This morning Keith picks me up on his way to the airport to get two
more confused souls also intent on self-abuse on the ice. They will be
joining us on the “shakedown” trip, as they are called. After a two
hour drive north, we stop in the small town of Ely to pick up a few
specialty items. This includes such items as over glove mittens that
can only have been designed by people who are sick of losing to very
cold temperatures.

Minnesota, it turns out, can produce conditions that approximate the
Arctic environment. The “Land of 10,000 Lakes” is ideally suited–within
the continental United States–to train for polar expeditions. Rick,
the owner of Polar Explorers later tells me that the “shakedown” is
designed to dissuade all but the most committed adventurers to embark
on this mission in self punishment. In a flat matter of fact tone, he
announces that the week had been designed to “shakedown” the less than
super fit. Of the five others participating in this week’s training,
three will engage to travel for the last degree to the Pole (or 60
miles). The weight of the sledge is proportional to the distance
traveled. I am the only one here to plan for the five to six weeks
needed to cover over 300 nautical miles or the last five degrees North.
In the years since Peary, less than 200 people have traveled that
distance. Within the next few years, no one will likely be able to
travel that distance–any longer–unless they are willing to travel partly by night…

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It is difficult to pin point the beginning of this journey.
Was it the childhood  dream to follow in the steps of the supermen who
chartered the maps of our world with their bravery, instinct and
natural connection with the land? Was it the day the thought entered my
mind that to make the poles could in fact be within my reach? Was it a
year ago when I began articulating the thought, first mentally, then
vocally, that I would undertake the Everest of polar expeditions—one of
the toughest on Earth? Was it six months ago when I stepped up both my
training and diet to increase strength and mass so that I could endure
the brutal cold and harsh conditions of six to eight weeks on the ice?
Was it when, low and behold, amidst a failing economy, minimal funding
came through to green light a two-member expedition to the North Pole
to commemorate the centennial of Robert Peary’s reach in 1909?  Or is
it just now, as I sit in the middle row of a fully booked flight to
Minnesota to undergo a week of “shakedown” training to test the
equipment, the systems and my capabilities.

Conditions here can simulate the arctic environment, and spending a
week on a frozen lake, sleeping in snow and dropping into a hole in the
ice for survival tests can wake you to the realities ahead.

I do not know what Duluth, Minnesota looks like any other time of the
year. But in early February it probably does not figure on many top ten
destinations, short of dogsled and Outward Bound training programs. The
approach by plane spelled out the grey, grim and frigid environment.
What kind of individual volunteers to fly from sunny California to this
dull outpost near the Canadian border at this time of the year?

Part of me came here to find out.

On the taxi drive from the airport to the Econolodge, where I will be
spending the rest of the night, my driver susses me out by assessing
the slew of sponsor badges that adorn my expedition jacket and
concludes accurately that I am not from these parts. After I share with
him the purpose of my trip, he tells me that two months ago, he saw the
coldest temperatures ever recorded here: minus fifty degrees! Minus
fifty? To this he adds that an ice storm will come in the morning…

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