WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S
MISSION?

One reason I got into expeditions is my curiosity about places on our planet. Being able to travel across vast stretches of land in those places has been an incredible opportunity. You get to understand what these places are like in a very deliberate process. You’re in that environment and you’re not flying over it or driving across it; you’re in it and almost becoming it. Another thing I think about is scale. It’s incredible to be such a small person in that huge landscape. It makes you realize how small and insignificant you are.

Not everybody has the opportunity to go to these vast places, because they live in a city for economic reasons, or whatever. What I want to do with my expeditions is to bring nature to people and create this experience where people understand what these places are like. The main driver of these adventures is to connect people to a place where they most likely will never go.

WHAT MOTIVATES
YOU?

In terms of the types of expeditions I do, the reality is my trips aren’t so much about being first anymore, but about being last. Look at some of the predictions of the Arctic. Sea ice is estimated to be melted in the summertime in 30 years. So that expedition to the North Pole over that ice will not be possible in the way that I’ve done it. That’s pretty tragic. Looking at Antarctica, this huge landmass covered by ice—much of that will be dramatically changed as well. It’s a tragic thing. It’s also a driver for me. It’s motivation for me to do more, to try to talk about these places more, to try to be better both on an individual level and advocate to society about what we can do to reduce our carbon emissions, because hopefully there is time to save all that ice.

HOW DO YOU PREP
YOURSELF AND
YOUR GEAR?

My basic philosophy about expeditions is “train hard and travel easy.” Any given week when I’m not out on the ice somewhere, physical training is a big part of my day: riding my bike, weight training, running, skiing, or hiking with a heavy pack. Then there’s logistics—getting permits, researching routes, figuring out what gear I’m going to take. I enjoy all aspects of what I do. I get to be very physical and train, but all this research and office work is equally important.

I pick and choose different gear depending on the environment and the way I’m traveling. I do research to find new things that are light, strong, durable and easy to use. There’s a lot of repair and maintenance that goes into prepping my current gear. We’re in environments that can be 40 or 50 degrees below zero. Being able to use gear in that environment requires a lot of preparation so that we’re not doing anything out there that takes up extra time or put us in a dangerous situation. When I’m on an expedition, my survival literally depends on the quality of my gear.

When I was in Antarctica this year, I didn’t get to see a lot of the landscape with the beautiful sastrugi because it was snowing so much. It was just this unending plain of white that stretched all the way to the horizon on a good day. Imagine being on the inside of a ping-pong ball for 12 or 15 hours a day and not being able to see anything! It’s hard to stand upright. You can’t keep your balance because there’s no horizon. It’s hard to navigate in a straight line. After a few days of that, my eyes lost their ability to focus and I kept seeing double of things as well. There’s a lot of beauty and a lot of harsh conditions in a place like Antarctica.

It’s like being on top of a white cake and all around you is just white. And it’s cold. These are the concrete things. Then there’s this other aspect which is less tangible. You’re doing one thing for two months or more focused on one goal with no outside stimuli. That’s hard to describe. In one sense it’s totally amazing. It’s this unique experience where you are completely alone and isolated. It’s also overwhelming for the same reason: you are completely alone and isolated. It’s boring. It’s beautiful. It’s physically hard. It’s mentally challenging. It’s rewarding. It’s unrelenting. It’s so many things—and that’s what I like about these trips.

WHAT ROLE DOES
TIME PLAY IN YOUR
EXPEDITIONS?

Time is one of the most critical factors. Because we’re dealing with really difficult objectives over a big span of distance, one of our biggest assets is using time to our advantage. We do so many repetitive things—setting up camp, making dinner, navigating—and we do them not just for a day, but for a month or two months. When we’re inefficient, we end up wasting time. If I’m navigating and I take 30 seconds extra to find my bearing, that’s 30 seconds I’ve wasted. Not a big deal, but if I do that 20 times a day, that’s 10 minutes a day. In six days, that’s an hour. In 48 days, that’s a whole day of travel lost. We’re dealing with a finite amount of food and fuel supplies, so keeping track of time and adhering to a schedule makes us efficient and accountable.

WHAT’S YOUR DIRECT
EXPERIENCE OF
CLIMATE CHANGE?

Anywhere cold on our planet is being affected by climate change. The polar regions have seen the most dramatic changes by far. My first trip to the North Pole was in 2006, I was there in 2018, and I’ll be there again this year. There’s been a dramatic change in the character and nature of the sea ice in the Arctic. The size of the thick ice pans has diminished in extent and thickness. How the ice moves has changed. The amount of landlocked ice has lessened. The freeze ups are coming later; the thaws are coming earlier; there’s more open water and there’s more irregular patterns in how the ice is moving. In Antarctica there’s just warmer weather and more snow.

I’ve spent my life in pursuit of the world’s coldest places and being able to survive in some of the most extreme and inhospitable places on the planet. As I see these places change and our global temperatures increase, it’s clear to me that ice is an endangered species. Pretty soon these cold places, these ice caps will be forever changed. As someone who has a very large passion for traveling in those places, in one sense I’m a dinosaur, because I won’t be able to do those types of trips. Pretty soon the only ice we have will be in a climate-controlled box in a museum. “Oh yeah, remember what that was like?”

WHAT IS
“GLOBAL WEIRDING”?

The Earth’s climate is one of the most complex systems on the planet. Some of the world’s most powerful computers aren’t designing missile systems, they’re modeling the Earth’s climate. There are so many variables; it’s a very complex system of interactions and feedback loops. For example, the Greenland icecap is this massive chunk of ice on top of land. When it melts, all that freshwater goes in the ocean. Not only does it raise the ocean levels, it changes the salinity of the ocean and changes the deep-water currents that make, for example, the United Kingdom much warmer even though it’s in a more northern latitude.So now that changes and then this other thing changes. That’s “global weirding.” Unfortunately, we don’t fully understand the extent ofthe harm that’s being done.

CAN ORDINARY PEOPLE
FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE?

When you look at the cumulative effect of individual actions, it’s a significant opportunity. In the US, the No. 1 and 2 drivers of emissions are electricity and cars. On an individual level we need to be mindful of our own actions—something as simple as turning off a light. These things have an impact when you multiply that by all the individuals in your town, your country or your hemisphere. We need to work on a national level as well, adhering to carbon emission standards, reduction targets, developing alternative energies. The technology exists right now to reduce our carbon footprint significantly. We just need the individual and the political will to act right now.

My main message to people boils down to a simple phrase: “Begin with one step.” You can apply that to whatever you’re doing. Oftentimes these big expeditions I do are so overwhelming, it seems impossible we’re ever going to achieve our goal, so I tell myself out loud, “Just take that first step and then the next one.” Then we get to the first hour, then maybe the halfway point, then it’s a full day and then the next day. With this idea of taking a big problem and breaking it into pieces, average people like myself can accomplish a lot. When you look at a problem like climate change that seems so overwhelming, it’s all about doing that first thing, then the next thing, and the next thing after that.