Ben Saunders
Cafe stop to “bulk up”, England, 2013
Ben Saunders is one of the world’s leading polar explorers, and a record-breaking long-distance skier who has covered more than 7,000km (4,350 miles) on foot in the Polar Regions since 2001.
His accomplishments include leading The Scott Expedition, the longest human-powered polar journey in history, and the first completion of the expedition that defeated Captain Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton, a 105-day round-trip from Ross Island on the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back again. Ben is the third person in history to ski solo to the North and South poles, and holds the record for the longest solo Arctic journey by a Briton.
He is a global brand ambassador for Land Rover and Canada Goose, an ambassador for The Prince’s Trust, a patron and fellow of British Exploring, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and an acclaimed keynote speaker, described by TED (where he has spoken three times) as ‘A master storyteller’.
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HERE I GO AGAIN
Almost two years ago I interviewed polar adventurer Ben Saunders for Port Magazine. He and I met via the internet a few years ago. He was the first guy I knew to start using Twitter. He showed me around London on a bike and inspired one of my all-time favorite blog/ forum interactions, all started with a quote from "Kiss or Kill". After serving a fine polar apprenticeship he decided to finish one of the greatest adventures of all time: to complete Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s journey to the South Pole on foot - and back.
The challenge is audacious, and a long time coming. Despite ten years of careful preparation and rehearsal Ben's attempt in 2012 fell through for lack of funding. As of today though, he and Tarka l'Herpiniere are 39 days and almost 400 miles into their 1800-mile journey.
Below is the full interview I did with Ben for Port.
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If asked to introduce Ben Saunders at a cocktail party I'd find it difficult to describe him in one word. The terms "explorer" and "adventurer” suffer from overuse, misuse, and the weight of pop cultural baggage.
So how does one describe a man whose passion and work intersect in action that simultaneously blends movement and balance, freedom and discipline, and the prosecution of internal battle between the ease of quitting and the far more difficult task of continuing? Lacking a succinct answer, I'll write simply that Ben is a searcher: pushing at physical limits to open the gates of deeper meaning, and painting ordinary life with that experience to perhaps give it meaning. With environment as backdrop and ultimately auditor, in action and spirit Ben's quest is near to that of highly evolved climbers and surfers, except the waves he rides are frozen.
Ben spent 59 days trying to reach the North Pole in 2001. He made a 240km roundtrip dash to it from the Russian Camp Barneo outpost in 2003. Ben skied to the Pole alone in 2004. Two others have done that. He skied further in the Arctic than any other Briton (1,032km), again, alone. Equipment failure halted his 2008 speed record attempt on the eighth day, and weather prevented him revisiting that attempt in 2011. The marathons and ultras he has run are dissatisfying surrogates.
"I am an explorer of limits – geographically, physically and mentally. It's about pure human endeavor, and the way in which I can inspire others to explore their own personal potential."
Not only has Ben set for himself these enormously difficult physical tasks but also confronts the much harder challenge of communicating and humanizing those very same experiences. Because lacking that, personal exploration - no matter its import - remains just that, personal.
As an example his proudest achievement did not net any geographic prize or outside-world acclaim because few can actually comprehend its enormity. During the 2008 speed record attempt on the North Pole he covered a half-degree of latitude (29.4 nautical miles) in four days. With only a marathon or perhaps Ironman as comparison Joe Public might ask why it took so long. To explain the 150kg sledge, the pressure-ridged and buckled ice, and the arctic environmental conditions is daunting. Adjectives fail. Perhaps though, when he describes the normal reality is to cover 1-2 miles per day, and that a Finnish special forces team had two years earlier covered the same distance in two weeks, perhaps then a small window of understanding may open.
Presenting the story of his experience and its lessons to a public or corporate audience in a way that may be applied to their daily lives, or that identifies and triggers realization of their own potential is a difficult task but surely not a pointless one.
Ben is an athlete and adventurer, a businessman, a speaker, motivator and leader. He is Roy Batty physical and Winston Churchill eloquent. You can find him on the horizon, eyes frozen shut and heaving against a recalcitrant sledge or with those same eyes opened, exhorting fellow men and women to cut free of the figurative sledge that prevents them fulfilling their own potential.
Have you become polar adventurer first by accident and then by frequent exposure? Or is it what you were meant to do?
A less pragmatic person might say that fate had had quite a hand in my career, though looking back I’d argue that very little of it happened by accident. In some ways I’ve spent the last decade living out a childhood dream, and getting to this point has meant seeking out and surrounding myself with experts, mentors and role models. My circle of friends includes many of my childhood heroes.
At this point, perhaps a better question is could you do anything else? Or have you memorized and spoken the language of adventure so long that you have no choice?
I last wrote a curriculum vitae and applied for a job was twelve years ago, and if I tried to write one now I’d probably come across as an egomaniac, a lunatic, or both. I can’t even remember my GCSE exam grades. In some ways I’ve gone so far down this path that it’s hard to imagine doing anything else with my life. With that said, this journey has shown me how malleable and adaptable we humans are, and how far our potential can stretch with the right stimuli.
