Get Away

In 1985, Ann Bancroft was a wiry treehugger who was teaching at Clara Barton Open School in Minneapolis and working at Midwest Mountaineering—a part-time gig she says allowed her to “feed my obsession.” A well-known character from northern Minnesota used to stop in the store looking for bargains and trade. Will Steger had already gained a reputation as a long-distance dog-musher, high-altitude mountain climber, and arctic explorer. His day job was teaching classes at an Outward Bound school in Ely. In 1985, he was preparing for his biggest adventure yet: the first modern, unsupported trip to the North Pole on the surface, using dog sleds. Steger had met Ann’s father, photographer Dick Bancroft, at Outward Bound. When Steger and co-leader Paul Schurke were finalizing the team, they struck upon the idea of including a woman in the otherwise all-male crew. Ann Bancroft was asked to join, and she jumped at the opportunity. Shortly thereafter, she quit school, and began the long and rigorous process of preparing for the North Pole. A year later, she stood on the top of the world. Subsequent trips across the Greenland Ice Cap and to the top of Alaska’s Mt. McKinley confirmed what she had felt since she was an 8-year-old camping out in her snow-covered Mendota Heights backyard: She had a calling for expeditions into cold and barren places. In 1993, she put together the Antarctic Women’s Expedition, leading a team of skiers across the ice to the South Pole. She thus became the first woman to stand on both the North and South Poles.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in Norway, Liv Arnesen was living out her own dream. A high school teacher and cross-country ski coach, she’d nurtured a dream of skiing to the South Pole ever since she was a little girl. “My father was deeply interested in Polar exploration,” she remembers. In tight-knit Norwegian society, arctic exploration has always been a point of pride in the national identity, dating back to Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen. By the late 1980s, Arnesen was an avid skier and coach, spending more and more time making long treks in the treeless windswept mountains at her family’s cabin north of Oslo. When others turned back to the comfort of cabin and fireplace, she wanted to ski another loop. Finally, in 1990, she took the plunge into expeditionary skiing. With a team of three other Norwegian women, she led a crossing of the Greeland Ice Cap in 1992. Like Ann, she too felt she had found her true calling, and in 1994—a year after Bancroft and the AWE team had crossed to the South Pole—she skied solo from the coast to Amundsen-Scott station, the permanent science installation at the geographic pole. “At the time, I didn’t know anyone who wanted it as badly as I did,” she said, “So I did it alone.” But that was before she met Ann Bancroft face-to-face.

You could call it the sisterhood of polar exploration, and you could call it one of the most exclusive clubs in the world. When Ann returned from the AWE trip in 1991, there was a letter waiting for her. It was from Norway. Liv introduced herself, and asked a few tactical and technical questions. A few months later, she made her own trip to the South Pole. After she’d made contact with Bancroft, she proved herself in the same wasteland. In hindsight, it feels like it was destiny that they should work together. In 1998, as Ann began contemplating a return to Antarctica, she invited Liv to come and spend a week at her farm in Scandia. There wasn’t any question of either’s skills in polar exploration. There was only the crucial issue of chemistry. Any worries were quickly dispelled. Ann says they took long walks by the St. Croix River, never really talking about the trip to come, but just enjoying the spontaneous camaraderie. “We get along,” says Liv today. “There was an instant feeling there. I feel like I found a sister soul.”

Lots of things came together at the same time. Bancroft had already launched YourExpedition with Charlie Hartwell, and after the women had decided to make their attempt to cross the Antarctic continent on skis, Hartwell got to work putting together a staff and sponsors. Ann had had tremendous difficulties getting funding for the AWE expedition in 1993 and Liv had traveled all the way to Italy to find sponsors for her 1994 trip. Now, though, Hartwell and his team were able to focus full-time on the business end, leaving Ann and Liv to plan and train. By October 2000, everything was arranged and ready, and the two arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, prepared to make the short flight to their jumping-off point. They reached Antarctica on November 13.

The next 94 days involved skiing and sailing 2,000 miles across a continent bigger than the U.S. and Mexico. Bancroft and Arnesen each towed a 250-pound sled. On windy days, they were able to make use of ski sails, logging up to 70 miles at a clip. On slow days, they were lucky to achieve a top speed of one mile per hour. Other days were so hopeless they simply stayed put.

What is it that attracts certain people to these types of climates? By all accounts, Antarctica is like another planet. Once you leave the coasts, there is literally nothing but windswept snow and ice for thousands of miles. Even at the peak of summer, when the sun never sets, the temperature averages about -30 degrees Fahrenheit. On a warm day, the mercury may rise into the relatively balmy -15°F range. Crevasses, pressure ridges, windblown drifts called sastrugi, and mountains ease the monotony of the scenery—but they also represent significant obstacles to be avoided or overcome with all due care.

Ann claims that the emptiness is precisely what attracts her. “Wide open spaces. I’m always drawn to them. Whenever Liv and I talk about the next big adventure, we find we’re always thinking about the same thing: Big, wide open space.” Liv agrees. “As soon as I get above tree line in Norway, or in the mountains, I get excited,” she says. Both women claim to be introverts, and it’s easy enough to make the claim that empty spaces are most notable for the absence of other human beings. But it’s not just being there, away from everyone and everything, which appeals. It’s successfully moving through such wide open spaces. Explorers like Ann and Liv are highly conditioned athletes. Like marathon runners or triathletes, they have special skills and physical gifts that become apparent on long polar expeditions. “To test strength, both mental and physical,” says Liv. “It gives you joy to feel that you are mentally and physically fit.”

Still, how does one occupy oneself while one is towing a 250-pound sled roughly the distance from Minneapolis to Los Angeles? Ann and Liv tell me that much of the time is spent thinking about technical issues, tactics, and so forth. At other times, they think about their bodies and how they’re holding up. That slight pain in the left knee—will it get worse? Is that a cramp developing in my side? Have I had enough water and food? At other times, though, the women say they go to a “mysterious and privileged” place. “I don’t know if I’d call it ‘The Zone,’” says Ann, “but it’s a time when your head can go to a place it doesn’t really get an opportunity to go to otherwise.” Liv compares it to meditation. “Every day you can stretch a thought, you can stretch a dream, there are no limits.” One of the necessities they do bring along for mental fitness is books, to help fill out the long, quiet hours. Liv especially likes to bring volumes of poetry, because poetry supports repeated readings and reconsideration. “I brought poetry mainly because if I started to suffer, I would force my mind to think about what I’d read the night before. And I ended up doing that every afternoon.”


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