Scott and Amundsen and Shackleton the Age of Heroes - an age that ended with Shackleton's fatal heart attack in 1922. But there were still heroes on the Ice: They were here, battling fire and deadly cold to keep us all safe, or for that matter, flying into the deep Antarctic night to drop a precious cargo into a small crescent of burning barrels. * (Ice Bound - a doctor's incredible battle for survival at the South Pole. Dr. Jerry Nielsen.

Imagine the Adventure

Most of us, ordinary people, wonder what propels and compels and impels some small section of a population to become adventurers. Those for whom the greatest pleasure seems to be to imagine themselves struggling against the most difficult of physical circumstances, and prevailing. From those who seek to cross vast oceans unaccompanied, climb the world's most inaccessible mountain peaks (accessible to those endowed with physical prowess and mind-boggling determination), and those who set out to reach the Arctic, the South Pole.

Incredibly strenuous activities that most of us would far prefer to read about, rather than ourselves to engage in. It takes the most dauntless of spirits to embark on such expeditions fraught with potential danger, and exacting every bit of energy and courage from those who set out to relish the triumph of accomplishment in these endeavours. We admire such people at the very same time that we wonder what exactly it is that motivates them.

The quest for adventure, the curiosity of what certain landscapes look like, the imagination of placing yourself there, in the very landscape that looks so inaccessible, obviously appeals to certain individuals. And for some of these individuals it becomes the motif of their lives' ambitions, to surmount all physical difficulties and to prevail in their attempts despite very real dangers, the evidence of which they also occasionally see for themselves.

In the mid-19th Century intrepid, educated and experienced world travellers, both men and women, travelled to the far corners of the world, where "civilized" people rarely ventured, to staunch their curiosity and satisfy their indomitable spirit of adventure. Many of those people wrote books recounting their adventures, their impressions, their fascination with their journey and their immense satisfaction at having set out and completed their destinations.

Occasionally, one reads such an accounting, published one hundred and fifty years earlier, by such explorer-adventurers and one such account was that of an overland journey from parts of the United States, on into the territory of Canada, well before the provinces were gathered into confederation. Where people set out from Britain with the intention of seeing for themselves the grandeur of the prairies, the mountains, the lakes and the forests of Western Canada.

In the process experiencing incredible hardships of an extent quite impossible to imagine today with modern communications and modes of transport, and highways and communities settled in areas that were not all that long ago, the province of the few. The original people of the country, the Sioux, the Assiniboine, the Shushwap, meeting up with the voyageurs, the white men and the Metis who worked for the Hudson's Bay Company.

Imagine the primeval forests where veritable giant trees thrived, fell over with their venerability, or from the effects of violent storms, so thickly covering the forest floor that access through the forest would be impossible. Veteran adventurers, skilled in the use of axes might attempt to cut and thrash their way through the forest, only to come across the dreaded Devil's club, whose sharp thorns would tear their clothing and their skin to shreds.

The Fraser and the Thompson river canyons affording hopeful avenues of progress for staunchly determined adventurers to travel from Edmonton, with its handful of hunters, not yet even a village, to FortKamloops , a journey of hundreds of miles on foot, with tough little Indian horses employed to carry supplies for a half-dozen people, hoping to supplement their pemmican and flour with game and fish on the way.

One has the idea that game would be plentiful, but there were winters when the aboriginal populations, skilled at life in their familiar territory, found insufficient game to maintain life and they faced starvation as surely as did the less capable adventurers moving laboriously through the landscape. Their horses starving for lack of decent pasturage, becoming skin and bones, but valuable, as were the dogs that accompanied them, as comprising an emergency food source.

Imagine the desperate condition of attempting to travel through such thick forest growth that pack horses would constantly stumble and fall, and refuse to continue and attempt to hide themselves within the forest; in the summer set upon by blow flies and utterly miserable from starvation and accidental injuries, yet they would carry on, even after tumbles down mountain sides and fording rivers with swift currents threatening to carry them and the travellers' provisions off.

Imagine the travellers, desperately seeking game, setting out from a winter's temporary location to follow game, only to be able to snare a marten, a skunk, a few partridge. Cooking up the predator-animals, finding their cooked stench detestable, but forcing themselves to partake of it to preserve their lives. Imagine that they have no provisions left and must contemplate butchering the horses that have served them so well.

Imagine, in dire straits, wondering whether they will somehow survive their travails, coming across the sitting corpse of another who had been in the same circumstances, before him the remnants of a fire, and the skeleton of his pack-animal before him, his desperation availing him nothing, in the final analysis. Imagine the misery, the determination, and the hope that compelled them to continue.

You needn't merely imagine: Read The North-West Passage By Land - Being a Narrative of an Expedition From the Atlantic to the Pacific (Viscount Milton and Walter Butler Cheadle, Prospero Canadian Collection)

Some Pride, Some Fall

Pride goeth before that legendary fall, doesn't it all too often? Well, there's no sense of satisfaction in these quarters reading that the initial foray of a bold and intrepid woman adventurer has been cut short due to an not entirely-anticipated event, but one that occurred and evidently couldn't have been avoided. By a woman who has had more than one person's share of adventures.

Meagan McGrath, a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, on leave to embark on a 45-day solo journey across the coastline of Antarctica, can most certainly be described as experienced and courageous. She is one of those rare creatures who set about and successfully mounted all seven of the world's tallest summits. Mount Everest in 2007.

There had been a news item in yesterday's paper about her preparedness for her journey. She had decided to separate her expedition gear, and haul everything on two sleds instead of one, to ensure greater stability, and also, one might suppose, in case one was somehow lost she would not be entirely bereft of supplies.

