Reaching Your Own North Pole
Reaching Your Own North Pole
By Dave Hanchette, Community Contributor
Our first below-zero temperatures came very early this winter, and a large chunk of the U.S. endured one of the coldest Thanksgiving holidays in years. While the 2014 Old Farmer's Almanac predicts “below-normal temperatures and above-normal snowfall during most of the winter across much of the United States,” Monday's high of 11 degrees Fahrenheit below zero brought with it dangerous wind chills. This is more wintry weather than many of us care to endure, but such “balmy” temperatures wouldn't phase John Huston or Tyler Fish one bit. They started a 500-mile trek across Arctic ice in temperatures of 60 degrees Fahrenheit below zero en route to the their goal — the North Pole.
Polar explorer John Huston sees his expeditions as values-based endeavors that push him beyond his perceived limits and challenge him to new levels of possibility. The lessons learned from an expedition to the North Pole can be applied to any human endeavor, according to Huston. “ You can reach your own North Pole, whatever it may be,” Huston said, speaking at the Leif Eriksson Fest Celebrating Viking Exploration at the Des Plaines Public Library.
Huston, 32, and Fish, 36, painstakingly planned to reach the geographic North Pole in 55 days. The plan demanded completion on Day 55 because their flight home would depart on the next day, April 26. Huston and Fish had seats reserved on the last Russian helicopter flight out from Camp Barneo, a private Russian ice base established for about one month each year on an ice floe near the North Pole. It consists of shelter for thrill seekers and North Pole travelers, and there is a Scientific Camp where Russian, Norwegian, and American researchers work. The base must be dismantled in late April when the ice becomes less stable. If Huston and Fish were to miss that final helicopter flight, arranging another flight from Canada would cost $150,000 — money they simply did not have. Thus, their commitment to reaching the Pole on time was absolute. To do so, persistence and belief in self would be essential.
Huston and Fish trained three years for the expedition, Huston said, recounting the almost daily dragging of five oversize tires linked on a rope over sand, clean cement, and grass — all high-friction surfaces. At 50 degrees below zero, snow is like sand. Pulling a sled across it causes a ton of friction. This tire-pulling task prepared the explorers to drag their heavy, equipment-filled, flotable sleds over the ice. Also, it was a real confidence booster for the explorers to make small improvements everyday in this task. “Training is the expedition,” Huston said.
Pulling the tires created the same physical stresses the explorers would face daily on the ice. This gave the men a chance to practice being patient and positive while strenuously exerting themselves. In the Arctic there is no controlling the environment, so one controls what one can. Controlling one's mindset is key, Huston said.
500 miles separated the explorers and the Pole when they stepped off a remote tip of North America onto Arctic ice. "The most exhilarating thing is to see that plane fly away," Huston says, "because from then on you're severed from all civilization.”
Huston and Fish each pulled two 5 1/4' flotable sleds loaded with supplies. As they started the trek, both labored on their snowshoes, each pulling a 300-pound load which would diminish only gradually as they consumed their supplies.
The two-man expedition embarked without the benefit of dogs, snowmobiles, kites, or other devices which would help propel them, devices used by most previous expeditions. Huston and Fish had snowshoes and skis, but they would use only their own muscle power throughout the trek. What's more, there would be no resupply. The twosome had what they pulled on the sleds, and that was it. They were fully accountable for their own success or failure. It was simply up to them, and that's how they wanted it.
Most arctic expeditions fail within the first 10 days, but Huston's and Fish's knowledge base would take them well beyond that. They knew that expectations at the beginning had to be low. One lesser-known strategy was accepting very slow going — just a few miles a day — in the first two weeks of the trek when the sleds were at their heaviest and the ice was in the form of “rubble.” Arctic Ocean sea ice is not as thick as it used to be in decades past. In the 21st century, when sections of sea ice push against land or each other, the ice crumbles, leaving “junkyards of ice” called rubble. Leaving North America Huston and Fish snowshoed through a surreal landscape of rubble — "from car-size boulders to house-size boulders to boulders the size of a shoebox and everything in between, in all different formations," Huston recalls. “Ice Armageddon,” they called it.
Studying previous expeditions and participating in many themselves had taught Fish and Huston how to survive in the extreme cold. They knew that fuel consumption and care of the fuel container were vital: fuel was needed to melt snow for water and to warm food for eating. They couldn't afford to run out or spring a leak.
