Though it is night, the ice surrounding us glitters in the sunshine. Only silence and shades of white surround me as I pace the decks. I am on a tourist ship, parked in the sea ice off the coast of Antarctica, for my work as a naturalist. It is 2 a.m., in January. On one side, glaciers drape the mountains, sliding slowly toward the sea. On the other is the frozen ocean. I can鈥檛 discern the line between ice and sky. Behind our ship, only the jagged break in the floes indicates that humans have come, and disturbed.

The ice is moving, unseen in the stillness. Melting of Antarctic and Greenland ice, as well as glaciers all over the world, is clearly documented. The polar regions are warming faster than any other place on Earth. Climate change is incontrovertible. I have witnessed it. Yet I know my being here, marveling at this icy world, contributes to its melt.

I have seen a lot of ice.

In 1993, I journeyed to Antarctica on a small ship that lurched through frenzied waters, we 50 passengers clutching the walls as we staggered between communal showers and a pot of pasta plonked unceremoniously on the table for dinner. But I was entranced by the beauty of the land outside. For 25 years, I have worked as a guide in Antarctica and the Arctic, and I wrestle with knowing that I should probably stay at home to avoid further contributing to the climate change affecting my beloved frozen world. But is the best way to protect what I love, never to see it again? Other guides and I discuss this dilemma often. We do not know what to do.

As a naturalist-guide, I take people to shore and talk to them about what they are seeing: wildlife, glaciers, habitat, everything. In all the years I have done this, I have believed that only by seeing the great ice expanses, tasting and smelling the salt air, and touching the cold do people learn to care for these places and join the fight to preserve them. Sea ice retreats to higher and higher latitudes, with shrinking populations of bewildered penguins nesting in previously unimaginable places, and humans now reach sites once only imagined.

We visitors used to see Adelie penguins everywhere. On some trips now, we are lucky to spot even one. Last year, on a cruise ship designed for luxury rather than serious exploration, we reached the western side of James Ross Island; 20 years ago, in an icebreaking ship three times more powerful, we could not get within about 80 miles. The ships have changed as well. Now luxury ships prevail, and passengers can enjoy champagne, live music, and butler service. On the first icebreaker I worked on, the beds had seatbelts for rough weather, but the communal area for passengers and crew at the bottom of the stairwell was full of laughter.

that 2023 was the record low for maximum sea ice in Antarctica since continuous recording in this region began. The World Meteorological Organization says the Antarctic Peninsula has experienced a 3-degree C (5.5-degree F) temperature rise in the last 50 years. In February 2020, the highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was reported at 18.3 degrees C (65 degrees F). The since 2012 than in previous decades; were the Antarctic ice sheet to melt, global sea levels would rise 58 meters (190 feet). Although there is no danger of all the ice in Antarctica or Greenland melting away in any of our lifetimes, visiting tourists often tell me they want to see the ice before it is gone.

Yet fossil-fuel emissions from travel and human activity accelerate ice melting, trapping all of us who come here to admire these icy realms in a quandary: We further the demise of what we have come to marvel over. When I started as a guide in the late 1990s, approximately 10,000 visitors traveled by ship to Antarctica each year. Now shows over 71,000 in the 2022-23 season.

Staring at the ice around me, I wonder about the people below decks, sleeping soundly through the sunshine of the night. Will they act as ambassadors for these regions? My fellow naturalists and I fervently hope so. We feel conflicted by our presence and the presence of the passengers we guide. We love ice, but we also know that our carbon footprint, which contributes to melting, is greater for flying across the world to reach the ships that burn fossil fuels as they steam towards these ends of the earth. We do our best to educate our passengers about climate change and have them understand what they are witnessing. Sometimes it doesn鈥檛 feel like enough. Would it be better for us to stay home to protect these regions? Yes. Would other guides step in and take our place? Also yes.

A recent described a study of black carbon (essentially soot) in Antarctica resulting from fossil-fuel emissions, and showed that it contributes to the darkening of snow and ice, accelerating melting. More people equals more melt.

In 2022, a group of scientists determined a method for separating natural variability in glacier fluctuations and the to climate change. So far, it has been tested only in computer models, but if it can be applied to actual locations, we could know exactly what human visitation does to this ice. When jagged pieces break and crash into the sea, would tourists shed tears, knowing exactly how much damage they contribute, instead of shouting with joy to see such power?

Most of the ice I have touched is now gone.

My father, Gunter Weller, was a glaciologist who became a climate scientist before the term existed. He introduced me to Antarctica through the six-foot-long black-and-white photo of Adelie penguins that hung on our living-room wall in Fairbanks, Alaska. His voyages to Antarctica in the early 1960s were a bit different from mine. On two separate occasions, a supply ship dropped him off at the research station and picked him up one year later. There he drove a VW beetle with chains on the tires over glaciers to collect weather data, watched the same black-and-white films so often that he and his co-workers took turns reciting the actors鈥� lines, and ate eggs of a disturbing color since fresh supplies also only arrived once a year.

His work looked at the effects of climate change on glaciers, which were clear to him already in the 1970s. He became curious when a scientific station buried long ago by ice and snow on the McCall Glacier in northern Alaska melted out (research he did on this glacier was published in a peer-reviewed paper, 鈥淔ifty Years of McCall Glacier Research鈥�), and he turned his attention toward what melting ice meant for people and the environment. As kids in Alaska, my sisters and I walked along glacial moraines and explored ice caves with our father. We slipped and slid crazily in our old sneakers as we scrambled behind him, trying to keep up.

Over the years, as my father tried to convince the world that climate change was happening, and people ignored his pleas, he developed a strategy for deniers. He never shouted back when people tried to argue. He calmly told them they were welcome to disregard the clear data and statistics if they wished. But surely, he said, they must acknowledge that we humans have put a lot of horrible stuff into the atmosphere. Wouldn鈥檛 the world benefit by reducing that? That usually ended the conversation.

Many people travel to see the natural places on this planet, to glimpse a wild animal in its ferocious splendor, feel the grandeur of vast landscapes, or learn about the world. And yet an analysis in The Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism in 2020 of tourists visiting glaciers in Iceland, Canada, New Zealand, and Chile showed that although most guests were aware that this might be the last chance to see these glaciers, few understood that their visits contributed to the demise. Even for the few people who did, the desire to see the destination exceeded concern. The Journal of Sustainable Tourism in 2021 described a from Churchill, Canada, where tourists flock each fall to view polar bears, that indicated that few visitors associate their air travel with greenhouse gas emissions responsible for melting the ice that the polar bears need for survival. Comparing data from 2008 and 2018, the study found that consumption patterns and CO2 production have not changed despite growing awareness of the impacts.

