{"id":29660,"date":"2021-01-05T12:51:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-05T17:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=29660"},"modified":"2021-01-05T21:34:41","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T02:34:41","slug":"stop-whining-about-the-cold-the-impossible-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/05\/stop-whining-about-the-cold-the-impossible-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop whining about the cold: The Impossible First"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For lovers of Antarctica exploration tales, The Impossible First<\/a><\/em> is worth reading. Struggling to muster the energy to head out into a windy Boston January to walk the dog? The author, Colin O’Brady<\/a>, walked into 50-knot headwinds in -25 degree temperatures while pulling a 300 lb. sled containing supplies for a solo unsupported unresupplied coast-to-coast trip, via the South Pole, across Antarctica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An endurance athlete, the 33-year-old O’Brady was racing against 49-year-old Louis Rudd<\/a>, who also managed to finish the trip. To me that was even more inspiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing I learned from the book is that if you have enough money you can do almost anything that you want in Antarctica, including sleeping in a heated tent at the South Pole. A.L.E.<\/a>, the Antarctic Logistics company, will arrange everything. Climb a mountain, hassle some Emperor penguins, or just walk from the ski plane to your tent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author is not a gifted writer and there are a fair number of flashbacks to only loosely-related mountain climbing expeditions (including Everest, way more crowded near the top than Manhattan during coronapanic). Feel free to skim this filler if you’re more interested in Antarctica than in the author’s personal journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One question is how people today are able to do the coast-to-pole-and-back or coast-to-coast trip so much more easily than the original explorers, notably Amundsen, Scott, and Shackleton. Today’s adventurers don’t need companions, dogs, ponies, depots, etc. Seemingly more often than not, they are actually successful in accomplishing whatever they set out to do. Is it because the modern ultramarathon athlete is way more fit than the heroes circa 1900? Is it because the routes are mapped and today’s travelers have GPS? Is it because they can travel with a thinner margin of supplies, knowing that if the weather turns against them or if equipment fails a helicopter or ski plane rescue is a Garmin inReach message away? [See Update below for the main reason; O’Brady traveled a shorter distance, starting and finishing via aircraft rather than via ship.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author sold clothing companies, such as Nike and Columbia, on sponsoring the project with the idea that his story would inspire kids and ordinary folks. Maybe they couldn’t climb Everest, but they could climb their Everest<\/em>. With even young healthy Americans generally too afraid to leave the house, this is kind of funny to contemplate. Maybe the most that we non-athletes can take away from this is that we shouldn’t complain if we have to bundle up for a 15-minute evening dog walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More: Read The Impossible First<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mindy the Crippler is never a whiner… (from this afternoon)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Update: Paul (see comments) highlighted this National Geographic article<\/a>, which shows the vastly longer distance traveled by Borge Ousland<\/a> in 1997. Ousland was solo, but sometimes used a kite to help move the sled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Looking at a map of Antarctica, you might wonder how O\u2019Brady\u2019s 932-mile route can be considered a crossing of \u201cthe entire continent,\u201d as he calls it, since it appears to start and end several hundred miles inland, especially compared to the much longer journeys of Ousland, Mike Horn (who completed a daring 3,169-mile solo kite-ski crossing of Antarctica in 2017), and others.<\/p>

Ousland skied from water\u2019s edge on the Ronne to water\u2019s edge on the Ross. When he undertook his expedition two decades ago, this was considered the only way to claim a crossing of Antarctica.<\/p>

\u201cTo me, Antarctica is what you see on a satellite map,\u201d says Ousland, noting the ice shelves have been a part of Antarctica for at least 100,000 years.<\/p>

But there is a continent somewhere under there, detectable with remote sensing equipment. In recent years, adventurers have begun claiming a crossing by citing this unseen \u201ccoast.\u201d Some, in order to please sponsors and media, did this only after failing in their attempt at a full crossing. Suddenly an Antarctic \u201ccrossing\u201d had shrunk in half. <\/p>

… adventurers eager to shorten the feat quickly seized on the new abbreviated definition. An unsupported couple crossed in 2010, skiing 1,118 miles. A solo woman crossed (with two food drops) in 2012, skiing 1,084 miles. But O\u2019Brady took the invisible coastline strategy to its extreme\u2014his journey was nearly 200 miles shorter than these earlier trips, and the shortest route yet that anyone had claimed as a \u201ccrossing of the continent.\u201d<\/p>

Put another way, it\u2019s not so much that no one had been able to cross Antarctica this way before, it\u2019s that no one had defined a crossing in such achievable terms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Maybe this is the athletic\/exploration equivalent of “A good lawyer knows the law; a great lawyer knows the judge.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n