The Impossible First

by Colin O'Brady

  As I stepped out of my skis, and unhitched from the harness, I walked up and saw a piece of yellow tape on the silver globe, and thought for a second that perhaps the orb had cracked or been damaged and was being repaired. South Pole temporarily out of service, I thought with a laugh. But as I got close enough to read, I was stunned. The tape had my name on it. “Go Colin, Go!” it read, and was signed, “South Pole Station,” along with a little drawing of a heart. I glanced around nervously, as though the message’s authors might be hiding and would leap out and yell, “Surprise!”

  I touched the tape with my mitten, then shifted my head in closer to the orb and peered into its reflective surface, and saw my distorted image looking back at me, my red-and-black jacket and pants making my legs look ten feet long, my oversized head filling the orb’s surface.

  When I pulled up my mask, I got another jolt. My face looked so thin. I brought a mittened hand to touch the black sports tape across my cheeks and nose. For a gasping, shocking second, it didn’t look like me at all, and I pulled back. Better not to look.

  Then I saw two men emerge from the main station building, and I immediately tensed up again. I knew I wasn’t breaking any rules or doing anything remotely wrong, but this was where it could get weird.

  As they got closer, I saw that one was carrying what looked like a tripod, with a camera mounted on top. And they kept coming.

  “You must be Colin!” one man shouted. “I’ve been following your Impossible First expedition and race against Captain Rudd in the New York Times. Amazing!”

  They were walking faster toward me now, and I shrank back in retreat, suddenly feeling the orb of the pole bulging into my back. I wanted to run away.

  They stopped about ten feet away, one holding the tripod upright, the other standing with mittened hands hanging to his sides. I think they could already tell that something wasn’t quite right with me, my backing away making little sense. In the normal world, at least.

  I nodded. I knew from Jenna that the Times was extensively covering the race between Rudd and me—but the coverage had seemed, out on the ice, like something so far away as to be barely real. It shocked me that people here could get up every morning and read the news.

  “Sorry there aren’t more of us out here to greet you,” one of the men said with a faint accent I couldn’t quite place. “It’s kind of the middle of the night for us here.”

  “Oh.” I stood up straight, taking my back off the pole. “What time is it?” I said, glancing down at the Rolex that I’d become so attached to since borrowing it.

  “Two-sixteen a.m.,” one of the men said after glancing at his own watch. Then he shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. “I’m a scientist,” he said.

  His friend laughed. “Yeah, it’ll never be quarter after two for him.”

  “Well, it’s 10:16 a.m. for me… uh, and I guess that would be yesterday—your yesterday, anyway. It’s still today for me… I think.”

  “Yeah, we’re on Christchurch time,” the man with the accent said, lifting up the ski goggles he’d worn in stepping out of the building.

  We were all silent for a minute after that, digesting the strangeness of it. The four of us were standing ten feet from one another in one of the most remote corners of the planet—a spot where no one can ever just pop in or drop by—and we were all functioning in sharply different time zones, and even days. My Rolex was set to coordinate with A.L.E., which was based out of Chile, sixteen hours different from the New Zealand time that the station ran on.

  It got weirder. I suddenly realized that I recognized the man with the accent who’d just pulled up his goggles. I stopped and questioned myself before saying anything. It felt about as likely as talking to Paul Simon. In all of Antarctica, in my own little time zone, I’d run into someone I knew. Reality felt as distorted as the world seen through a reflective silver orb.

  “Uh, actually I think we’ve met,” I said.

  He looked blankly back at me. “Um… I’m not sure I—”

  His hesitance gave me a flicker of doubt. “You’re… French, right? You work on the telescope? We met here in 2016…. I toured the station—”

  “That’s right! Now that you mention it, of course I remember. Of course!” he shouted with a radiant, toothy smile, which reminded me again how much I’d liked him the first time. “Welcome back and good to see you again, Colin! I hope it hasn’t been too terrible for you out there,” he said, waving his hand toward the rest of the continent. “I assume we’ll get to see Captain Rudd as well, but congratulations on getting here first.”

