Eric Larsen had been waiting for ten days when his phone rang with bad news from Barneo Ice Camp.

The veteran explorer and guide was set to lead the only American expedition to the North Pole in 2024. He and five clients had packed their gear, obtained travel visas, and traveled to Krasnoyarsk, a hub on Russia’s Trans-Siberian railway, and the official jumping-off city for the 2024 polar season. They had waited for the go-ahead to fly to Barneo, a temporary collection of huts and sleds that drifts on sheet ice 68 or so miles below the planet’s northernmost point.

And then the call came in. The fragile 4,000-foot runway that Barneo’s workers built across the ice had cracked, and the fissure was big enough to jeopardize a plane landing. There was no other area big enough to build another runway. Polar season was off.

“I was disappointed but I wasn’t that surprised,” Larsen told听国产吃瓜黑料 from his home in Crested Butte, Colorado. “I’ve spent years of my life on polar ice and I know how hard it is to find a section that long and stable. I know how delicate the operation is and how slim the margins are up there, and I always knew it was a possibility.”

Indeed, even in good years the is a fraught and fragile operation. Twenty or so workers parachute onto the pack ice equipped with tools and small bulldozers, and they then work round the clock for five days to cut a runway into the frozen ice. Transport planes land and workers unload tents, huts, food, generators, and other gear onto the ice. Then, the crew of Russians build living quarters, a mess hall, and other accoutrements for the coming guests鈥攖he 250 or so visitors that cycle in and out of Barneo include scientists, adventurers, and tourists. Some visitors come to run the North Pole Marathon, others arrive to drink champagne and party, while听still others complete the week-long out-and-back ski trip to the North Pole.

The camp is owned by Swiss billionaire Frederick Paulsen but manned by Russians. The whole camp drifts on pack ice and is pushed several miles each week by currents. The season’s duration is, at best, a month long. It begins in late March when the sun finally peeks above the polar horizon after a long winter, and ends a few weeks later when the warming rays melt the ice to slush. A freak storm or rapid warming can upend the entire operation, as was the case in 2018 when the runway ice cracked.

“The fact that it operates even once is a minor miracle,” Larsen said. “Everything has to line up perfectly to get things moving.”

Things haven’t lined up for much of the decade. Political tension between Russia and Ukraine forced Barneo’s closure in 2019, and the camp was shuttered in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to a ban on Russian planes in European airspace, which torpedoed the camp in 2022. Last year was supposed to be Barneo鈥檚 grand return, but on the eve of the season Norway prohibited flights there from Svalbard, the jumping-off city.

Larsen and others were hopeful that 2024 would be a successful year.

The constant cancelation has created enormous hurdles for guides like Larsen, who has reached the pole six times in his career. It’s also generated headaches for veteran adventurers hoping to complete the so-called Explorer’s Grand Slam: ascending the highest mountains on all seven continents and then reaching both poles. Four of Larsen’s five clients this year were hoping to complete the challenge, he said. He felt a professional obligation to help them reach their goals, since they had been waiting for several years to get there.

“It’s an expedition that doesn’t exist anywhere else on the planet鈥攊t’s kind of like the Wild West,” he said. “Anything can happen. The ice is always different.”

And Larsen says reaching the pole this year would represent听a sizable personal accomplishment. He is one of the only people alive to have ever touched the South Pole, North Pole, and summit of Mount Everest in the same year. But in 2021 he was diagnosed with stage 4 rectal cancer, and over the course of a year he underwent six rounds of chemotherapy, did radiation, and lost a sizable section of his large intestine. In 2022 he emerged from the treatment cancer-free. Last February Larsen told the story of his diagnosis, treatment, and recovery on The Daily Rally podcast. Getting back to the pole, in a way, would constitute another chapter of his healing.

“After being sick, I felt like going back up there was a way to prove to myself that I didn’t die and am still capable of doing the things I love,” he said. “It really is a great trip鈥擨 cannot think of too many places where you’re traveling over constantly-shifting surfaces every day.”

Larsen knows that the clock is ticking on him ever reaching the North Pole again. He’s 52 now, and has survived a brush with death since the last time he was there. And nobody knows for sure how much longer Barneo Camp will exist. Temperatures in the Arctic Sea are rising faster than almost anywhere on earth, and research by NASA says that the polar ice sheet is shrinking by 12.2 percent each decade. Soon, polar expeditions may be part of history.