In an older interview you admitted you have something to prove. Does this remain true?
By most people’s standards I’m still enormously driven, though my motivation has shifted over ten years from an egotistic desire to make my mark –for peer and public recognition- to something more nuanced. Scott 2012 is undoubtedly the most audacious project I’ve undertaken, yet I identify more now with the craftsman or the artist than the show-boater. Integrity matters more to me now than ever before. In The Fountainhead Ayn Rand sums it up better than I am able: “It’s so hard to stand on one’s record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is the strictest judge. It’s easier to donate a few thousand to a charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of achievement… there is no substitute for competence.”
In the context of sponsorship you have said, "people either get it straight away or they never will." Clearly the statement has broader implications. How do you translate the lesson learned in extremis into a message the public can a) hear and b) put to use in a meaningful way?
Despite the fact that much of what I do lies way beyond most people’s frames of reference, there does seem to be a lot about these big journeys that people identify with, often profoundly. Most of us have goals, dreams and aspirations, even if they remain unspoken and unrealized. The story I try to tell is that, in my experience, we all have far more in us than we think we do, and that even the most audacious plans can come to fruition given enough determination and self-belief, and a willingness to focus and to sacrifice.
High-risk experiences that play out over a long timeline impose a level of self-exploration that the quick-hit adrenalin thrills can never offer. The internal negotiation between quitting and continuing is constant up to the point of no return. Is crossing that line – when the only way out is forward – oppressive or liberating?
I still find the utter commitment of these big expeditions incredibly liberating, though I’m far less gung-ho about the risks than I was in my early twenties, and I have far more responsibility and far more to come home to now. It still gets my back up when I’m called an adrenaline junky. Extended, unsupported polar travel tends to be 99% drudgery and one percent blind panic, and that panic isn’t in the least bit thrilling or enjoyable. The adrenaline is not the point; satisfaction comes from being equal to the challenge.
I’m often asked how I stay motivated when the chips are down. When one is fully committed, simply giving up is not an option. For a few weeks on my 2004 solo North Pole expedition I was the only human being on the Arctic Ocean – an area larger than the USA – and at close to 50 degrees below freezing the extent of self-reliance is profound. On bad days I was acutely aware of my own mortality. I was a tiny speck of heat on a vast frozen ocean. It is rare to experience life-threatening weather but I did and being alone, it focused my mind totally. To sit down on my sledge and quit wasn’t an alternative. Any energy spent on fear would be wasted. So the paradox is that a choice between pushing and easing up simply isn’t available. That degree of commitment and absolute focus is an incredible thing to experience. I suspect it’s also addictive.
Three-part Question:
1) The public learned that Amundsen reached the South Pole nearly three months after the fact. The time lag and minimal information allowed readers a flight of imagination to fill in the gaps. Does the information overload of this era – the daily updates and the sheer quantity of imagery – depreciate the power of modern adventure?
In many ways I’ve hugely enjoyed sharing the stories of my previous expeditions in real time, largely via the internet, as they’ve unfolded. I’ve helped develop some of the technology that enables contemporary polar expeditions to do this, and I have a deeply geeky alter ego. Yet despite this I can’t help hankering for an age when these stories took longer to form, or at least for the means to conduct stealth expeditions with no sponsor logos or Facebook status updates. I often wonder what Scott or Shackleton’s social media strategies would have looked like. I suspect they’d have been repulsed (as I am) by the necessity of compressing their passions and aspirations into a Powerpoint ‘deck’.
2) Philosophically, does the constant supply of information steal our ability to imagine, or replace our dreams and the necessity of achieving? After all, if it is being done somewhere by someone and we can participate virtually then why bother leaving the house?
I was inspired principally by books rather than by television or film (or indeed the internet). The immersive quality of today’s media (3D television!) may well be in danger of removing the mystery and romance of –and the longing for- grand challenges and far-off vistas, though if it’s done properly then I believe it still has the potential to inspire. How would snowboarding have progressed were it not for the mass of films celebrating and documenting its pioneers? And I’d argue road cycling’s mass adoption of late owes a lot to the satellites and helicopter-borne camera crews that follow the modern-day peloton.
3) Does the vicarious participation of thousands of viewers affect your behavior on the ice, influence decision-making, or even your thinking during idle moments?
I think the success of my 2004 expedition blog (we had nearly seven million visitors over four months) was largely due to my naiveté. My satellite phone’s tiny bandwidth and carefully-rationed battery life meant that data was sent one-way from my tent; I had no capacity to receive information, to surf the net or to read emails, and the blog became my personal diary. I was far freer writing about my emotions, my fears and my mental state on that ten-week solo expedition than I would be nowadays. The story that comes back is always skewed, though. I thought then that indulging in too much self-pity might come across as conceited, especially as I was lucky enough to be living out a dream –a half-million dollar camping trip in a world where people are starving to death- so I rarely wrote about the depths of suffering and self-doubt that I waded through, and I was conscious of not offending anyone. I didn’t, for example, write about how ten weeks of utter isolation and self-reliance in such a threatening environment had turned my shaky agnosticism into a resolute atheism.