They also knew that they must eat roughly 7,000 calories per day to give them the energy they needed for such strenuous exertion in the extreme cold. Accordingly, they ate meals of high-fat content foods — mainly butter, bacon, fudge, nuts, and pemmican. For breakfast they had pemmican stew — a kind of fatty meatloaf containing concentrated fat, lamb, chicken, lentils, and spices — to which they added whole milk powder and butter. Lunch meant fudge bars and little pieces of butter, and dinner was pemmican stew again. They ate the same meals each day, which meant they would consume about 110 meals of pemmican stew in 55 days if the expedition was successful. Nuts and bacon added a little variety.
To underscore their resolve to reach the Pole, the two explorers explicitly agreed to “something akin to a marriage commitment,” Huston said. It was this: no matter what happened, no matter how bad things got, they would go forward toward the Pole. This was their pact — the agreement which superseded all other considerations. Forward!
Early in the trip Huston and Fish snowshoed in twilight and didn't see the orb of the sun above the horizon until the third or fourth day. Their pattern was to trek for 90 minutes to two hours, take a 15-minute break to eat a little and drink, then repeat. "The main thing — I remember was how loud it was — not the ice itself, but us moving on the ice. Because at 40 or 50 below the ice has so much friction when you step, it's like cr-crunch!” said Huston.
At the start of the trek the temperature was about 60 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. At 45 below, your sweat clings to your facial hairs like tiny snowballs. At night in the tent it could be 40 below. But by mid-April, the six months of night were over. The explorers were enjoying sunlight all day and all night, and this warmed things up quite a bit. Of course, they had planned for this.
They covered only 47 miles in the first 17 days of the expedition, but they expected that. Trekking through the rubble was very slow going. But then the ice smoothed out some, and they were able to use their skis and increase their speed almost daily until Day 45. By this time the sleds were lighter, so Huston and Fish spent more time trekking and slept only about 5 hours per night. Whenever they completed 60 miles (one degree of latitude), they took a nip of scotch. It was important to celebrate small victories.
The men talked mostly about mostly about skiing or family, but they did it in an unusual way. They had conversations for five hours on one topic. They'd introduce an idea in one sentence and then think about it for 30 minutes. Then they would say a few more words, and another 30 minutes would pass. Fish said he couldn't decide whether these were the shortest conversations, in terms of words, or the longest, because they happened over miles and miles.
Huston and Fish were close, yet conflicts arose at different points, conflicts that are inevitable among participants on long expedition.
“We went into it expecting that our relationship, aside from the goal, was the most important element of the trip, and yet it's going to be tested. We had considerable imbalance after the preparation, but we operated better out on the ice. It could tear people apart, but it didn't. We're better friends because of it,” said Fish.
“You need to [be completely honest and say hard things to each other for the benefit of the relationship,” said Huston. “Relationships matter, and they take work. Trust is everything,” Huston said.
Huston has studied many famous Norwegian explorers, viewing them as highly successful models. His favorite, Roald Amundsen, was a genius at polar exploration. Amundsen learned cold weather skills from the Inuit. He vigorously sought out and identified the weak point in any plan or piece of equipment and worked diligently to improve it. Amundsen didn't believe in luck, but said, “Victory awaits him who has everything in order.”
“Polar explorers were like astronauts in his day,” Huston said. “They would sail a ship or take an expedition, going off the map and exploring there for several years. These men literally went where no man had gone before,” said Huston. Having everything in order could make the difference between a successful expedition and a disaster.
The expedition adopted several core values they thought necessary for its success: optimism, responsibility, self-care, and humility. For this expedition, humility meant that a person might have accomplished a lot but didn't feel the need to talk about it. This person would be confident in his abilities, but he would think of others first. A humble person would have “the pragmatic ability to adapt and learn,” according to Huston, which would further his success. He observed that his favorite explorer, Amundsen, showed great humility. “Humble people are successful,” said Huston.