How sad, this conundrum of desire, guilt, and lack of understanding.

Years ago, I did the same thing, climbing Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with my sister, to see ice at the equator before it was gone. As we rose from the tropical zones, we smelled wet soil turned hard with frost, then tasted the tang of ice. My teeth chattered, my face and fingers froze, and we gasped for breath in the thin air. My father would have loved those glaciers, pink in the rising African sun.

On one of my tour ships, ice blocked the way when we tried to reach the northernmost piece of land in the world, Oodaaq Island in northeast Greenland. Since then, new islands have been revealed as ice melts and now, the northernmost land is a rocky islet called 83-42. Another year we got stuck in sea ice in the Northwest Passage, and even our six-engine, 25,000-horsepower icebreaking ship could not move until the currents released us. Some passengers were frustrated, some bored, and some frightened as we watched the icy rubble press high against the side of the ship. After a week, the ice consented to let us through.

In other years, we made it to the North Pole, in a bigger, nuclear-powered icebreaker that smashed and plowed its way through the thinning sea ice. We found open water at the top of the world, a place that should be solid white. The tourists marveled at the vast expanses of ice surrounding that open water, and a reverence for this landscape shone in their eyes. We tasted the icy brine as we plunged into the open water for lightning-quick swims.

The North Pole trips have become more difficult in subsequent years, because finding solid sea ice in which to park the ship is a challenge. A this year projects that under current greenhouse-gas-emission scenarios, the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in the summer before 2050. That is soon.

At the annual Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) in 2023, the governing body of Antarctica made a resolution known as the Helsinki Declaration. They committed to increasing efforts to communicate the global impact of climate change on Antarctica and the need to prevent irreversible changes.

Do I keep guiding at the ends of the Earth?

Susan Adie, a friend and fellow guide who has worked in the polar regions longer than I have, says she believes that if she can help educate the visitors who travel there and get them to care, and enough caring people educate others, perhaps action can be taken, in many ways, to help the Earth. She says, 鈥淚f I just give up and say it鈥檚 a losing battle, then what kind of a human am I?鈥�

Our lives are enriched by ice, made larger and wilder and somehow more precious. To love cold inanimate objects sounds at odds with all that is logical and right in the world, and yet we do.

It may be that this one politician, that one influencer, that one poetic writer who listens to us guides, who sees what we see, whose heart can be pierced by a shard of glittering ice, can make a difference in this confusing, messed-up, beautiful world of ours. Maybe I can reach one more person. Maybe just one more trip.

Kara Weller is a ship-based naturalist who works all over the world, but primarily in the polar regions. Although a snow and ice aficionado, when visiting the outhouse at her plumbing-less cabin in minus-40 degree temperatures she dreams of simple things such as flush toilets. She lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.

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My favorite spot on the East Antarctic plateau, the planet鈥檚 highest, driest, coldest, windiest, deadest desert, is the Love Shack鈥攁n uninsulated plywood box the size of a modest bathroom, painted black to absorb the 24-hour sunlight, furnished with a chair, a desk, a cot, and a pile of coarse cotton blankets. Rumor has it that researchers and laborers at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which sits about two miles away, occasionally require a refuge for romance, something I tried not to think about when I was in there. Like a prep school or military base, the station is insular, a cheek-to-jowl compound of laboratories, workshops, dorms, and supply depots, and the 250 inhabitants during the austral summer are hard-pressed to find privacy sufficient for their (ahem) needs.

In my case鈥攖hat of a 22-year-old Vermonter who in 2008 ditched his wonderful college girlfriend to chase the ineffable at the bottom of the globe鈥攖he Love Shack was a strictly celibate hermitage: pencil, notebook, a couple cans of Speight鈥檚 Gold Medal Ale, immense quiet interrupted by chattering teeth. I frequently spent Saturday evenings shacked up with only amorphous breath clouds for company, shivering and gazing through the plexiglass window, simultaneously contemplating the sprawling abiotic wasteland and鈥攂eneath thermal undies, a fleece sweater, and a fat red fur-ruffed parka鈥攎y own navel. The idea was to space way out and space way in. Touch the edge, the border where inner and outer converge. Take some solo time with The Ice.

But I鈥檓 getting ahead of myself.

The post Working in Antarctica Was Mindless Boredom. Until I Found a Pair of Skis. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Poor Prince Harry.

The Duke of Sussex has spent the his new memoir, Spare, which details his unhappy upbringing as a member of the British Royal Family. Alas, the excerpt that generated 鈥攁苍诲 鈥攚as about that time he and got .

I did not laugh when I read about Harry鈥檚 pain down under, as it reminded me of a chilling experience of my own. It was 2011 and I had been cycling north of New York City when a blizzard blew in, forcing me to pedal home into a bone-chilling headwind. Somewhere near the town of Nanuet, I realized that my fingers, toes, and yes, penis, had gone numb. I popped into a 7-Eleven and frantically tried to warm things up down there, only to feel a searing jolt as sensations returned to my groin. I then pilfered napkins, newspaper, and even a Styrofoam cup to MacGyver a crotch-mounted wind helmet for the journey back to Brooklyn.

My ad-hoc barrier worked鈥攂arely鈥攁苍诲 I made it to my apartment without suffering a medical disaster.听

Of course British royals and irresponsible cyclists aren鈥檛 the only victims of this painful malady, which yes, does have a name. Does the term 鈥減olar penis鈥� ring a bell? Over the past few days I have reached out to arctic explorers, Nordic skiers, and other cold-weather outdoor athletes, all of whom have shared anecdotes and advice on this touchy subject. What did I learn? There are specific meteorological elements that cause it, and just about everyone who has dealt with it never wants to suffer again. Athletes told me about their unorthodox trailside hacks for preventing a cold crotch. I also discovered that this topic is similar to others involving the nether regions: It鈥檚 something that a lot of people have dealt with, but few talk about.听

鈥淧eople don鈥檛 really want to talk about their penises,鈥� says , an ultra runner and ski mountaineering athlete. 鈥淎 lot of winter sports athletes have dealt with it, and it seems to be something you just kind of quietly put up with, and then figure out how to never deal with ever again.鈥澨�

A Sensitive Organ

Frostbite is usually associated with fingers and toes, but penises are also susceptible to it. interviewed several urologists about the topic, and Craig Comiter, a professor of urology at Stanford鈥檚 medical school, told her that 鈥渆nd organs鈥� like the penis are more sensitive to cold than, say, your head or leg because its blood supply comes from just one or two vessels.