  I mumbled a thank-you and fidgeted, feeling anxious to be off.

  “Well, I really can’t stay,” I blurted. I’m sure that sounded crazy as well. I’d just arrived. People struggled for years to stand where I was standing. I’d put in forty exhausting days to get there. But it was too much, too alien, and too threatening. I needed to be on my way. Sure thing, my 2:16 a.m. camp greeters said, though I’m not sure they did, or could ever remotely, understand.

  “But one thing,” I said. “Can you please take a picture of me with the Explorers Club flag?”

  This was a moment I’d looked forward to from my first days on the ice, from the first planning of the expedition, and I’d already dug into my sled and retrieved it—carefully folded in a plastic bag in the bottom of my big orange duffel: “Explorers Club flag number 109.”

  Almost every well-known explorer, from Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, to Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first men atop Everest, has been a member of the Explorers Club. The club, founded in 1904, had allowed me to carry one of its 220 flags across Antarctica on my project, flag number 109. The flags all have rich histories, linking to the places around the world, and even on the moon, where they’ve been carried. Flag 109 had journeyed, since its creation in 1941, from the Lyngen Alps of Norway, to the waters of Hudson’s Bay in search of the wreckage of the HMS Hampshire, sunk in battle in 1697. Its fabric had tiny, proud scars from those many expeditions, in the holes and carefully stitched patches, and as I held it there in my hands, I felt I could burst all over again with pride and awe. Number 109 had a new story to tell whether I finished the crossing or not.

  I carefully climbed on top of my sled, skis laid on the snow, and held the flag gently in my mittens as the still-smiling scientist took my photo. Standing there, I couldn’t help but think of the sweep of history and movement and change.

  Even the silver orb of the Pole itself and its twelve flags, which looked so majestic and permanent in their installation, were always changing, always moving—along with the polar station buildings—as the great continental ice sheet they sat on slowly slid and shifted beneath.

  But here, the constant, imperceptible movement of the ice meant that the ceremonial spot where I was standing was not technically the true geographic South Pole, where all the latitude lines of the planet actually hit their bull’s-eye. The true geographic pole was about a five-minute walk away. Each year, with the ice having moved about ten meters, the true Pole was measured and a simple metal stake in the ground was moved slightly to its new location.

  I felt I had to honor that place, too, with a brief stop, just to touch it, running my mitten down the stake, trying in a way to absorb its power. And the scientists, perhaps curious about me by then in my probably pretty strange behavior, followed me over.

  “Could you please take one more photo?” I asked as I got to the geographic pole. When they were ready, I flipped over to do a handstand, my red-and-black legs rising up into the sky. “I’m at the bottom of the world, holding it up!” I shouted, just before falling over onto the ice.

  It was mind-bending, that technically in that moment all directions from that place were north. Only when I’d gone a few steps farther would east or west even exist. And as I headed out past the station’s airstrip—the exit route from the camp as strictly mandated as its entry points—the power of that brought Steve Jones to mind. Jo
nes is a warm and enthusiastic Brit in his fifties—but even more than that he’s an astonishing historian, a living encyclopedia of Antarctic history and lore. As A.L.E.’s expeditions manager, he’s also the great connector of all the dots in how independent expeditions on the ice are accomplished, or not.

  Jones, who had worked in Antarctica for decades for A.L.E., had an aura I’d come to love about so many people who had been touched and affected by this harsh and astonishing place, where ferocity and extreme conditions can turn people inward, to reflection. He carried the spirit of Scott, who wrote glorious prose in his tent as he lay dying, and Shackleton, who journaled his thoughts in trying to survive shipwreck. Jones, in his years of study, had become a master of the arcane details of Antarctic dreams—the follies, disasters, and triumphs. He knew every nuance of everything that had ever gone right or wrong on the continent.