In her photographs the young woman in her mid-30s, looks confident, happy and fully engaged with life. She departed from Hercules Inlet on the first day of December, hoping to have fairly decent weather along most of her route, although the temperature, she knew, would dip very low in places, closer she got to her destination, the South Pole.

She had travelled 19.4 kilometres the first day of her journey. The following day as she set out again, she fell into a crevasse. She spent eight fruitless hours attempting to extricate herself from her dilemma. She contacted a commercially operated base camp by satellite telephone for help. She was cold and wet, she informed them, and uninjured.

But doubtless frustrated beyond endurance, and feeling that this was not quite the experience she had psyched herself up for. After the fanfare of the news story, this humiliating impasse. She was rescued, transported back to Patriot Hills (site of the base camp) and given a medical check which revealed bruised ribs. A team member of the Patriot Hills base camp retrieved her expedition gear.

Now she must indulge in some heavy introspection; consider whether she feels prepared to resume her adventure. Her Antarctic Odyssey has been in the planning stages for a few years. That's one tough break on a tough woman. She's already accomplished, as an extraordinarily determined adventurer, more than most people in her physical shape and frame of mind, might ever presume to undertake.

More power to her.

For Self

And then there are others, mature adults riveted with their personal need to experience adventures that most people would never dream of submitting to. The allure of arduous tribulations for the thrill of seeing firsthand and living precariously on one's own capabilities is most certainly not for the faint of heart. But because these adventurous trips are undertaken by thoughtful individuals who value their experiences for what they bring to them in quality of life, they are not to be compared with the misadventure of permitting teen-age sailors to set sail on their own.

David Scott Cowper of England, at the age of 68, is a veteran of sea travel, and he seeks no recognition from the public, nor to achieve celebrity status for living his adventures to satisfy his own need. He has no hesitation in embarking on his sixth circumnavigation of the globe which will take him 56,000 kilometres to Greenland, through the Northwest Passage, the Bering Strait, then to Fiji, Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, then the Falklands, South Georgia and Antarctica. Which represents quite the ambitious itinerary.

From there he will head north across the Pacific to negotiate the Northwest Passage from the eastern end, and return to the North Atlantic, involving a double transit of the Northwest Passage. Mr. Cowper is the first person to have sailed solo around the world in both directions. He sets out with the ship Polar Bound, a motorboat which he used on his fifth circumnavigation.

"She is the perfect tool for the job: self-righting and the strongest surface vessel of her size in the world. She can take 65 tons of ice pressure per square yard of hull and her bottom is shaped like that of a tablespoon so that she cannot be caught in the ice's grip. If she is squeezed, she pops up."

He is prepared to accept that he may be icebound for weeks, even months, in the Northwest Passage, at -40Centigrade. "You try to relax, read books, but you don't concentrate that much. You are always thinking to yourself: "Is the rudder going to be all right? With a pure motorboat, when things go wrong you are a dead duck, simple as that."

He is compelled, as a 68-year-old man, to live his live as one fifty years younger. This is his mature and considered choice. And more power to his boat.

Sailing For Home

The young and the restless have always sought to put space between themselves and their parents, to absent themselves from the stultifying and ego-stunting care of parents anxious for the well-being of their offspring. Independence, freedom to do as they wish, represents the allure of setting off on their own. And then there is also the more unusual occurrences of young people venturing off on their own, with the prefix 'ad' for full measure. In some instances the 'ad' resulting from parents advocating that their children undertake extreme adventures.

This unusual approach surely represents adults living through the promise of their children. Parents grooming children to become what they themselves could not, or were not able to. Exposing children to exciting opportunities and encouraging them to acquire expertise to achieve celebrity. A status that would reflect luminously on the parents, proud of their child's achievement. The parents, like a succubus, living off the child. And the child anxious to please, secure and confident through the parents' encouragement.

Seventeen-year-old Mike Perham, the British youth whose father introduced him to sailing at the age of seven, became the youngest person to sail across the Atlantic Ocean in 2007 at the age of 14. He has just now ended his solo round-the-globe voyage of nine months, taking his yacht on the 38,700-km trip. Throughout his time at sea he contended with technical problems, necessitating that he make port in Portugal, Grand Canaries, Cape Town, Tasmania and Auckland for vessel repairs.

Obviously this is not an adventure for the impoverished youth seeking to assuage boredom. Nor for the adventure-averse, home-body. "The low points are when things go wrong unexpectedly and it is down to you to fix it, because that's not getting you nearer to home, that's only getting you further away", he explained in a BBC interview. His sail ripped from top to bottom, and he'd had to swim under his Open 50 yacht's hull to cut a jammed spinnaker sheet free.

He was imbued with a sense of inevitability; that he would be able to complete his trip, but he was assailed, he admitted, from time to time, with wondering why he was doing what he set out to do. If he questioned the purpose of his adventure to himself, this was surely because it made little practical sense, and even the sense of adventure palled and paled when he found himself on his own, impossibly responsible for his survival, at age 16.

He set out to sail around the world. He was groomed to do this by his doting parents. Who obviously held notoriety for themselves, celebrity for their son, in greater esteem than the worrying potential of his loss at sea. As for the young Briton, he set out to explore and adventure and to satisfy his parents' dream for themselves through his ordeal. He persisted and he dealt with adversity, and he informed himself that "you push on and you handle it".

Victory lay in his arriving home, safe and sound. From the moment he set out on his voyage that was his goal, to reach home.

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