鈥淚f the blood vessels constrict, as they naturally do when it鈥檚 cold, you actually can get death of the tissue,鈥� Comiter said. There鈥檚 another reason why the penis is more sensitive to cold weather than other extremities like fingers and toes鈥攎ovement. We often flex our hands and feet when we play outdoor sports, but rarely do we use our penises. Comiter offered a helpful rhyme to remind folks of the most at-risk extremities to cold: 鈥渇ingers, nose, penis, toes.鈥� I鈥檓 not sure this jingle will catch on.听

Cold temperatures are an obvious contributor, but the athletes I spoke to also blamed the wind. Perhaps it was the whooshing air from descending a ski slope, or hurricane-like arctic headwinds鈥攅veryone said their cold genitals happened after an icy breeze cut through their outerwear.听

Antarctic explorer Louis Rudd said he suffered two cases of it during expeditions, and both came after he encountered multiple days of strong headwinds on the Ross Ice Shelf. 鈥淲e were skiing for three hours, taking turns at the front, and eventually I had to stop and shove my hands down my pants,鈥� Rudd says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 that wind, straight on your front, and it supercools that area on the front of your thighs, and there鈥檚 really not much you can do.鈥澨�

Those Who Have Known the Pain

Harry鈥檚 revelation overshadowed two well-publicized cases of polar penis. During the 2022 winter Olympics in China, Finnish cross-country skier Remi Lindholm after admitting to reporters that his genitals iced up during the men鈥檚 50-kilometer race. Olympic Nordic skier Scott Patterson, who grew up racing in Alaska, told me that it鈥檚 common in the sport. 鈥淚 can still remember several times where after a particularly cold or windy race most of the men鈥檚 field retreated to the nearest inside space right after a race with their hands down their pants and faces contorted in agony,鈥� Patterson said.

Prior to Lindholm鈥檚 case, in 2016 a British soldier named Alex Brazier after mentioning his frozen penis during an expedition to the South Pole alongside retired army officers. Louis Rudd was leading Brazier鈥檚 expedition when the soldier began to suffer. He says he had warned the group prior to setting out that their junk might ice up if they encountered wind. 鈥淚t鈥檚 definitely something that people know about in the polar community even if it doesn鈥檛 get brought up a lot,鈥� Rudd, 49, says. 鈥淧eople are always showing their frostbite wounds to each other but not showing that type of thing.鈥澨�

You don鈥檛 have to be crossing Antarctica to suffer a case. There are lengthy threads on online forums like and about the topic, and a written by a chilly cyclist produced dozens of responses of similar anecdotes. Nelson encountered his first bout with it during the 2013 .听That year the race was held in Jackson, Wyoming, during an atmospheric inversion. Cold air hung in the valley, while sunshine and warm temperatures greeted the athletes at higher elevations. Nelson said his body temperature rose as he climbed out of the clouds and into the sunshine鈥攂ut he froze during the descent as his sweat chilled his skin under his thin racing bodysuit. On the race鈥檚 second of three laps, Nelson felt his penis go numb while skiing downhill. On the ensuing uphill, the organ warmed up, and Nelson felt pain throbbing through his groin area.听

鈥淚t was the equivalent of having the on my junk,鈥� Nelson said, referencing a numbness and pain that ice climbers often experience in their hands. 鈥淚t was some of the worst pain I鈥檝e ever felt.鈥澨�

Nelson tried to cup his crotch through his Lycra racing suit on the final descent, but the position left him wobbly on the snow. He eventually finished the race in third place and retreated to a warming hut.听

鈥淗ere I am, that guy skiing with my hand down my pants,鈥� Nelson says. 鈥淚t made things pretty awkward.鈥�

Impromptu Solutions听

Luckily, you don鈥檛 have to steal items from a convenience store to ward off polar penis during a ski, ride or run. The athletes I spoke to shared tales of inventive solutions and trailside hacks鈥攐nes that don鈥檛 require shoplifting.听

Ultrarunner Mike Foot says he sometimes nabs plastic dog poop bags from the trailhead and then shoves them down his crotch for a wind barrier. 鈥淚鈥檝e also used a glove,鈥� Foote says. Long-distance cyclist Mike Curiak told me he once stuffed his warm hat into his bike shorts for several days during a cycling race in Canada鈥檚 Yukon Territories. When he returned home, Curiak cut the padded chamois out of a pair of worn bike shorts and then sewed the pad into his preferred pair, effectively doubling the wind barrier.听

Another long-distance cyclist, , dealt with polar penis a few times while competing in the Iditasport Challenge鈥攁 bike race along the Iditarod trail鈥攚hich he won four times in the 1990s. Stamstad says he would store sheets of plastic clingwrap in his saddle bag for later use as a wind barrier on his crotch. He would place the plastic wrap underneath his tights as a wind barrier between the fabric and skin.听

Stamstad says he still uses the method to this day, and advises cyclists to fold the clingwrap over multiple times to trap air between the layers. This works much better than stuffing a sock, hat, or glove down there, he says.听

鈥淎 hat is bulky and so it will eventually slide around down there and then bad things happen,鈥� Stamstad says. 鈥淪aran wrap will mold to the area and not chafe, and if you get air [between the layers] you get a nice vapor barrier.鈥澨�

Like Curiak, Rudd stuffed a down hat into his crotch when he suffered his first case of polar penis during an Antarctic expedition in 2007. When he returned home, he sewed an extra layer of windproof fabric to the crotch area of his thermal long john baselayer. This ad-hoc solution worked during his ensuing polar expedition.听

But Rudd says that during his 2016 trip, he again started to feel a chill in his crotch, and worried that the strong headwind might bring back the same pain he had experienced on previous expeditions. Not wanting to sacrifice his hat or gloves, Rudd says he tried an unorthodox method that didn鈥檛 involve gear.听