Despite the North Pole’s unknown future, Larsen is going to keep trying. The ticking clock, he said, is one of the reasons to continue.

“Imagine if Mount Everest got bulldozed one day,” Larsen said. “That’s why people want to experience it.”

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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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Pete McBride told his story to producer Cat Jaffee for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

This giant male orca with a six-foot-high dorsal fin, taller than I am, swims at me. We lock eyes, about eight feet away. And I get a thwack.

Most people call me Pedro. My grandfather was born in Guatemala, and I have an affinity for all things Latin culture.
I am a visual storyteller. I also do a lot of public speaking and some writing.

The scene is March 20th, 2020. I was sitting on South Georgia Island, which is the Galapagos of Antarctica, surrounded by 200,000 squawking penguins that were making more noise than you can imagine. Penguins, interestingly, identify their young and their mates through sound, not sight. So they’re trying to stay safe, and they have this amazing little haven and habitat at the bottom of the world.

I had gone down there to be a speaker on a boat, but the minute we got there, we were told we better come back as all ports are closing, the world’s locking down.

So we turned around into what is called the Mount Everest of ocean crossings, and powered into the big 40-foot swells, and went back to the tip of Argentina to then get on planes, trains, and automobiles.

I was getting on my fifth flight to get home where I live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and I arrived at Chicago and noticed that I’m the only person in security, in passport control, the whole thing. I’m like, Wow, I knew things had been changing with COVID but suddenly everything came screeching to a halt. And I had been in the middle of nowhere listening to penguins, so I’d kind of missed the memo. So had the penguins.

I’m walking to my gate, and as I’m approaching the gate, I hear the loudspeaker come on. 鈥淧assenger McBride, passenger McBride, please report to Gate 29.鈥� I was like, Oh, great, great they’re gonna tell me they’ve got a voucher for me to stay at the weird, creepy hotel with nobody in it.

I walk over there and the lady looks up and goes, 鈥淧assenger McBride?鈥� I was like, 鈥淵eah, that’s me.鈥� She goes, 鈥淐ongratulations, you will be the only passenger on this flight.鈥�

So I got on the flight, flew back to Colorado, and we went into global pandemic lockdown. It sucked for humans on many levels. But it was an amazing moment for nature because we have created a very noisy planet, wildlife suddenly were like, 鈥淥h my God, I couldn’t hear in that party. How are you doing?鈥�

And that made me really start thinking about it, and collating all my imagery over 20 years, to do a project called Seeing Silence.

I was able to pitch a story and go into the polar night, when the sun doesn’t come above the horizon and get into the very inky, cold, arctic sea in a very thick wetsuit with my cameras and try if I was lucky to see and hear the orca that were coming for their mass migration, because researchers have been telling me that they have been having more conversations with themselves in the water. And that was because all the shipping lanes had gone quiet.

So it’s like one in the afternoon. It’s dark, sunset light, and my cameras barely work. The water temperature is 36 degrees Fahrenheit. This pod we’ve been following very peacefully and not disturbing them. They were relaxed. They were starting to feed on herring. And I see a female below me just sort of hanging, and then I suddenly pull my head up, and above the horizon is a giant dorsal fin coming my way.

I take the biggest breath I can and I dive down with my long flippers, and I’ve got my camera and I’m diving into this abyss of darkness. This giant male orca swims at me and we lock eyes and right as we lock eyes, I get a thwack.

It’s a silent thwack, and my heart just goes thump-thump, and I realize that he is trying to identify me and check me out with his best communication device, which is sonar. Sonar is quiet. But it’s really powerful, especially when it comes from a 25-foot-long, 12-ton orca.

Their brain is 33 percent larger than ours, which is the frontal cortex, which enables them to have sonar and communicate so well. They’re really remarkable, and we don’t know very much about them. But to see that ballet underwater and to hear it, I think we have completely forgotten about that side. We have turned nature into a backdrop for our social media, and we forget how much mother nature actually can say or sing if we stop and listen.

I will make sure I stop and put my cameras down and take a memory photo as I call them. I convince my friends around me to take a moment of silence and listen. It’s amazing how hard it is at first, and then how everyone loves it and talks about it later.

