On April 22 (Earth Day), polar explorer Eric Larsen completed his journey to the North Pole, leaving him officially two thirds of the way finished with his historic Save the Poles expedition – an attempt to be the first human being to reach all three of the world’s poles in a consecutive 365-day period.
So far Larsen has reached the South Pole and the North Pole, leaving only Mount Everest, which, weather permitting, he plans to summit in mid October alongside Aron Ralston, who made international news in 2003 after sawing off his own arm to escape being trapped between a rock and a hard place during a climbing accident in Canyonlands National Park in Utah.
When I talked to Eric at the Winter Outdoor Retailer tradeshow in Salt Lake City a few months ago, he told me that for him, one of the most important aspects of the Save the Poles expedition is documentation. He wants to preserve the images of the Poles for future generations. And, like many other experienced polar explorers, Larsen realizes that these frozen places are literally melting away. He’s seen it with his own eyes.
So Larsen’s is a mission of documentation – to capture the lonesome beauty of the world’s great frozen places before they disappear due to warming atmospheric temperatures. But how does he make his films? One thing to keep in mind when watching this video is that this is the actual North Pole, which means there was no film crew on ATVs to document the journey with expensive cameras. There aren’t drop spots to exchange film or cameras. The team is literally hundreds of miles out in the arctic wild – moving along constantly shifting chunks of ice. All the footage you see here was shot by Larsen and his team, an undertaking which required stopping at regular intervals to set up a video camera, push past it, then walk back to retrieve it again, over and over – until they could get a shot that worked – sometimes doubling the energy expenditure required to make it to the Geographic North Pole.
It might not sound like much to shoot a little video along the way, but anyone who has ever attempted to document a hike or bike ride with even a marginal level of professionalism knows that the act of constantly stopping, starting, and focusing the equipment can be a frustrating undertaking that takes a lot of patience and work. Doing it in the North Pole, where freezing temperatures, thin ice, and the occasional polar bear are constant motivations not to stop, takes pure dedication.
Larsen is featured on the cover of the current issue of Wend. His story, From Nowhere to Nowhere, documents the first leg of his Save the Poles expedition – a 750-mile push through the whiteout-whipped emptiness of the South Pole. You should still be able to find some copies of that issue on newsstands, or you can sign up for our digital edition to read the entire story (and the entire magazine) online for free here.