鈥淚 started trying to have erotic thoughts about my wife,鈥� Rudd says. 鈥淚 thought that maybe if I got some warm blood down there it might work.鈥� Rudd says he eventually got 鈥渁 stirring down there鈥� and did not suffer any penis pain on the trip. The wind also died down, he says, which likely helped.听

Gear For Down There

Outer layers cannot prevent polar penis alone鈥攖he athletes I spoke to said the only apparel they trusted for keeping their undercarriage warm were thick base layers that are equipped with strategically-placed wind-blocking panels. Merino wool was the fabric that my sources referenced repeatedly, although some athletes said that synthetic weaves also succeed. 国产吃瓜黑料 correspondent Wes Siler recently did a deep dive into synthetic base layers that he believes surpass wool.听

This athlete feedback, when paired with research, is helping brands design apparel that can keep the wind out down there. Andrew Slaybaugh, product line manager at Smartwool, said the company鈥檚 body-mapping technology showed that men were getting cold in the groin area, and that wind and cold were to blame.

鈥淲e saw the need and to battle the elements,鈥� Slaybaugh says. 鈥淭hese products use our regular fleece and underwear styles, which has all the benefits of Merino, and paired them with wind panels.鈥�

American apparel manufactures rate a garment鈥檚 windproof capabilities by measuring the cubic feet per minute of air that can pass through the material when exposed to a 30 mile-per-hour breeze. A CMF rating of 60 or higher that is akin to that old fleece vest you wear on chilly fall evenings; 20 CMF is wind-resistant; one CMF or less is considered windproof. Smartwool produced three under layers鈥攁 , wind tight, and Merino sport fleece pants鈥攖hat featured panels rated one CMF on the crotch.

Of course athletes have their own favorite pieces for protecting themselves. Rudd says he relied on his homemade long johns until he discovered the shorts made by NordicLife, an apparel company out of the UK. The briefs are constructed from merino with an inner layer of polypropylene mesh. There鈥檚 also a thick layer of Windstopper fabric on the front panel to protect the genitals.听

Nelson swears by the , made by German brand Craft, which features wind-protection panels on the front. He says he now wears the garments whenever he is backcountry skiing鈥攏o matter the conditions. When conditions are icy cold, Stamstad alternates between two veteran underlayers that he鈥檚 owned for years. One is a threadbare pair of Craft tights that has Windstopper panels on the crotch and thighs. He sent me a photo of the garment, and I could see that it was well-loved.听

Could a wind-stopping undergarment have prevented Prince Harry from making international headlines? Perhaps. To echo Nelson鈥檚 sentiment鈥攁thletes who have suffered from polar penis seem willing to do just about anything to prevent the ordeal in the future. Perhaps no situation illustrates that better than that of Stamstad. He has another garment that he says protects his crotch: A prototype base layer from Patagonia that he received when he was a sponsored athlete. The garment never went into production, Stamstad says, but it is perhaps his most cherished piece of apparel. In 2016 Stamstad was hit by a driver while cycling, and he was wearing the tights at the time. Paramedics told him they would need to cut them off in order to care for his leg, which was broken in four parts. Stamstad says he balked at the order, and instead peeled the base layer from his shattered extremity so that he could save it for future rides.听

鈥淚t was a high price to pay to save the tights but I鈥檓 glad I have them today,鈥� Stamstad says. 鈥淚 had to endure a few minutes of suffering to keep them and it was worth it because they do their job.鈥澨�

The post Prince Harry鈥檚 Icy Predicament Is a Pain Felt by Many Outdoor Athletes appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Paralympic champion is confident that she will cross the Antarctic plateau before New Year鈥檚 Eve. She just doesn鈥檛 know听how exactly she will do it.

Darke, who is paralyzed from the chest down, has two modality options: a custom-made recumbent hand bike and a cross-country sit ski. She will take both to Antarctica, but if the snow is too deep, she will have to leave the bike behind. Darke would rather use the hand bike, because the sit ski requires her to push herself forward a few inches at a time with ski poles.

鈥淭hat way [the sit ski] is horrendous,鈥� Darke told 国产吃瓜黑料. 鈥淒ue to where I鈥檓 paralyzed, I鈥檓 reliant on small groups of muscles in my back and arms, and they get absolutely hammered by pole planting.鈥�

The 51-year-old Brit and her three crew members plan to depart from Union Glacier Camp, a private campsite near the Hercules Inlet, in early December, and then cross 180 miles of rock and ice along the 79th meridian west. Antarctic adventurers often launch their respective expeditions in late November or early December to take advantage of warmer temperatures and longer spans of daylight. But the snow conditions are infamously finicky in the Antarctic summer. Windswept snow deposits called often dot the landscape, and navigating them on foot鈥攍et alone on a bike鈥攊s tricky.

If the sastrugi are too deep, the hand bike may become bogged down. Darke will bring the sit ski and bike to Union Glacier Camp and then try each out on the terrain before making her choice.

鈥淣obody knows what conditions will be like down there because they change every year,鈥� Darke said. 鈥淲e feel like we鈥檙e pushing the limits with the bike.鈥�

Her ultimate goal is to reach the intersection of the 79th latitude and 79th longitude, a point on Antarctica that she is calling the 鈥淧ole of Possibility.鈥� The spot is several hundred miles from the magnetic South Pole, and Darke has chosen it as her turnaround point because 79 is the atomic number of gold.

If she鈥檚 able to complete the trip by bike, Darke believes she will become the first person to travel across Antarctica by hand bike. If she sleds, Darke believes she will set the record for the longest Antarctic journey by a paraplegic. A handful of adventurers have pedaled across Antarctica, and in 2013 a British explorer named Maria Leijerstam to cycle from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole. Darke believes she faces a greater challenge because she must use her arm muscles for propulsion.

Darke was paralyzed in a rock climbing accident in 1992 when she was 21, and in the ensuing years she committed herself to outdoor sports and adventure. In 2002 Darke paddled a sea kayak from Vancouver to Juneau, and in 2005 she hand biked from Kazakhstan to Pakistan. Darke joined the British Paracycling program in her thirties,听and she won a silver medal at the 2012 Summer Paralympics and a gold in 2016. In recent years she has worked with hand cycle companies to help design bikes capable of breaking speed records and enduring extreme environments. In 2018 for hand biking by hitting 46.04 miles per hour in the Nevada desert.