If we can go into our wild places and take back just a little bit of silence, just a little jar of silence that we keep inside our heart or our head, or wherever you need to. I think it’s an important healing metaphor tool to remind us to stop and listen.

Pete McBride has traveled to over 75 countries on assignment for publications including 国产吃瓜黑料, National Geographic, and Esquire. He has produced a number of documentaries and films detailing the rivers of the American Southwest. His most recent book, Seeing Sound, was selected as one of the top photo books of 2021. Learn more about Pete and his petemcbride.com.

You can follow听The Daily Rally听on听,听, or wherever you like to listen. and to be featured on the show.

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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.

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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�

The听 S.A. Agulhas II is projected to make landfall March 19.

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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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I鈥檓 heading to the Arctic thinking about death.

Lying facedown in the top bunk of an overnight train inching from Saint Petersburg toward the Russian port city of Murmansk, I have a berth waiting for me on an August expedition sailing north.

I鈥檓 working on a book about Arctic explorers, and that means swimming in a sea of sorrow. In my train compartment, dead adventurers haunt me: Faithful sled dogs eaten by humans or swallowed by chasms in the ice. Sailors devoured by polar bears or their own shipmates. Even when no animals or people are stalking them, polar explorers have a tendency to starve or freeze or succumb to disease.

I鈥檝e come to Russia at age 51 to re-create parts of William Barents鈥檚 third voyage to the Arctic from 400 years ago. Crossing and recrossing the sea northeast of Scandinavia, Barents, a Dutch navigator, went looking for a passage to China, but he and 16 men were trapped by sea ice during the summer of 1596. For nearly a year, they were stranded hundreds of miles above the mainland on Novaya Zemlya, a pair of large islands extending all the way to 77 degrees north. Five sailors died, including Barents himself, who perished at sea after they abandoned their ship and he and the remaining crew tried to get home on small boats. His quest to find the lucrative route to China was a brave but dismal failure.

Once we leave Murmansk, our boat will sail the same formidable waters. Setting out with a Russian crew aboard a yacht called Alter Ego, I鈥檒l follow in Barents鈥檚 wake over the sea that now bears his name.

But Barents isn鈥檛 the only thing on my mind. Other grim news is preoccupying me as much or more. Arctic sea ice is collapsing, with few signs of reversal. I鈥檝e been to the far north twice to report on climate change, and in the meantime it鈥檚 only gotten worse.

My family seems equally vulnerable. The night before I left home, my cousin Joe messaged me about the trip. As kind a man as I鈥檝e met, and a traumatized veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, he had checked himself in for alcohol rehab earlier that summer at the age of 47. By the time I was packing my bags, he鈥檇 been sober for more than a month. On the last day of July, I sent my love and told him to hold down the fort while I was gone.

But I鈥檓 wondering if the fort will be standing when I return. Weeks before, my father and stepfather were diagnosed with cancer; my mother is now deep in the throes of paranoid dementia. My two teenage children are fine, but I feel bad about leaving my husband parenting solo for so long while he鈥檚 working full-time. Meanwhile, the contract I signed before all this happened says my book is due by Christmas.

I feel both grateful and ashamed to have a chance to go off the grid to focus on research. I鈥檓 running from looming family mortality into the arms of historic鈥攁nd historical鈥攖ragedy. Part of me thinks I shouldn鈥檛 go. But I know it might be the journey of a lifetime.

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Polar explorer found inspiration in Robert Service鈥檚 poem 鈥淭he Call of the Wild鈥�听when he first read听it. Hoping to move听others, Larsen pulled together eight years of footage from five continents and set them to Service鈥檚 words to celebrate these wild places.

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Name: Nikita Ovsyanikov
Job:听Behavioral scientist
Home Base: A small village 250 miles northwest of Moscow听
Age: 67
Education: Studied zoology at Moscow State University

When he was just three years old, Russian Nikita Ovsyanikov told his mother that he wanted to work with animals.听He stuck to his word.听Ovsyanikov grew up to study听biology and zoology at Moscow State University, then听spent over a dozen years studying the Arctic fox. In 1990, he听switched his focus to an even bigger animal: the polar bear.