  I’d called him in early 2018, after the trip to Whistler when Jenna and I first began planning The Impossible First project, and told him I was interested in trying a solo, unsupported, unassisted crossing.

  “Well, you should know, things have changed, Colin,” Jones said.

  Henry Worsley’s death, beyond the news it made around the world, had sent a fierce ripple through A.L.E., as people all over the globe second-guessed what had happened and why. Though the company had done exactly what it was supposed to do—sending out a rescue expedition when Worsley finally, too late as it turned out, called for it—the storm of publicity had hurt. The company’s owners had ordered an internal review of how expeditions were approved and what routes would be allowed, Jones told me.

  “We’ve gotten much more restrictive about what expeditions we’ll support,” Jones said. “Any solo expedition now needs approval of all four owners of the company, so that’s your first step.” Jones didn’t have to say the rest—A.L.E. didn’t want any more people to die, and wasn’t going to put anybody on the ice that the owners weren’t comfortable with.

  So I got two letters of recommendation—one from Dixie, and the other from Guy Cotter, a mountaineering legend I’d met in the Himalayas, whose help had been crucial during my Explorers Grand Slam project. I also told Jones that I planned to do a Greenland crossing in preparation, which reassured the company. Finally, Jones called with the green light.

  “But I have to tell you, Colin, that the route you can take through the Transantarctic Mountains is nonnegotiable,” Jones said. “Leverett Glacier to the Ross Ice Shelf is the only solo expedition option. If you’re going to do this, that’s it. All the aerial mapping of the crevasse fields, the ground penetrating radar, everything supports this.” He paused for a second. “Lots of that work is thanks to you Yanks, since the US government uses the route to send a large load of gear from McMurdo, their coastal base, to resupply the South Pole station every summer. The South Pole Overland Traverse will have already come through for the year by the time you get there, so as a result the route won’t be completely pristine. You’ll see some flags and rutted tracks from their vehicles, but it’s the safest for soloing.”

  I was silent for a minute. My research into the routes through the Transantarctic Mountains was preliminary, but I’d read accounts of expedition teams on other routes navigating through crevasse fields there and, while roped together, falling through the ice daily. The thought of being alone, unroped, with no one to pull me out of a bottomless crevasse was terrifying.

  “Just so you know, others have inquired about making the solo crossing next season,” Jones said. “And if more than one of you go ahead with your plans… well, it’ll be a race for the ages, that’s for sure.” I could hear the excitement in his voice, probably thinking about the race that still echoed down through everything on the continent, between Scott and Amundsen. He continued: “But regardless, A.L.E. will only support soloists on the Leverett on that side of the continent. You will all be in the same boat out there.”

  I was silent again and I think Steve took my pause for disappointment.

  “I’ve been around for a while, Colin, a lot longer than you, and let me tell you, safe is good in Antarctica,” he said. “And the second thing is that any route, whatever it is, if it can be completed solo, unsupported, and unassisted, it will be a world first—no one has ever manhauled the landmass of the continent in that way.”

  “No, no,” I said. “I’m happy to take the safest route that qualifies under the rules—and the route has historic precedent anyway, right? Felicity Aston went across on the Leverett in the opposite direction if I remember correctly, and she really inspired me.” Aston, a climate scientist, became in 2012 the first woman to ski solo and unassisted across the continent, although she was supported by two resupplies along the way. But her grit and commitment had impressed me even before that—in her early twenties, she’d spent more than two years through two Antarctic winters at a remote research station, gathering data on how climate change is affecting the world’s coldest places.

  “Yes! Felicity is amazing!” Jones shouted over the phone. “She’s another Brit, too, you know, so watch out, Colin! We’re after you!”

  * * *

  THE WHITEOUT THAT HAD SOCKED in the Pole began to clear as I left, walking along the side of the station runway. I stopped and turned around for one last look at the station’s buildings, watching the light change, sunlight reflected back from glass and steel. And as I turned back and fell into a rhythm going north, other clouds felt like they were lifting inside me as well. The elements that defined my life on the ice—the sound of my skis, the pull of the harness into my shoulders, the puff of my breath into the mask—all seemed in sync in their sweet familiarity, and a slow wave of joy started building.