Biking across Antarctica presented an altogether different technological challenge because of the deep snow and extreme cold. A decade ago, Darke first attempted to ride a hand bike in a polar environment during a trip to Norway, only to see the device fail spectacularly.

鈥淚t was a disaster鈥攊t sank into the snow and couldn鈥檛 get any traction,鈥� she said.

Leijerstam rode from McMurdo Station to the South Pole on a recumbent tricycle specifically designed for polar riding made by a company called Inspired Cycle Engineering (ICE). But that bike was built for traditional foot pedals and not hand biking. Over the summer, Darke scored a breakthrough鈥攁n Israeli company called ZITrikes called her after to the chassis of an ICE bike.

In August Darke traveled to Israel to ride the custom rig. The frame has clearance for four-inch-wide tires, and it has an internal transmission that is geared to ascend steep inclines. It is also much taller than the recumbent hand cycles Darke is accustomed to riding.

鈥淲hen I first saw it I was blown away by it鈥攊t felt like I was climbing into a tractor,鈥� she听said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not a fast bike. It鈥檚 like my version of slow walking. But the terrain you can access is mid blowing.鈥�

For a month Darke piloted the bike in Israel, taking it into terrain that was previously too challenging for a hand bike, like sharp rocks and loose climbs. While pedaling along the Dead Sea she steered it onto a beach, and marveled at its ability to navigate the deep sand.

鈥淥ver the years your brain comes to understand what is and what is not possible on a hand bike,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 took it into terrain where my brain told me that it wouldn鈥檛 work, but it kept rolling. It was a real eye opener.鈥�

Still, there is no guarantee that the ICE bike will overcome the snowdrifts, and so the sit ski will also make the journey. Darke said that completing her journey safely is more important than breaking records with technology, and so she鈥檚 already prepared to pivot from the bike to the sit ski. She already has a history with that apparatus as well. In 2007 she spent a month pushing herself across Greenland on a sit ski, one agonizing pole plant at a time.

鈥淚 love going into places that are hard to get to,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 suppose my circumstances mean that I always have to find unusual and crazy ways to get there.鈥�

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The other day I searched for Alfred Lansing鈥檚 1959 book in my local library鈥檚 database. I live in the Yukon, in northern Canada, and usually when I search for a decades-old book in the library鈥檚 extensive Arctic and Antarctic collections, I find what I need. But this time, every copy of Endurance was already checked out. Ernest Shackleton鈥檚 sunken ship, Endurance, had just been located 10,000 feet down on the floor of the Weddell Sea, and Lansing鈥檚 classic is the definitive tale of of the extraordinary events听that followed the 1915 sinking: Shackleton and his crew, over the course of two years, fought their way through Antarctica and made it back home. I guess I shouldn鈥檛 have been surprised that the book was in high demand.

Luckily for those of us who are fired up about the discovery of the Endurance shipwreck, there is plenty to read and watch to slake our thirst for polar adventure and suffering. The last decade alone has seen the publication of a flurry of books about lesser known expeditions to the poles: Andrea Pitzer鈥檚 tells the story of a 16th-century voyage to the high Russian Arctic that became a yearlong battle for survival, while , from 国产吃瓜黑料 alum Hampton Sides, and , by Julian Sancton, both New York Times bestsellers, recount tragically unsuccessful 19th-century attempts at being the first to the North and South Poles, respectively. A little older, but still underrated, is , by the late David Roberts鈥攖hink Touching the Void but set in 1913 Antarctica.

We rounded up our favorite true and fictional accounts of polar adventure and disaster. Pour yourself a hot beverage, and dive in.

Endurance, Alfred Lansing

Lansing鈥檚 book about how Shackleton and his men survived the loss of the Endurance听remains a classic for a reason: working in the 1950s, the author was able to interview many of the surviving crewmen, and he was given access to nearly every written diary that made it off the ice. More than 60 years after its publication, is a bridge to a different era. It remains worth a read鈥攊f you can get your hands on a copy. (For a more recent account of Shackleton鈥檚 expedition, check out Caroline Alexander鈥檚 1998 bestseller .)

The Terror (AMC, season one)

Book after book has been written about the lost Franklin expedition: two British navy ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and more than 120 men, vanished during a search for the Northwest Passage in the late 1840s. For polar-history buffs, the story is a well-beaten path. But season one of AMC鈥檚 The Terror (now ), based on of the same name, takes a hard turn away from the usual approach. Instead of depicting what was most likely a slow, painful collapse into starvation and scurvy, the show鈥檚 creators inflict a supernatural doom on Franklin and his men. The Arctic they move through is ominous and hostile, and they are stalked by a violent force that they can鈥檛 understand. The result is a gripping period piece turned horror story, fabulously acted and frighteningly told.

Ice Ghosts, Paul Watson

Journalist Paul Watson was on board the vessel that located one of the two lost Franklin ships, Erebus, off the coast of King William Island in 2014. (The Terror was also found nearby, two years later.) revisits the doomed expedition and its disappearance in the 1840s, but it also brings the narrative up to the present, telling the story of the Parks Canada divers, the marine archaeologists, and the Inuit knowledge-keepers who put the pieces of the Arctic鈥檚 most famous puzzle together and found the ships after more than 160 years of failed searches.

Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead

Maggie Shipstead鈥檚 celebrated novel is not strictly about the polar regions. tells the story of a fictional female pilot, Marian Graves, and her attempt to circumnavigate the globe, by plane, from north to south. Graves vanishes off the coast of Antarctica on the final leg of her journey, and the novel pivots between two timelines: her (fascinating, eventful, sometimes grim) life leading up to that moment, and the story of Hadley Baxter, a recently disgraced Hollywood starlet who has been cast to play Graves in a present-day biopic. The narrative is vivid, enriched by real-life details from the histories of aviation and exploration, and by Shipstead鈥檚 own travels to Greenland and Antarctica. The book also has something to say about our fascination with the people who vanish into the planet鈥檚 wildest places and the limits of what we can know about their deaths, or their lives.

