Skiing to the North Pole
OUTFITTER: The Polar Travel Company; 011-44-1364-631-470; www.polartravel.co.uk
COST: $45,000
DATES: Feb 25-May 18, 2001
MILEAGE: 690

John Noble

Patriot Hills, Antarctica

REACHING THE NORTH POLE: HAVE YOU GOT WHAT IT TAKES? Strength/endurance: To train for schlepping the 200-plus pound sledges, Hadow suggests that clients drag a string of tractor tires behind them on their favorite hikes. Mental Fitness: If the $45,000 fee doesn't turn you off, consider the four-day camp Hadow makes prospective clients endure. They are marched into unfamiliar wilderness in Dartmoor, England, at night and told to find their way back; forced to swim cold lakes in the dark; and required to rappel headfirst into quarries. "It's like in the Arctic," says Hadow. "You don't know what'll happen next." Environmental Challenges: As the team nears the pole and spring sets in, temperatures will rise and the ice will constantly break, making forward progress agonizingly slow. Skills: No polar experience necessary. The only requirement:having survived Hadow's course. POLAR EXPLORERS' READING LIST: For Inspiration: Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure, by Frank Arthur Worsley. The account of how 25 shipwrecked British explorers survived in the hostile Antarctic for two years before their leader, Ernest Shackleton, pulled off one of the most extraordinary rescues in history. To Scare Yourself Silly: Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure, by Admiral Richard E. Byrd. Byrd, who won fame for his daring polar flights, recounts his struggle for life and sanity while stranded alone at the North Pole in 1934 with no hope of rescue until spring.

The trip will merge the misery of Sisyphus with the mission statement of a Grand Canyon pack mule. After a nine-hour day hauling your baggage over, say, 11 miles of ice, followed by a night shivering with your tentmates in minus-40-degree cold, you might wake to discover that wind-driven pack ice has transported your heavy kit and your exhausted caboodle seven miles back south—sometimes all the way to where you were the previous morning. Pushing northward again—and again and again and again—takes perseverance.

And flexibility. "The only thing predictable about skiing to the North Pole is that it's unpredictable," says Caroline Hamilton, who collaborated with Hadow on a North Pole trip in 1997. "Just when you start to relax, something happens." A beautiful day transmogrifies into a soul-numbing whiteout; ice ahead of you buckles into an insurmountable ridge. But the blend of uncertainty, hardship, and challenge can offer an elixir far more intoxicating than cheap champagne, says Hadow, a 12-year veteran of polar travel who traces his love of the Arctic to his childhood caretaker, Nanny Wigley, who also looked after famed polar explorer Sir Robert F. Scott's son. The agonizingly slow progress also means you'll have time to discover, digest, and appreciate the Arctic's subtle aesthetics: the vibrancy of total silence, the adamantine clarity of a polar dawn, ice blocks carved into abstract shapes that Henry Moore would envy. "You'd think going to the pole would be all white, but it's not," says Hamilton. "You see so much blue. It's incredibly beautiful, that nothingness."

NEXT TIME TRY:

Skiing to the South Pole
Aventuras Patagonicas; 888-203-9354; www.patagonicas.com
November-December 2000

Although 17th-century mapmakers called Antarctica "Terra Australis Incognita"—the Unknown Southern Land—skiing to the bottom of the world is less of a mystery than reaching its polar opposite. No decisions about which way to go around frigid leads, no drifting ice. Point your skis south, and south you'll go. That's not to say, however, that skiing halfway across the world's highest, driest, and coldest continent is easy. Rodrigo Mujica, the owner of Jackson, Wyoming-based Aventuras Patagonicas, plans to lead a group on a 600-mile, 60-day unsupported ski expedition from the foot of the Ellsworth Mountains to the South Pole during the austral summer. In addition to the continent's ever-present cold (minus 25 isn't rare) and blinding windstorms, clients will encounter a level of bleakness unmatched anywhere else on the planet. "There's nothing for hundreds of miles," Mujica admits. "It can make you crazy."

DON'T DO IT YOURSELF

Only veterans have the experience to overcome the myriad dangers in the world's polar regions, where the learning curve is steep and where falling off it means you'll probably die. Upshot: Go with a guide, or don't go at all.