The reality, of course, is that there is no barber pole at the North Pole. It’s actually an imaginary place that can only be located with navigational tools. And, since the Arctic is nothing but floating ice, the spot on the ice that is mathematically the North Pole is moving constantly. You could pitch a tent at the pole one day and be four miles away from the pole the next without ever leaving the tent.
I knew the trek to the pole would require agonizing exertion, interspersed with moments of holy terror from open water, numb fingers, and polar bear tracks that would remind us we weren’t necessarily at the top of the food chain. As I sat down beside Paul’s woodstove sipping my second glass of fine Scotch, I still didn’t know why I was about to put myself through this harrowing ordeal. I just knew it was something I had to do.
The next morning, Paul and Bill summoned us one by one to Paul’s home to discuss the trip. Most conversations went quickly. Mine lasted a little longer. Paul said I’d made the cut, but he felt I needed to train more intensely to be ready, and I had just four months to get in shape.
“You could stumble your way to the pole in the shape you’re in,” he said, “but it will be a lot more fun if you’re in better shape.”
I asked what role I would play on the expedition. Handling the dogs? Navigating? Communications?
Paul smiled and shook his head. “Craig’s going to be the head cook,” he said. “You’re going to be his assistant. It seems to be the best use of your talents.”
I made it. So did all the others. Okay, so I would be the assistant cook, the lowest-level job on the expedition, mostly cooking ice into water and cleaning dishes. But in the event that the head cook was not able to perform his duties I needed to be ready to step in.
As we left the lodge and headed home, I didn’t care about my role on the team. I was going to visit Santa’s Land!
Chapter 3
Ready … Set … Go
SUNDAY–TUESDAY, APRIL 11–13, 1999
AFTER LEAVING PAUL’S LODGE IN DECEMBER, I focused on fitness. When I first dreamed of going on this expedition I was a poster child for mentally fit—and a clinical case of physically unfit. I didn’t want to be the caboose, the weakest link, the runt of the expedition litter, and so I changed my workout program.
Working out in full gear
Given that fitness was foreign to me, I outsourced my program to personal trainers in a six-day-a-week, often twice-a-day schedule. I lifted weights, trained as a boxer, did aerobic exercises, and took up long-distance swimming, spinning, cross-country skiing on roller skis, and running. I also did cross training in full Arctic gear. My kids thought it was so funny they volunteered to get up early and go to watch me.
Each of the trainers made me their special project. In each case, I was blunt with them. I knew I’d found the right trainer when they responded to my challenge with glee. I especially liked the ones who added a touch of sadistic humor. They took the challenge seriously. I provided an opportunity for them to really apply the intensity of their training.
My biggest challenge was learning what it feels like to work out. Over the years I had insulated myself from fitness through a commitment to not getting hurt. When I exercised and felt pain, I stopped to prevent injury.
In truth, I had been lazy. I didn’t understand good pain from bad pain. I didn’t understand that muscle soreness from a workout was a good thing. It meant I was getting stronger. Although I understood the basics of working out, I didn’t know what it really felt like to be healthy.
The trainers had a common religion: the heart rate monitor. It’s a truth teller. When my mind told me I felt tired, even though my body was capable of more, the monitor would snitch on me, and the trainers would demand more effort.
During the December training trip, I tracked my heart rate while working with the dogs and sleds. While in the snow and loaded with gear, my heart ran above 75 percent of my theoretical maximum rate. When the sled had to be pushed and pulled, my heart rate shot up to 90 percent of maximum.
As the time for the journey came near, I underwent a second heart stress test at Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires. An earlier test at their Tucson location showed that my heart and lungs were in below-average shape. Not good enough. The test involved running as fast as I could on a treadmill for as long as I could, wearing a facemask to measure my oxygen intake and my CO2 output. A nurse stood next to me with what looked like heart jumper cables while I kept thinking, “Sell my clothes, Mabel, I’m heaven bound.”
I lasted twelve minutes in my first test. On the second one I managed twenty-three minutes. Afterward, the Canyon Ranch doctor said, “I have good news and bad news.”
“Give me the bad news first,” I said.
“The bad news is you can’t use your heart as an excuse for not going” he said. “The good news is you may freeze to death, but you probably won’t die from a heart attack. Your heart is in excellent shape.”
The test indicated that I had the maximum heart rate of a twenty-nine-year-old and the VO2 max of a man of twenty-four. Naturally, I’ve been mentioning these results since then to anyone who will listen.
By the time I left for the expedition I had increased the average maximum weight I could lift by 32 percent. For the first time in my life, I could bench press my weight! Not bad for a guy who a year before could only bench press 60 percent of his weight (roughly equivalent to seven small sacks of potatoes).
I was in the best shape of my entire life. Of course, that wasn’t saying much.
After more than a year of intense planning and preparation, I was finally on my way, leaving Cincinnati to travel 3,523 miles to the top of the earth.
On a Sunday we flew to Edmonton, Alberta, to meet the rest of the team, and from there we flew to Yellowknife, then onto Resolute Bay, the Inuit village that served as our point of departure, from which we would fly to a point on the ice at 88 degrees latitude, where we’d be left to our own devices.
In the week before leaving, three events occurred that my imagination fanned into full-blown crises:
Crisis One: On April 8, in Orlando to give a lecture to a trade association, I awoke in my hotel room at 2:30 A.M. with a nasty sinus infection. The world outside was quiet, but my mind exploded into hyper-drive.
What if the doctor said I couldn’t make the trip? What if my condition was contagious? What if the Twin Otter planes that would transport us to 88 degrees were not pressurized and my eardrums burst?
Worst of all, these internal tensions exposed a vulnerability I hadn’t realized until that moment. For the first time, I understood how important it had become to me to make this trip. I had come down with an irrational, nonsensical need to stand on a piece of ice on top of the earth. I had Arctic Fever. The admiral suffered from the same malady.
To me the final and complete solution of the polar mystery which has engaged the best thought and interest of some of the best men of the most vigorous and enlightened nations of the world for more than three centuries, and today quickens the pulse of every man or woman whose veins hold red blood, is the thing which must be done for the honor and credit of this country, the thing which it is intended that I should do, and the thing that I must do.
Later that morning, a call to my office triggered a chain of solutions. By noon, a fast-acting