The Last Viking, Stephen R. Bown

Non-Canadians may have missed this compelling recent biography of Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who in the early 20th century bagged nearly every major remaining polar prize. Amundsen led the first team of European explorers to sail the Northwest Passage, traversing the North American Arctic from east to west, before heading to Antarctica to beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole. (Bown also suggests that Amundsen may have been the first to truly reach the North Pole.) His exploits changed polar exploration, cementing a shift away from the ponderous siege-style tactics favored by British military expeditions and toward a lighter, nimbler approach, and in his later years he was also an early adopter of aircraft for polar travel. portrays him as, in a way, the first modern explorer: forever cash-strapped, dependent on publicity and sponsorship, and skilled at navigating not only sea ice but the tensions that arise when exploration becomes your business.

Against the Ice (Netflix)

This year, Netflix brought us Against the Ice, a re-creation of the marooning of Danish explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen in 1909 after he set out with six men to determine whether Greenland was a singular landmass and therefore Denmark鈥檚 dominion. While Mikkelsen and his engineer were scouting for records of a previous,听doomed Greenland expedition, the rest of the crew jumped on a passing fishing boat and headed home. The two were left to fend off blizzards, polar bears, and isolation-induced hallucinations while they awaited rescue. The film was shot on location in Iceland and Greenland, and it compellingly captures the brutal conditions and loneliness of a polar expedition.

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In January 1915, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton鈥檚 ship, Endurance, became icebound in the Antarctic. What happened next would become legend: Shackleton and his crew watched their ship slowly sink, survived a year and a half stranded on the ice, and eventually secured their own rescue with an 800-mile journey in an open lifeboat. Every member of the 28-man team survived.

Now, 106 years later, the wreck has been found in remarkable condition, at a depth of nearly 10,000 feet in the Weddell Sea. An from the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust led by polar geographer John Shears located the wreck using an underwater autonomous vehicle on March 5, after a month at sea. They announced the discovery to the world four days later.

The mission to locate Endurance had other goals鈥攐nes that focused on environmental dynamics and scientific research that Shackleton and his men likely could have never envisioned a century ago. The crew spent nearly six weeks off the coast of Antarctica aboard the South African icebreaking polar research vessel Agulhas II, during which time scientists and researchers conducted studies on a wide range of topics, including maritime navigation and how the changing climate has affected ice levels around Antarctica.

鈥淎 lot of these snow and ice properties we measure here are needed to learn about the structure of the ice and snow in the Weddell Sea,鈥� says Lasse Rabenstein, the expedition鈥檚 chief scientist. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a complicated and special one, more complicated than other parts of the Antarctic or Arctic.鈥�

Researchers often evaluate ice thickness in specific areas of Antarctica via satellite imagery, but as Rabenstein told 国产吃瓜黑料, at some point scientists need to study the ice and water on-site.

That鈥檚 not all the researchers aboard the vessel studied. Rabenstein, a geophysicist, recently founded his own company, called , which specializes in navigating frozen seas. At a 24-hour ice information desk aboard the ship, Rabenstein and his crew kept up-to-date satellite images and ice drift forecasts for the crew and the subsea team to help them navigate through the dark and in whiteout conditions. The information they provided helped in the search for the lost ship. It also furthered Rabenstein鈥檚 research around navigation in ice.

鈥淲ith my company, we are writing navigation software for research ships in the ice. I learned a lot about what else is needed in a software to navigate safely, so for me that was the most important goal: to apply our own tools and learn how we can improve them,鈥� Rabenstein says.

Meanwhile, engineering scientists used sensors to learn more about how the Agulhas II reacted to pressure from the ice to optimize future polar vessels for safety and stability, Rabenstein explained. Representatives from the South African weather service deployed weather balloons and scanned the water column, collecting data that was shared with a global research community.

In total, the expedition team was composed of 63 people with various backgrounds and areas of expertise: engineers, geophysicists, doctors, statisticians, scientists, polar field guides, oceanographers, and beyond.

For a group of individuals whose highly specialized work often takes them to far-flung places, the opportunity to be a part of the legendary explorer鈥檚 story was significant. Nico Vincent, manager of the subsea team, said that even if the team had failed to locate Endurance, the expedition would have provided worthwhile outcomes.

鈥淪econdary objectives have been successfully achieved too: ice science, weather forecast, marine engineering research, education for kids, and media support,鈥� Vincent says.

Of course, locating Endurance was the team鈥檚 primary task, Vincent stressed, and all 63 members of the expedition contributed in some way to the search for the lost ship.

The Agulhas II was outfitted with two helicopters, all the materials to install an ice camp, and loads of scientific research equipment, including two underwater autonomous vehicles (AUV) that did the heavy lifting of hunting for the wreck.

While many have dreamed of finding Endurance, this is only the second expedition mounted to try finding the wreck. In 2019, a crew consisting of many of the same individuals set out in an icebreaker equipped with an AUV to scan the seafloor, but the expedition lost the vehicle in the drifting ice. This time around, the group also brought a robust team of sea ice physicists and researchers to help the AUV navigate through the ice.

鈥淭he Weddell Sea is probably the most difficult ocean to travel on worldwide,鈥� Rabenstein says. 鈥淭he goal was to assist the ship as much as possible with information so that we can smoothly and smartly travel through the ice.鈥�

The subsea team operated about 30 dives with the primary AUV before locating the wreck, watching from a computer screen as the AUV scanned the ocean floor for four to eight hours at a time. Vincent ensured they were prepared for any eventuality: they brought 50 tons of equipment with them, including three winches, more than 40 miles of fiber optic tether for the AUV, homemade ice drill augers able to drill ice up to 16 feet deep, and more. The staff tested the equipment for six months before the expedition.

Vincent explained that operating an AUV under these conditions is extremely challenging, requiring high-tech equipment and a strong, experienced team. 鈥淭o make it under drifting ice is harder than landing on the moon in 1969,鈥� he says.

For many members of the expedition team, this was a unique mission. 鈥淚 never had an expedition where we had really a search-and-find target,鈥� Rabenstein says. 鈥淓ither we succeed completely by finding the wreck or we fail. Usually when you do scientific operations, there鈥檚 a goal, but it鈥檚 more open鈥攏ot a fail-or-succeed goal.鈥�

After locating the wreck, the crew paid a visit to Shackleton鈥檚 grave in Grytviken, South Georgia, to pay their respects.

