A South Pole Expedition 2

This is Captain Robert Falcon Scott. He led the last team to attempt this expedition.

Scott and his rival Sir Ernest Shackleton, over the space of a decade, both led expeditions battling to become the first to reach the South Pole,

to chart and map the interior of Antarctica, a place we knew less about, at the time, than the surface of the moon, because we could see the moon through telescopes.

Antarctica was, for the most part, a century ago, uncharted.

Some of you may know the story.

Scott's last expedition, the Terra Nova Expedition in 1910, started as a giant siege-style approach.

He had a big team using ponies, using dogs, using petrol-driven tractors, dropping multiple, pre-positioned depots of food and fuel

through which Scott's final team of five would travel to the Pole, where they would turn around and ski back to the coast again on foot.

Scott and his final team of five arrived at the South Pole in January 1912 to find they had been beaten to it by a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen, who rode on dogsled.

Scott's team ended up on foot.

And for more than a century this journey has remained unfinished.

Scott's team of five died on the return journey.

And for the last decade, I've been asking myself why that is.

How come this has remained the high-water mark?

Scott's team covered 1,600 miles on foot. No one's come close to that ever since.

So this is the high-water mark of human endurance, human endeavor, human athletic achievement in arguably the harshest climate on Earth.

It was as if the marathon record has remained unbroken since 1912.

And of course some strange and predictable combination of curiosity, stubbornness, and probably hubris led me to thinking I might be the man to try to finish the job.

Qestions

What were Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott Trying to do?

>to become the first person to reach the South Pole.

What did Scott's team find when they arrived at the South Pole?

>Another team of explorers was already there.

A food depot is...

>a place where food is stored.

Scott and his rival  Sir Ernest Shackleton,over the space of a decade, both led expeditions battling to become the first to reach the South Pole.

How come this has remined as high-water mark?

I hope in that you might find some food for thought.

One of the interesting side effects seems to be that my short-term memory is entirely short.

Scott and his final team of five arrived at the South Pole in January 1912 to find they had been beaten to it by a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen, who rode on dogsled.

Unlike Scott's expedition, there were just two of us,

and we set off from the coast of Antarctica in October last year, dragging everything ourselves, a process Scott called "man-hauling."

When I say it was like walking from here to San Francisco and back, I actually mean it was like dragging something that weighs a shade more than the heaviest ever NFL player.

Our sledges weighed 200 kilos, or 440 pounds each at the start, the same weights that the weakest of Scott's ponies pulled.

Early on, we averaged 0.5 miles per hour.

Perhaps the reason no one had attempted this journey until now, in more than a century, was that no one had been quite stupid enough to try.

And while I can't claim we were exploring in the genuine Edwardian sense of the word — we weren't naming any mountains or mapping any uncharted valleys —

I think we were stepping into uncharted territory in a human sense.

Certainly, if in the future we learn there is an area of the human brain that lights up when one curses oneself, I won't be at all surprised.

You've heard that the average American spends 90 percent of their time indoors.

We didn't go indoors for nearly four months.

We didn't see a sunset either. It was 24-hour daylight.

Living conditions were quite spartan.

I changed my underwear three times in 105 days and Tarka and I shared 30 square feet on the canvas.

Though we did have some technology that Scott could never have imagined.

And we blogged live every evening from the tent via a laptop and a custom-made satellite transmitter,

all of which were solar-powered: we had a flexible photovoltaic panel over the tent.

And the writing was important to me.

As a kid, I was inspired by the literature of adventure and exploration, and I think we've all seen here this week the importance and the power of storytelling.

Questions

How many people were in Saunders' expedition?

>there were only two people

In what sense did Saunder see himself and his partner as explorers?

>they were exploring uncharted parts of themselves and humanity.

"Man-hauling" is another way to say...

>using your own body to pull something. 

How was their expedition different from the Scott's?

>They had less men but better technology than Scott did.

What made it so difficult for them to walk?

>They were dragging heavy sleds behind them.

"Uncharted territory" is...

>a situation that people have never experienced before.

The high-water mark of something is...

> the time when it is the most successful.

Our journey was an 1,800-mile round trip on foot from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back again.

There were only two people.

Storytelling is powerful and important.

"Man-hauling" is another way to say ...

>using your own body to pull something.

As a kid, I was inspired by the literature of adventure and exploration, and I think we've all seen here this week the importance and the power of storytelling.

So we had some 21st-century gear, but the reality is that the challenges that Scott faced were the same that we faced:

those of the weather and of what Scott called glide, the amount of friction between the sledges and the snow.

The lowest wind chill we experienced was in the -70s, and we had zero visibility, what's called white-out, for much of our journey.

We traveled up and down one of the largest and most dangerous glaciers in the world, the Beardmore glacier.

It's 110 miles long; most of its surface is what's called blue ice.

You can see it's a beautiful, shimmering steel-hard blue surface covered with thousands and thousands of crevasses, these deep cracks in the glacial ice up to 200 feet deep.

Planes can't land here, so we were at the most risk, technically, when we had the slimmest chance of being rescued.

We got to the South Pole after 61 days on foot, with one day off for bad weather, and I'm sad to say, it was something of an anticlimax.

There's a permanent American base, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at the South Pole.

They have an airstrip, they have a canteen, they have hot showers, they have a post office, a tourist shop, a basketball court that doubles as a movie theater.

So it's a bit different these days, and there are also acres of junk.

I think it's a marvelous thing that humans can exist 365 days of the year with hamburgers and hot showers and movie theaters,

but it does seem to produce a lot of empty cardboard boxes.

You can see on the left of this photograph, several square acres of junk waiting to be flown out from the South Pole.

But there is also a pole at the South Pole, and we got there on foot, unassisted, unsupported, by the hardest route, 900 miles in record time, dragging more weight than anyone in history.

And if we'd stopped there and flown home, which would have been the eminently sensible thing to do,

then my talk would end here and it would end something like this.

If you have the right team around you, the right tools, the right technology,

and if you have enough self-belief and enough determination, then anything is possible.

Quesitons

What may their arrival to the South Pole anticlimactic?

>the South Pole has a permanent American base. 

Why was Saunders' team add the most risk wild of the Beardmore glacier?

>No planes could land on it to rescue them.

How are Saunders and Scott's journey similar?

>They faced the same challenges due to the harsh weather.

During a white-out...

>it is nearly impossible to see.

A crevasse is...

>a deep crack in a glacier.

The reality is that the challenges that Scott faced were the same that we faced: those of the weather and of what Scott called glide, the amount of friction between the sledges and the snow.

An area that hasn't been mapped yet is called an uncharted territory

No planes could land on the glacier, so they were at the most risk while on the glacier.

Planes can't land here, so we were at the most risk, technically, when we had the slimmest chance of being rescued.

It is covered with thousands of crevasses.

Anything is possible if you have the right team, tools, and technology.

You've heard that the average American spends 90 percent of their time indoors.