“We wanted to undertake this expedition being completely respectful to those who had done this before. We were certainly not the first people who had skied to the North Pole unsupported. We were the first Americans. Having the respect of those people and being friends with them is more important than any media story.” Huston viewed another Norwegian explorer, Rune Gjeldnes, as “a polar Superman.” Gieldnes suggested three critical rules for this two-man polar expedition. Huston introduced them in reverse order in his presentation: 3) No complaining. 2) The body will achieve a lot if the mind will let it. 1) Say nice things to each other.
The trekkers also knew that the ice could change every day, or even every hour — presenting various dangers. But they were well aware of the possibilities.
They started to encounter “leads.“ These were areas of “pans” of ice — large sections of ice that would spread far apart from each other. In between the pans were sections of thin ice, thin enough so you could see the water underneath. You had to keep moving on this thin ice — if you stayed in one place, you would go right through.
Huston and Fish approached a newly frozen lead around mid-morning on a sunny but breezy day. "I checked the ice, and I should have checked it more thoroughly, obviously.,” said Huston. Tyler and I talked about it, and I started skiing, and it felt like I was skiing down an escalator into a Slurpee.”
"Falling through the ice was probably the most traumatic day of the expedition," he says. "Almost all expeditions on the Arctic Ocean, no matter how experienced the people are, will have an expedition member fall through the ice to varying degrees. And I went all the way through, up to my neck."
"At first I was not that cold. I was more worried about losing my skis — if my skis had come off, the expedition would have probably been over — and then it was just extreme cold. I was probably only in the water for a minute or a minute and a half, but my fingers and feet got just extremely cold.” In response to extreme cold blood goes to the core to protect vital organs, leaving the hands and feet cold and stiff.
"The coldest part was when we stripped me down naked right there on some good ice at the edge of this open lead and put me in dry layers” — including a pair of Fish's dirty long underwear. “Otherwise, I could have turned into a brick of ice.”
“You have to be smart and steady while trekking in the Arctic,” said Huston. “That day I was neither.'
Soon, the men encountered patches of open water amid the ice. They knew that these open water areas could be as much as 30-60 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the air. Fish and Huston donned drysuits, floated like little bobbers, and backstroked across these 20 - 30 meter open patches of water while pulling their floatable sleds behind them. They needed to do this more than a dozen times. Climbing out on the ice on the far side required technique. "You're heading backwards using your arms and legs, and when you reach thin ice, you sort of get up on it and break it, go back a little further, get up on it and break it, go back a little further . . . .” said Fish. Eventually solid ice insured climbing out. Sometimes the men floated for as much as two hours at a time, just to warm up.
The air temperature rose to a couple degrees above zero by the end of the expedition. But John said even as the temperature warmed, he and Tyler felt colder. "We felt warmer at 50 below zero in the beginning, wearing less clothes, than we were at minus ten Fahrenheit or zero degrees and a bit of wind at the end," John said. "Because at the beginning we were a bit fat, we could deal with the cold physically a bit better. Toward the end of the trip we were super thin, we'd each lost 20 to 30 pounds. We were worn out and tired. And we were wearing more clothes to stay warm in warmer temperatures because we just couldn't generate any heat anymore.”
On the 51st day of a smoothly-run expedition, the men were trekking for 18 hours and sleeping for 6. They were ahead of schedule with roughly 60 hours trekking to go. But a check of the GPS that evening took them aback. They were not as close to the pole as they thought. The Arctic ice must have started drifting away from the Pole, carrying the explorers with it. It was moving to the southeast at eight to 10 miles a day propelled by winds and ocean currents. This meant if Huston and Fish slept for 6 hours, they would wake up two or three miles further from the Pole. It also meant that in a 3-day period, the drifting ice would make it necessary to travel an extra 25 miles to reach the Pole.
”It became really stressful to figure out how we were going to travel fast enough to overcome this treadmill of drift that we were on the wrong end of," Huston said. "Basically we ran out of time.”
Despite the persistent, sustained efforts of the two explorers for seven weeks, all was in jeopardy. For the first time Huston and Fish lost their positive mindsets. They were demoralized and could envision only one outcome — failure!
That night they phoned their mainland contact — their expedition chief. She listened to their problem and suggested they forget about it and sleep for 6 hours. In the morning they would call her again, and together they would devise a new plan.