The explorer died of a suspected heart attack in 1922 while pursuing another Antarctic expedition.

鈥淪hackleton is probably more important for me than for the average person in society,鈥� Rabenstein says. 鈥淗e never gave up, but he also did not push it to the limit鈥攁ll of his people he took on his expeditions, all of them survived. Other polar explorers were not so successful at that. He was a real hero if you look at how he dealt with failure.鈥�

罢丑别听 S.A. Agulhas II is projected to make landfall March 19.

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A dream team of six elite climbers鈥擩immy Chin, Conrad Anker, Savannah Cummins, Anna Pfaff, Alex Honnold, and Cedar Wright鈥攎ount an expedition to Queen Maud Land, a stunning and rarely visited wilderness of frozen towers in Antarctica.

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鈥淨ueen Maud Land鈥� is available to all 国产吃瓜黑料+ members, part of an extensive library of climbing and adventure sport films.听Watch the full film, or learn more听.听

You鈥檇 be forgiven for thinking that 鈥淐onrad Anker,听Jimmy Chin, Alex Honnold, Cedar Wright, Savannah Cummins, and Anna Pfaff fly to Antarctica 鈥︹�� is the start of a joke鈥攕omething about torturing the world鈥檚 greatest climbers with the world鈥檚 least climbing friendly landscape鈥攂ut you鈥檇 be wrong. Wrong about Antarctica, which erupts with stunning walls and spires of rock, and wrong about the joke. This is actually the premise of Wright鈥檚 2019 short film 鈥�Queen Maud听,鈥� which follows the A-list crew as they look for new routes and first ascents on the Wolf鈥檚 Jaw massif, a thousand miles from the South Pole.

Working in teams, they tick off some astonishing climbs. The centerpiece of the expedition is the new route Anker and Chin put up Ulvetanna Peak, a 9,600-foot fang named after the Matterhorn. Meanwhile, Honnold and Wright speed round 13 different spires over the course of the two-week trip, while Pfaff introduces Cummins to expedition climbing on the 8,700 foot Holtanna.

Despite the collective resume of the crew鈥攏ot to mention the sprawling, forbidding location鈥斺�淨ueen Maud Land鈥� is not the sort of high-stakes, find-the-meaning-of-life-on-the-edge-of-death experience you might associate with the Ankers, Chins, and Honnolds of the world. That鈥檚 because this is very much Wright鈥檚 film, and Wright has a gift for finding levity and poking fun in situations that would have most of us crapping our pants.

Instead, the expedition feels almost like a long weekend you鈥檇 do with your buddies, if your buddies happened to be some of the best climbers of their generation. The climbs are spectacular, but the film鈥檚 real strength is how it showcases the relationships and dynamics of each team. At this point, Honnold鈥檚 peculiarities are internationally famous, but the rest of the climbers prove that it takes a certain kind personality to excel in climbing鈥攚hether you do it at your local crag, or the ice-covered bottom of the earth.

Want to learn how to climb from a top-tier expert? Check out our 听online course on , where 国产吃瓜黑料+ members get full access to our library of more than 50 courses on adventure, sports, health, and nutrition.

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OUTSIDE: As our story related, in January 2010, aboard a craft called the Berserk, you set out from Norway with a crew of five people. In early 2011, you left Auckland, New Zealand鈥�
JARLE ANDHOY: Well, the Berserk had done numerous expeditions before this. Our goal was to retrace the 100-year anniversaries of Roald Amundsen鈥檚 successful navigation of the Northwest Passage and his expedition to the South Pole. We sailed out of the Caribbean, from Puerto Rico, in 2006, and navigated through the Northwest Passage. That expedition hit a few bumps along the way, and we left the Berserk in Nome, Alaska. In 2009, we did work on the Berserk in Dutch Harbor and then continued.

Got it, thanks. To clarify: I was referring only to the Antarctica portion of your journey, which started in 2010.
ANDHOY: That鈥檚 correct. That year we sailed the Pacific from the Bering Sea down to New Zealand, with a mix of newcomers and some shipmates from the previous trip.

Let鈥檚 review who was on board when you left New Zealand. The crew included you, a South African named Leonard James Banks, and three Norwegians: Samuel Massie, Tom Gisle Bellika, and Robert Skaanes.
ANDHOY: Yes, and Bellika was the captain in the Southern Ocean. He had sailed with me in Greenland and through the Northwest Passage, so I knew him very well. Rob was a diver, and Lenny grew up surfing and sailing. They were selected for the expedition after about a year on board.

You sailed south and reached Horseshoe Bay, a body of water near the Ross Ice Shelf, in mid-February of 2011. While Bellika, Banks, and Skaanes stayed on the boat, you and Massie set off on ATVs to travel to the South Pole. Your plan was to reach it, head back to a rendezvous with the Berserk, and sail north. On your tenth day out, a big storm hit. Is that accurate?
ANDHOY: That鈥檚 right. And in our plan, safety came first, so I had a line of communication going with Bellika. I was expedition leader on land; he was captain on the boat. We kept in contact and all was good until we got notice about a coming storm the night before the Berserk left its anchorage and base camp in Horseshoe Bay.

Your mission was to reach the pole and get back safely. What was their job?
ANDHOY: To stay with the Berserk and, if necessary, take shelter inside Ernest Shackleton鈥檚 hut. [Editor鈥檚 note: The hut is from the 1907鈥�9 British Antarctic Expedition, during which Shackleton tried and failed to reach the South Pole. It sits on Cape Royds in McMurdo Sound.] The bay is the safest place for getting shelter from big seas, ice, and winds. The Berserk crew were also making preparations for overwintering if they had to. That involved storing equipment like fuel, food, tools, and shovels.

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Often听when we talk about a big, ambitious book, we reach for the language of geography. We describe the terrain it covers; we say that it sprawls, or ranges widely. The book is framed as a kind of passage through the world: we might talk about a protagonist鈥檚 journey, or an author鈥檚 exploration of a topic.