  I’d been so guarded and wary and careful getting in and out of the Pole, and I’d tightly managed so much else in my expenditures of energy in the days and weeks since the start. Even my mistakes and patchwork, in stealing food from myself, spilling gas, falling, and figuring out how to fix what needed fixing, had reinforced the sense that relentless focus and a disciplined mindset were the answers to almost every challenge.

  Now it almost seemed as if I were being untied and released from those pressures, as though I’d passed through something, broken free. I felt, rising inside me, a strong current of energy-boosting emotions. And the clearing skies intensified the feeling, spiking the temperature to the warmest I’d seen since coming onto the ice—only fifteen below, my clip-on jacket thermometer said. The winds had calmed, too, almost to a point of stillness, making fifteen below feel almost balmy. I pulled off my mask and jutted my chin up toward the sun, fear of frostbite entirely faded for the moment. That I’d made it to the South Pole—the finish line for almost every Antarctic expedition—and was now ten miles beyond it was part of that release. I’d feared the Pole in a strange way because the rules about what defined an unsupported and unassisted crossing were so specific, and now I felt a palpable sense of having moved beyond the threat.

  I turned my face away from the sun and opened my eyes, looking out through my goggles onto the icescape. It was as stark and empty as always, but also suddenly full. With the lifting of the whiteout, I could see vast distances in what felt like absolute clarity of vision and thought—even the far edge of the horizon seemed like something I could grab onto and pull into my embrace. And then colors started swirling before my eyes as airborne ice crystals refracting through the bright light formed a complete circular rainbow around the sun, a full sundog.

  I grabbed my camera to capture the astonishing image, then turned the lens back to my face. I wanted to tell someone the depth of what I was feeling.

  I smiled at Cam. “I don’t know that I’ve ever felt this happy in my life,” I said, squinting into the lens. Even as I said it, and waved Cam’s eye around to capture the scene, I wasn’t sure I could ever make anyone understand, because there really weren’t any words for it. But as I kept talking, it came out like a prayer.

  “I just feel this deep gratitude,” I said, snot run
ning down into my pathetically thin little mustache, all I had to show after forty days of not shaving. “Gratitude for all the amazing people in my life, for being alive, for the privilege of being able to attempt something like this and experience this beautiful moment.”

  Cam’s unblinking eye stared back at me. “What a gift to be out here all alone in Antarctica,” I said, my voice going quieter. “I’ll probably never do this again, but these are the moments that I’m going to remember.”

  The winds stayed calm through the rest of that day, enabling me to make nearly fifteen miles, which only added to my surging confidence, now 578 miles from the start. And the calm made setting up camp different as well. In pulling my tent and my arctic bedding from the sled and laying them on the ice, I felt for the first time in many days almost worry free. Wind had been a constant nagging tension through almost every morning and night in getting things to and from the sled. In the deep calm I could lay almost anything onto the ice and know that, when I looked back, it would be just where I’d left it.

  Like the glorious wheel of the sundog, life had spun to a new place, it seemed. Maybe, I thought, as I crawled into the tent, what had unfolded in these hours was some new permanent state. And as I listened to the stove, feeling almost warm from the radiant sun blazing through the red roof, I wanted to believe it. The high was too good, too vivid and too real, and I didn’t want to come down.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN An Inch from Failure

  DAY 41

  I saw sundog circles with my eyes closed that night after the Pole, as though the image had been burned into my retinas from staring at it too long. It actually felt a bit like a hangover, like I’d flown too close to the sun in my euphoria. But the idea of a circle looping back onto itself, ends and beginnings reaching a shared point, also somehow seemed like an appropriate image. Balance and equilibrium were back in my life with a vengeance that next morning, my forty-first day on the ice.