Husky News

Then comes that solo expedition to the North Pole. He swims in his dry-suit across “inky black water over three miles deep - the scariest thing I’ve ever done”; he sledges for hours only to discover, when he checks his GPS at the end of the day, that he is more than two miles behind his position that morning. The constantly shifting sea ice has drifted against him. In the finale, he reaches the North Pole-alone in an area one and a half times the size of America. He ends on an uplifting note: “I am not an explorer in the Edwardian sense. The maps have been drawn. But I see myself as exploring human possibilities. I did something many think is impossible.” The implication: so can you.

I found his story more convincing when he told it to me in his cluttered flat a few days earlier, popping up frequently to show me the binding on his well-worn, blue skis or discoursing excitedly about expedition diets. But now, the financiers are enthralled and at the end he is surrounded by a knot of admirers eager to shake his hand.

It is the day after Saunders’s talk at Lloyd’s. We are standing on a dirt path with the sweep of Richmond Park before us—a sprawling, wooded oasis on London’s wealthy south-western fringe where Saunders often trains for his expeditions. I ask him about his status as an explorer, and his normally direct gaze becomes hard to catch. “I think the word ‘explorer’ needs reinventing,” he says slowly. “I shied away from it for a long time because…it conjures up a colonial, chest-thumping image.” He thinks for a moment, then continues, “But there is something to it. It’s more than adventuring…To me that sounds like bungee jumping, an adrenaline kick. And ‘athletics’ only captures one side of it…But the world’s mapped. It’s about human possibilities, really.” He rushes out this last sentence, an echo from his speech at Lloyd’s the previous night, as if only half convinced.

Saunders takes runs on this path and cycles or roller-skis on the paved road that rings the park. He has started training 30 hours a week for a return solo trip on foot to the North Pole next March. He wants to break the record held by Robert Peary, who in 1909 reached the Pole in 37 days using dog sleds.

Saunders has been an avid cyclist since he was 12, when he would take “epic” bike rides through the woodlands around his home in Devon. He has run several marathons, including two “ultra-marathons”—40 miles and 58 miles, respectively—and he competes frequently in duathalons (a long run, a bike ride, another run). The mental challenge is as important as the physical. “You are fighting yourself, really…Part of you always wants to quit,” he says. After falling through ice in 2004, he remembers being shaken and ready to give up. “It is so tough that you are always looking for an excuse to stop and call for rescue. But of course you can’t. So you carry on.”

Saunders’s second North Pole expedition was added to his schedule after his magnum opus-an expedition called, simply, “South”—was postponed until next October because he hasn’t been able to raise the money. South would take him across Antarctica to the South Pole and back, a journey of 1,800 miles he plans to ski solo and without “support”—no dogs, kites or vehicles and without resupply. This means he will haul everything he needs for the four-month journey (during his 2004 expedition, his sledge—shown below—weighed almost 400 pounds). It would be the longest unsupported trek in history. Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, is the only other man to have done this, but used dog sleds. Critics snipe that Saunders’s trip-equipped with GPS and satellite phones-can hardly be called unsupported. “It will be epic!” Saunders says.

Source: INTELLIGENT LIFE MAGAZINE, December 2007