In award-winning author Maggie Shipstead鈥檚 new novel, all of those analogies are made literal.听

鈥檚 600 pages span a full century and the entire planet. The book tells the story of Marian Graves, a fictional female pilot who disappeared in 1950 while attempting an unprecedented north-south circumnavigation of the earth. She had only one leg left in her trip, a final leap from Antarctica to New Zealand, when she vanished, Earhart-style, in the South Pacific. Shipstead takes readers through the events of Marian鈥檚 life leading up to that moment, from her parents鈥� doomed marriage and her unorthodox childhood, roaming semi-feral with her twin brother in the Montana woods, to the complex web of desires, ambitions, and romantic entanglements that prompt her to her听final flight.听

Braided with Marian鈥檚 story is a contemporary narrative. Hadley Baxter, a troubled young Hollywood starlet, attempts to rebound from scandal by playing Marian in an Oscar-bait biopic. But Marian and Hadley have more in common than a casting decision: Hadley鈥檚 own parents crashed into Lake Superior in a small plane when she was a toddler, and听like Marian, she was raised, to the extent that she was raised at all, by a dissolute uncle. Her parents鈥� fate matches what鈥檚 known of her character鈥檚 final act, and while Marian yearns for the sky, the specter of what she calls the 鈥渟harp gannet plunge鈥� of lives being extinguished in cold, dark water looms throughout both timelines.

Great Circle is a big novel but not a daunting one: an impressive array of historical research is integrated seamlessly, and the story is propulsive. The characters are compelling, and their choices, even the extraordinary ones, make sense within their worlds. Shipstead鈥檚 sentences are luminous, her metaphors precise: a luxury steamship crossing the North Atlantic at night is 鈥渁 jeweled brooch on black satin鈥�; in the present day, Hadley looks down from a hillside mansion at 鈥渢he big flat circuit board of Los Angeles planing off into the pale haze.鈥� Anyone who鈥檚 felt a little plane rattle up off a rough dirt runway will recognize their experience in Marian鈥檚; anyone who hasn鈥檛 will get a taste of the sensation.

Those details were earned through deep research, trips to the archives, and Shipstead鈥檚 own experiences. She grew up in Orange County, California, and is now based in Los Angeles, where many of her friends work, in one way or another, in the film industry. She has written two previous and听very well-regarded novels: , an award-winning New York Times bestseller, and . She was traveling between her first and second release, figuring out what to work on next, when she got the idea for Great Circle.听

Shipstead was in Auckland, New Zealand, and spotted a statue of , the first pilot to fly solo from England to New Zealand, outside the city鈥檚 main airport terminal. Batten was one of a cohort of female pilots who were enormously famous in the early, daring years of aviation听but who have since largely slipped from mainstream public memory. The exception, Amelia Earhart, is known more for her disappearance than her accomplishments. The rich history of female aviation, and how little of it we choose to remember, got Shipstead chewing on narrative ideas that involve disappearance and death. 鈥淚t鈥檚 so often the same thing,鈥� she says, 鈥渂ut as a society we process it really differently.鈥�

Shipstead let the idea linger for a couple of years before really sitting down to write in the fall of 2014. Around that time, she also began to get assignments to write travel stories (including 国产吃瓜黑料), and a fruitful cross-fertilization began. Over several years, her reporting took her to the far-flung islands of the Pacific鈥擧awaii, the Cook Islands, sub-Antarctic New Zealand鈥攁苍诲 around the circumpolar region, from Greenland and Alaska to Svalbard, in Arctic Norway, and the Canadian high Arctic. The map of Marian鈥檚 journey began to take shape.听

The trickiest and most critical place to reach was Antarctica. The southern continent was crucial to the story of Marian鈥檚 disappearance, and Shipstead says she didn鈥檛 think she could imagine her way through听it. Landing on the Greenland ice sheet in a C-130 for a travel story would give her some sense of the flat, frozen immensity at the poles, but she wanted more. The gap in her research was resolved unexpectedly: on an assignment to the sub-Antarctic, she met an expedition leader who worked in the region and they hit it off. He invited her along on a cruise, and so, she says, 鈥渙ur first date, really, was a five-week-long sea voyage to Antarctic. That was a really strange way of getting that wish granted.鈥�

There were other lucky breaks. During a visit to an aviation museum in Missoula, Montana, Marian鈥檚 hometown, Shipstead was hanging around, sitting in the cockpit of a vintage airplane on display, when she was invited along by a couple of pilots who were taking a 1927 Travel Air 6000 up for a spin. 鈥淭hat became the plane that Marian learned to fly, because I鈥檇 been in it, I鈥檇 been in the actual aircraft, in the exact right place,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat was really serendipitous and incredibly useful.鈥�

Shipstead鈥檚 travels were supplemented by wide-ranging research into the times and places that Marian and her brother, Jamie,听pass through. The early history of aviation is woven into the fabric of the novel, but so is the story of Prohibition-era Montana, of bootleggers and cross-border flights to Canada. When World War II breaks out in Europe in 1939, the novel absorbs and makes use of several little-known pockets of history: the 鈥渃ombat artists鈥� who painted and drew the front lines for the United States military; the crew of female pilots in England who flew warplanes around from base to base before their next missions across the channel; the bloody battles in remote corners of the world, like the Aleutian Islands. 鈥淥nce I came across it, in it went,鈥� she says.

Shipstead鈥檚 brother, a former pilot and Air Force veteran who, like Marian, had grown up intoxicated by airplanes, helped with the technical details, like what models of planes Marian might have flown听and how far she could have gone on a tank of fuel. Shipstead wanted Marian鈥檚 circumnavigation plan to have been just barely within the realm of feasibility at the time she made the attempt鈥攏early impossible听but not completely out of reach. That largely determined the timing of the flight in the novel, which matched up with a real-life Antarctic expedition that could have offered Marian a refuelling station, and with the existence of several new postwar runways in the South Pacific. Shipstead knows she may not satisfy every detail-loving aviation buff out there, but, she says, 鈥淚 tried to keep it all tethered to reality as much as possible.鈥�

I鈥檝e spent a lot of time in Cessnas and Twin Otters, taking off from or landing on ice and ocean and earth, so I felt very at home in Marian鈥檚 world. At first, Hadley鈥檚 share of Great Circle felt like an interruption to me. But as the novel unspooled, I appreciated her perspective more and more. A lifetime after Marian鈥檚 disappearance, the filmmakers try to reconstruct her, but to a reader, it鈥檚 clear that the gap between her life and their story is a yawning crevasse. The contemporary timeline shows us how much is lost when a person dies or disappears and听how much becomes unknowable, no matter how much historical research we might dig up.听

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