The quantity of information available today has largely demystified mountain and polar adventures. Those seeking to participate casually may do so by hiring guides or buying a facsimile of the experience. And the public sees no difference between the fellow who walked the last few miles to the Pole after flying within easy reach and the fellow who began his journey at the edge of the ice. Have you cheapened the experience by over-communicating?
One of my biggest fears is that I’ve helped spawn an entirely new generation of dilettante wannabes, who have precious little appreciation of the apprenticeship I’ve served, and precious little reverence for these places and some of the things that have been achieved in them. I get emails all the time from people that have just climbed Kilimanjaro or run their first marathon, and who want to “do the North Pole” next. The myth of what I do must seem appealing to the outsider – the macho self-actualisation, the audience applause, the sponsored cars, watches and clothing, the ultimate chat-up line – but the reality is almost devoid of glamour. Adventure tourism and made-for-TV pseudo-adventure have both diminished the standard of endeavour that these regions have witnessed, and my challenge now is convincing people that it hasn’t all been done before: that 21st-century expeditions aren’t all contrived stunts.
Has it become more difficult to balance what you must do to earn a living and finance expeditions, which is a very public and vocal life, with the solitude, autonomy, and simplicity of a polar journey?
Treading this balance is one of the hardest parts of what I do. I’m deeply ambivalent about fame and celebrity, and I’m happy that I have very little of either at this point. As I’ve become more ambitious, however, the working budgets of each of my expeditions have increased, to the point where we’re now chartering a modified, long-range airliner to reach Antarctica and we’re staring down the barrel of a seven-figure price tag. Corporate sponsorship is the only avenue I have to come up with this sort of money, and backers generally expect some level of public profile and exposure for their investment. Fame is becoming a necessary evil of this game, but it’s certainly not why I’m playing it.
When you say, "I'm absolutely average" I think it's disingenuous, pandering to an audience if you will, in order to reduce the gulf between what you have done and what they have the potential to do themselves. This is a necessary tool of public speaking, of motivating others but what are the psychological consequences to you? Does this have a potentially negative effect on your self-belief?
Ha! Perhaps it’s part disingenuous and part preemptive defense against tall poppy syndrome; we Brits are rarely comfortable seeing mavericks and misfits with lofty goals and inflated self-belief, and it often seems that we (or at least our mass media) like nothing better than reveling in the downfall of an over-ambitious dreamer. I genuinely claim to be average in many respects, however, at least in the building blocks I started out with. I’m not a great believer in talent, I showed almost no athletic or academic promise as a child, and my dad was a penniless, orphaned bricklayer, so there certainly wasn't an expectation I’d be a high achiever (or indeed an inheritance to cushion the journey).
I read somewhere that (and I must paraphrase), "after South 2012 I hope can be comfortable, and done with the big stuff." Do you really think you can be done?
I know I’ll always be going back to the polar regions, and I know I’ll live the rest of my life pining for the simplicity of existence that I’ve experienced on long solo expeditions; the joy of being removed, however temporarily, from the clutches and constraint of society and culture and civilization. It was Peary that said “The charm of the Arctic is the appeal of the primeval world to the primeval man, stirring the last drops of the blood of the caveman in our veins. It is the physical lust of struggling with, and overcoming, the sternest natural obstacles on the face of the globe. It is association with Nature in her sternest and most savage mood, and no live man, no man with red blood in his veins, ever goes North, but that returning, he goes again and again.” I’ve flippantly remarked that these expeditions, and the pursuit of ever-more rarified limits of achievement are like a crack habit. Nothing at home quite compares to the highs and lows that I’ve experienced in a sledge harness, and the quest for those extremes has the potential to burn up all the money you can get your hands on, and ruin every relationship you’ve had. In that light, I hope this Antarctic project (South 2012) might scratch the itch for good, and leave me content with shorter, safer excursions, and with the time and inclination to revive and foster all that I’ve put on hold.
South 2012 originated with the efforts of Captain Robert Falcon Scott in 1912. He was a stubborn man who insisted until too late in his storied career of Antarctic exploration that man-hauling supplies on foot across the ice was superior to having dogs drag the kit while man skied alongside. While his reputation was subsequently tarnished, first by death and later by a scourge of biographers, Scott did confront and very nearly finish the magnificent challenge of a roundtrip to the South Pole on foot. Remarkably, no one has completed this journey in the 100 intervening years.
Despite having climbed the highest peaks, visited the moon, rowed and sailed the oceans, paddled lunatic rivers, mapped underwater caves, and crossed deserts, ice caps and continents on foot and bicycle, no human has walked to the South Pole and back. One-way is the norm with recovery by airplane from a camp near the Pole, which is bit like being plucked from the summit of K2, with only the "easy" leg of the journey done.
Right now, as you read this, Ben and Tarka are trying to fulfill Scott's dream by completing the 1800-mile trial by ice. And, powered by the Coverdale/ Marsden anthem 'Here I Go Again' pumping through a solar-charged mp3 player, they have a rather good a shot at success.
Riding in rural England, 2013
