a twelve-member Soviet-American team, from Siberia to Alaska via the Bering Strait to reestablish cultural connections among Arctic natives long separated by the Cold War.
Paul’s excursions depart from most so-called adventure trips, where clients fork over big bucks to have Sherpas schlep their gear up mountaintops and provide whatever is needed. With Paul, I paid handsomely to be a grunt bearing the brunt of the load. I figured that after I got over the pain, the trip would provide massive bragging rights in the world of macho exploration.
If the North Pole has a PR man, Paul is it. In an interview for our Expedition Web site, Paul was clear about his preferences for the North Pole versus the other two major adventures—Antarctica and Everest.
“Trekking to the top of the world represents one of the world’s greatest geographic challenges,” he said. “Of course, the bigger the challenge, the bigger the rewards, and I’ve always considered my polar successes to be a marvelous gift. They’re a resource I draw on each time I tackle other personal or business goals. The North Pole puts all other challenges in perspective and, for me, has made many other dreams achievable.
“A South Pole trek is obscenely expensive—upwards of one hundred thousand dollars per person. It’s also boring. The South Pole sits amid an absolutely featureless expanse of ice. And it’s anticlimactic. You arrive there to find a research station staffed by hundreds.
“An Everest climb is nearly as expensive and insanely dangerous. One of eight climbers is injured or killed. Besides, climbing Everest has been accomplished by a whole lot more people than the North Pole.”
As we entered the lodge, I felt confident about my abilities. Over the previous few months, I’d exercised like crazy, working overtime to make myself as fit as possible for the expedition. I had also read numerous books about the world of Arctic explorers with particular emphasis on the admiral.
But over the course of the next few hours, as I met my fellow North Pole adventurers, my confidence melted away.
The first prospective teammate I met was David Golibersuch, Ph.D. He said he was a Hivernaut.
“A what?” I asked.
“Hivernaut,” David said, pronouncing it EE-ver-not. “Paul coined it. ‘Hiver’ is French for ‘winter’ and ‘naut’ is Greek for ‘explorer.’”
David Golibersuch
I nodded, peering at him to determine if he was joking. He wasn’t. He was serious.
David was fifty-six, a native of Buffalo, New York, unmarried with two daughters. Since 1970 he’d worked in corporate research and development for General Electric in Schenectady, New York. An experienced cross-country skier, he made his first journey to the high Arctic in the spring of 1998, on a Schurke-led excursion to Ellesmere Island.
Mike Warren
Next, I met Mike Warren, fifty-one, a real estate developer in Gainesville, Florida. He had climbed Mt. Rainier and trekked to Kala Patar in Nepal. He told stories of climbing the Rainier, becoming intimate with the sight of the heel of the person in front of him so he could step in his footstep.
I asked him what he expected from the trip to the pole.
“I do not—repeat, do not—expect it to be fun,” he replied. “You do trips like this for the physical, mental, and spiritual challenge. It’s absolutely grueling, but there’s tremendous satisfaction when you complete the journey. And there’s great camaraderie when a group of people come together and combine their talents to achieve a goal.”
On and on it went. Each team member was more macho than the last. Each was a veteran of pain and punishment. I was a veteran of meetings and memos.
I introduced myself to Bill Martin, the co-leader of the trip, a lanky guy of forty-nine with a big smile. A resident of Gainesville, Florida, he had led climbing expeditions in North and South America, Russia, the Himalayas, and Antarctica.
Bill wondered if I was related to Rob Hall, who had been a good friend of his.
“Had been?” I asked.
Bill explained that Rob was the guide whose death on Everest was made famous by Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air. “Rob was a major dreamer who lived the dreams that others merely dream,” Bill said.
Thinking I might find an answer to the eternal question, I asked, “Why do you do it?”
“Because I’m brain damaged,” Bill explained with a proud smile. “I spend six weeks a year on adventures. I’m an orthodontist. I arrange my practice so that I can train and make trips like this.”
“So what’s it really like on a trip like this?” I asked, a thinly veiled attempt to understand what I had gotten myself into.
Bill quickly became analytical: “When I climbed in Antarctica I learned that first you’re freezing—colder than you’ve ever been before. Then, as time goes on, you acclimate, your body adapts—assuming, of course, you’re in good enough shape to handle the trip.”
Good enough shape?
I wondered what was good enough shape. Again, I consult this Jedi Master: “What’s good enough shape?”
“I run up and down the stairs of the local university’s football stadium,” Bill said, “wearing a full pack.”
He paused to let me explain my training regimen. Figuring that my daily two-mile run wasn’t macho enough, I did the only thing I could think of—I took a long slug of Scotch.
Gulp!
I was in trouble. What had I been thinking?
Sensing my anxiety, Bill suddenly shifted from macho mountain man to mentor. He assured me I would be okay. “Listen close and train hard, harder than you can imagine, and you’ll be fine.”
I took a deep breath, and made a mental note to keep close to Bill during this Hell week. He could be my guide to the world of high adventure.
The rest of the expedition team included:
• Celia Martin, Bill’s forty-five-year-old sister, also from Gainesville, also an orthodontist. Our teeth would be straight for this trip. An alumnus of Outward Bound wilderness courses, Celia was an avid hiker. I would learn that she’s quick to speak her mind. When I messed up, she was blunt about saying so, but she conveyed the message with a gentleness that made me feel okay about my incompetence.
Celia Martin
• Alan Humphries, thirty-six, from County Down in Northern Ireland, near Belfast. Alan was an entrepreneur with a chain of small casinos in and around Northern Ireland. Next to Paul, Alan was our most experienced musher, having dogsledded across Hudson Bay in 1996 and piloted an eight-day team in the 1997 World Dogsledding Championships, a time-trial sprint race covering twenty-five kilometers a day over three days in Finland.
Alan Humphries
He said he had dreamed of going to the North Pole since childhood. “I remember getting a gift as a child, a little guy known as Action Man who came with a polar exploring expedition kit, complete with dogs and sleds and the whole works. I’ve had the bug since then.”
• Randy Swanson, forty-two, was from Grandville, Michigan, where he owned an auto repair business. He had climbed Africa’s Mt. Cameroon and Mt. Bartle-Frere in Australia. Like Alan, he was also an alumnus of one of Paul’s Arctic trips.