I have to wonder though, how long does it take for the afterglow of such a massive accomplishment to wear off and to start asking yourself "what now?"
I personally can't understand these ongoing Bernoulli experiments, surely something in these people's mind differs profoundly from mine.
Thinking a lot does that. It's not just searching for meaning of life and a higher purpose but also realizing how this is the only life you get to have and it is very short. I'd compare people who do this to suiciders,they've both contemplated their current lives intolerable and found a way out: One way is through it,the other is around and both routes are one-way.
It's fun.
My assumption is that people want and need some level of "excitement"[1] to feel like living a meaningful life. Say, in scale 1-10, if you only get exposure to level 1 excitement, you kill yourself to avoid a boring life, occasional level 5 keeps your life interesting, 7-8 starts to be so uncomfortable that you rather avoid and 10 is so much that you rather kill yourself than expose yourself to this level of excitement.
Now, the problem is that same things give very different levels of excitement. There are people for whom game of Monopoly is level 5 excitement. And there are people for whom game of Monopoly is solid level 1 excitement.
With this model you see why some people decide to take risks some other find outright stupid or insane. So next time you think someone is doing something insanely risky, you might want to think how fulfilling your life would be if the things you do to get emotions would be stripped from you before calling the persons with pejorative adjectives...
[1]no, I have no good definition for this word
To me, the whole point of doing something like this is that there is no point. It matters, at the moment, to the guy doing it and that is all that matters.
A couple of years back, I rode my motorcycle for 18 hours with only fuel breaks. 8 hours of the ride was in 40+ degree Celsius heat and the next 10 hours I had to endure the monsoons. I loved the whole experience. What did I gain from it? In the grand scheme of things, nothing. Will I do it again? Yes, already planning another trip.
Life seems pointless to me. I just try to have some fun along the way.
https://m.facebook.com/louis.rudd.7
Him and Colin set off on the same day, 1 mile apart on the ice.
For some of us, getting Tetris to work in Conway's Game of Life is insanity. For other people, walking across a continent is insanity.
The indirect benefits of such expeditions have not been measured. If someone did, I'm quite certain, a ton of benefits will crop up.
Rene Daumal
I recently read an interview of a retired ex-paratrooper who lost his friend to Piteraq in Greenland (similar katabatic winds exist at Antarctica), the tent broke, exposing the people and they froze to death. With winds up to ca. 80 m/s and double-digit subzero temperatures, the wind chill effect is insane and a new shelter must be up within minutes.
It was a dangerous undertaking, no doubt. But then again so was Thor Heyerdahl with his raft, and Apollo 11 with the flight to the Moon, and so on.
Tip: if you want to concretely experience extreme cold, and the sheer brutalness of it, look up a cryotherapy room. -110 C or so for a few minutes while wearing swimming gear (and some cover for the extremities) felt like a hopeless, prolonged open ice swimming without the immediate endorphin rush (which eventually did come sometime later).
Not to say it's any easier, but ever since these stories started coming out I've been wondering who decides what it means to cross the continent. Would going from Dronning Maud Land to George V Land, a journey of double the distance but passing north of the South Pole, count?
Then I read that he was out for 53 days. And of course his conditions are far, far more grueling than I have ever faced (all in North America). So then I was shocked at how little he had with him!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqOWpIMl7Si/?utm_source=ig_share...
7000 calories a day!
Eating sticks of butter is common too.
If you look through Colin's earlier instagram posts [1] you'll see that the terrain was not smooth for much of his journey. The terrain is covered in sastrugi [2] and this year was marked with unexpected higher temperatures and snowfall which made the skiing very slow for Colin and all the other explorers out there. Explorers Web has a good collection of blog posts about the various expeditions that are happening this season [3].
[1] https://www.instagram.com/colinobrady/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sastrugi [3] https://explorersweb.com/category/poles/antarctic/
https://www.colinobrady.com/theimpossiblefirst
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/18/sports/antarc...
I once met a guy who told be about a historical book of, as far as I can remember, 2 or 3 explorers who were friends (?) and were racing to explore Antarctica. Does anyone happen to know the name of said book? It's been my white whale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worst_Journey_in_the_World
It's a fantastic read, written by Apsley Cherry-Garrard who was part of Scott's expedition. Such an amazing story, and to think they were doing this in a day where sat phones and GPS were not a thing (not even flashlights!)
It's definitely not a story about 3 friends racing to explore Antarcica - for one, while it takes a few small creative liberties, it's an historical narrative, and only one of the three are significantly included.
But it is a fantastic read, and even if it isn't the one you're looking for it is both well worth your and it is concerning the same topic.
"The race to the South Pole, 1911. In 1911, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen went head to head to be the first to reach the South Pole. In the early 20th century, the race was on to reach the South Pole, with a number of explorers setting out to claim it for their own."
It would surprise me if it wasn't a Norwegian that did it, we seem to have some sort of obsession with the South Pole. Cecilie Skog in the article you linked to is, no surprise, also Norwegian.
If you ever want to walk in the tracks of people like Roald Amundsen you should check out Expedition Amundsen, a 100km ski trip by sled over three days at Hardangervidda. Hardangervidda is absolutely stunning, but also known for taking a toll on even the most seasoned polar explorers.
I do wish users would submit more weird out-of-the way articles, though, and less major media. Especially ones that haven't appeared here before. Edit: like this one! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18760852