“Fifty-one days into the 'hardest trek on the planet,” Huston and Fish realized they might not make it to the North Pole after all. After three years of planning and preparation, “ . . . that was a really dark night in the tent," Huston recalls. “There were tears in the sleeping bag. We just thought, 'What have we done wrong?' “
Progress is impossible without change. Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything, Huston said. A dramatic change was needed to overcome the effect of the drifting ice. The explorers devised an extreme plan during that morning's phone call.
The men had to travel about 66 hours to reach the Pole in three days, overcoming the drift of the ice. They committed to one intense final push forward, which meant skiing almost nonstop for 3 days. Huston and Fish emptied their sleds of all nonessentials. They felt bad about littering on the Arctic ice, but they did it anyway, They would do whatever was necessary to reach their goal — to go forward. They would trek for 23 hours, then stop for an hour to eat and sleep. Then trek again.
Adding insult to injury, they had run out of food, except for some rotting bacon crumbs. So they were trekking the Arctic ice for 23 hours a day sustained by only one hour of sleep and rancid bacon crumbles.
Huston regretted that they had thrown out Fish's anti-snoring device when they tossed all the nonessentials out of the sleds. In the tiny two-man tent Huston spent his one hour of sleep time listening to Fish snore.
Luckily, the ice flattened out, which helped a lot. The two men dug deep into the optimistic part of their minds. They did not allow themselves to think of quitting — they simply wouldn't go there. They knew that many people had gone through hell and achieved great things. That meant they could do it too. A person can achieve whatever his mind allows. Forward!
They skied 23 hours the first day and 23 more the second day. Then they were were up in one hour and skiing again, this time for 20 hours more. During this final push Fish became fatigued while Huston became famished. They knew that after those 66 hours they were very close.
Finding the North Pole using a GPS was one of the hardest tasks on the trip. The North Pole looks exactly like all the rest of the Arctic ice. It's not like there's a sign or stake in the ground. And with the ice drifting, the pole is constantly moving. You're close, but you need to hit an invisible moving target. You think you're there for a second, and then the ice moves.
On Day 55 of the expedition, at 4:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, GPS coordinates told Huston and Fish they had reached their final destination. A weary Fish announced they had “traveled a long ways to find this thing (the North Pole). We're here now.” They didn't celebrate. They just stopped stop moving.
"It was a big achievement and a really blurry time as well," says Huston. "We were sleepwalking sometimes, for sure.” After a bit, they found that single-malt scotch bottle and some leftover fudge before collapsing in exhaustion.
Huston points to the "treadmill of drift" they encountered as a sign of climate change. “Climate change is one of the reasons we were drifting so much — the ice is so much thinner. It's a lot less resilient to wind currents and ocean currents and melt than it was 20 years ago.” Huston estimates that, within a decade, it might be impossible to ski to the North Pole due to melting on the Arctic Ocean. Why would anyone do something like this in the first place? "We're addicted to challenge in that it makes us engage life to the fullest," Huston said. "This challenge was everything we hoped it'd be and a bit more.”
Still, Huston says he won't be repeating the North Pole unsupported expedition anytime soon. "You'd have to pay me a lot of money to do this trip again," he says, laughing. "It was so hard mentally. It was completely unrelenting. We were always occupied with staying safe and warm. I'd put it as a 10 on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the hardest and one being the beach."
Huston hasn't ruled out other expeditions, though he has two stipulations: the next trek won't be to somewhere cold, and it won't last two months.
On the helicopter ride home, someone asked Fish, “What was the worst part? He thought a while and then replied, “Coming home.”
“You have to grab your moments when you can," he said. "Maybe it's, 'Wow, look at the patterns in the snow,' or, 'Wow, this is an incredible rubble field I'll never see again.' Really, like I said, it's grabbing those moments and appreciating them.”
He realized in that moment he was not ready to return to his “real life” just yet, knowing that there was nowhere else he would rather be but on the ice, and deep down, knowing he would never be again.
John Huston's and Tyler Fish's 2009 expedition marked the first time Americans reached the North Pole under their own power and without resupply. The values and principles that Huston and Fish built into their expedition helped them get there. Huston believes these ideas will work for regular folks on whatever their personal goals may be. The two determined explorers have demonstrated the tools to help us reach our goals, and more importantly, the assurance that we can do it. For the full story of the this expedition, see the book Forward written by the explorers themselves. (Octane Press, ISBN-10: 1937747905 ISBN-13: 978-1937747909)