To observe these creatures in the wild, he spent years living on remote Wrangel听Island, a polar bear denning location in the East Siberian Sea. 鈥淚f you want to know how animals live, what their interaction with their environment is like, you have to observe it,鈥� Ovsyanikov says. 鈥淲hen I decided to do this kind of research, I had to choose to live in the wilderness. The more of your own lifetime you invest in this activity, the more you learn.鈥�

Now mainly retired from field research, Ovsyanikov works as a guide and lecturer with Arctic-tourism outfitter . We called him at his remote cabin to talk about his life鈥檚 work.

On Why He Picked Polar Bears: 鈥淚 was studying Arctic foxes, and I started to understand them. So I thought, Let鈥檚 look at how this larger Arctic predator is managing life. I knew there was almost nothing known about the social life and behavior of polar bears.鈥�

On the First Thing He Does When He Wakes Up in the Field: 鈥淚 listen for wind and the sounds of tundra outside the cabin. The sound of the wind tells you whether or not there is a storm today. I make breakfast and preparations to go out for long daily observations. It鈥檚 important to prepare yourself for long stretches outside in the cold and wind to observe animals. You can only step out when you are physiologically and psychologically ready鈥攑repared, warmed up. In the Arctic, you can鈥檛 do this work effectively if you jump out of bed, then run from the cabin, not being warmed up, as people usually do in big cities. If you do that in the Arctic field, you might get in trouble by making mistakes, or you would miss important events that are happening around you.鈥�

On How He Lives Among听Polar Bears: 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 make yourself invisible to animals鈥攖hey鈥檙e smart, they see what鈥檚 in their territory, they鈥檒l come investigate you. So you have to convince them that you鈥檙e a harmless creature.听I have to present myself not as a hunter but that I鈥檓 living there alongside them. Year after year, they know when you鈥檙e in this cabin, you鈥檙e not posing any threat to them.鈥�

On How He Stays Safe: 鈥淚 never considered having firearms. From the beginning, my philosophy was that my presence and my ambitions there in no way should result in the polar bears losing their lives. In my more than 2,000 encounters with polar bears on the ground, I experienced only four cases of serious aggression, where polar bears attacked with motivation to kill me. I provoked each of those incidents myself, by making some kind of mistake in my behavior, so I developed a听nonlethal approach that combines behavioral rules with the use of only nonlethal bear deterrents, like pepper spray or a wooden stick.鈥�

On the Most Fulfilling Part of His Job: 鈥淎ll animals are very individual. The major pleasure for me working with polar bears听is to discover their personal characters. It鈥檚 like opening another world.鈥�

On the Hardest Part of His Job: 鈥淵ou have to suffer bad weather, drive long distances. If your snowmobile breaks in the tundra, you have to walk 40 kilometers [25 miles]听to the cabin. The hardest part is surviving the extremes of the Arctic environment.鈥�

On the Biggest Misperception People Have About Polar Bears: 鈥淢ost people see polar bears as killing machines. Yes, polar bears are predators. Their main task in life is to survive. They have powers and instruments to kill. But that is only one side of them. People do not know that polar bears are the most cautious animals on earth. Biologically, this is very logical. They make their living by hunting, so if they get injured or become incapable in any way, they would not be able to hunt. They鈥檙e very personal, very psychologically advanced, very intelligent. They鈥檙e actually very sensitive and gentle.鈥�

On the Biggest Misperceptions People Have About Him: 鈥淨uite a few times听I have heard that I am this crazy man who walks among听polar bears. Some people have even said they heard I got killed by polar bears. I wouldn鈥檛 be there if I wasn鈥檛 100 percent confident that I could manage this in a safe way. If I got killed or injured, it would put a very bad shade on polar bears.鈥�

On the Biggest Threat to Polar Bears: 鈥淓xtermination by humans鈥攈unting and poaching. Global warming is a threat, but polar bears have survived several major global warmings in the past. When they are forced by climate change to spend more time on land, they are exposed to more encounters with humans.鈥�

On What We Can Learn from Polar Bears: 鈥淚f you want to know what it means to be a good mother, watch polar bears with their young鈥攈ow they share responsibilities, how they take care of their territory, how they care for their kids. They are extremely careful and cautious mothers. They鈥檙e also very demanding and strict. If the kids do something wrong, their mothers correct them.鈥�

On His Biggest Fear: 鈥淭hat humans will not change their philosophy and attitude, and will continue exterminating animals, and we鈥檒l lose them from this earth. That鈥檚 the worst thing we can do. I鈥檓 not afraid of the polar bears.鈥�

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