30 years ago, Steger and Schurke led historic dogsled trip to North Pole

It is so easy to recall the start of our expedition to the North Pole on March 8, 1986. Eight team members, one woman,  seven men, and 49 huskies.   Sam Cook published an article two days ago on 8 March, 30 years to the day after we left for the North Pole. Thank you Sam for such a good article, published below:

Ely polar explorer Will Steger says he has trouble reading “North to the Pole” these days. The book, co-authored by Steger and expedition co-leader Paul Schurke of Ely, was written after their team’s successful 55-day dogsled expedition to the top of the world in 1986.

  

Monday marks the 30th anniversary of the eight-member Steger International Polar Expedition team’s departure for the pole from northern Canada.

Reading the account of the trip is almost too painful for Steger, now 71.

“It was so difficult,” Steger said in a recent interview in Duluth. “It was moment-to-moment all the time. There was a specific time, about 30 days in, that I thought we weren’t going to make it. I actually thought I had made a mistake on the logistics.”

But after negotiating 40-foot-high pressure ridges of ice, leads of open water and temperatures that plunged as low as 70 below zero, six members of the original team reached the pole on May 1, 1986. Navigating entirely by sextant, the team became the first dogsled expedition confirmed to have reached the North Pole without outside support or resupply. National Geographic magazine chronicled the trip in a cover story later that year.

The expedition, conceived in a tent on one of Steger’s previous Arctic trips with team member Bob Mantell and based out of Schurke’s garage in Ely, captivated Minnesotans. The team built its sleds in the Ely Memorial High School shop. At fundraisers, Minnesotans bought “Zap to the Pole” buttons, named for one of Steger’s polar huskies. In those pre-Internet days, Minnesotans waited with anticipation for periodic media updates based on radio transmissions from the team.

When the team returned to St. Paul by charter aircraft after the expedition, four Twin Cities television stations ran half-hour special programs on its historic accomplishment.

Minnesotan Ralph Plaisted’s team had reached the pole by snowmobile in 1968. But no other expedition has captivated Minnesotans as Steger’s did, said team member Ann Bancroft of Scandia, Minn., the first woman to reach the North Pole.

“Timing is everything,” Steger said. “The pole was still new to exploration, and we took on this challenge that everyone said was impossible. It was real homespun, is what it was.”

The dogs were a big part of the appeal, Bancroft said. So, too, was the epic struggle of the team in the early days of the trip, with brutally cold weather and nearly insurmountable pressure ridges.

“We had all these turning points that could have turned the other way, and the thing would never have happened,” Steger said. “But we had this great magic that was with us. Minnesota caught the fire of that magic.”

Springboard to success

The expedition’s success launched the careers of several team members, including Steger, Schurke and Bancroft. Steger and an international team went on to complete a dogsled crossing of Antarctica in 1990. He traveled by dogsled across Greenland and made several other successful Arctic expeditions. In 2006, he founded Climate Generation: A Will Steger Legacy (formerly the Will Steger Foundation) to educate the public about climate change that he had witnessed in the Arctic and elsewhere. All of that was made possible by credibility he had established on the North Pole trek.

“It basically made my career,” Steger said.

Schurke, 60, and his wife, Sue, used the polar trip as inspiration to start their Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge and Wintergreen Northern Wear businesses in Ely in 1989, both of which are still operating. Schurke subsequently made five more trips to the North Pole with clients on shorter expeditions and has traveled widely in the Arctic.

“The North Pole trip defined my life and my livelihood,” Schurke said. “Tackling a monumental challenge was daunting and fearsome for us. But our success is now the quiet voice I hear, every time I face new challenges, that says, ‘Yeah, you can pull this off, too.’ ”

After becoming the first woman to reach the North Pole, Bancroft used her experience to complete several other major expeditions and to devote her life to empowering women. In 1993, she skied to the South Pole, and later skied across Antarctica, gaining her induction into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She had been an elementary schoolteacher before the trip.

“That trip gave me the platform from which to speak about things that are important to me,” said Bancroft, 60. “It took me a while to figure that out when I got back — the whole ‘first-woman’ thing. Then I thought, ‘I can’t squander this opportunity.’ I didn’t go back to the classroom. I made my classroom the outdoors.”

We had a reunion in 2011 to celebrate 25 years since the team reached the North Pole: Left to right: Will Steger,  Brent Boddy, Richard Weber, Bob McKerrow,  Paul Schurke, Bob 'Iron Man' Mantell, Geoff Caroll and Ann Bancroft

Steger expedition team members plan no gathering to mark the 30th anniversary of their North Pole trip departure. Steger will depart Monday on a 50-day, 350-mile solo trek by ski and canoe-sled from Ontario’s wilderness to his homestead near Ely.

The same day, Schurke and a team from Wintergreen will start a dogsled and ski trip across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Traveling over the pack ice on the Arctic Ocean has become more and more difficult for recent expeditions. Although several more teams have reached the North Pole — including the Northland’s Lonnie Dupre, Eric Larsen, Tyler Fish and John Huston — a warming climate has melted much of the polar pack ice floating atop the ocean.

“Actually, almost all the expeditions I did in the polar regions, you can’t do anymore,” Steger said. “Now you can’t reach the pole by dog team ever again because of the water on the Arctic Ocean.”

Physical toll

Challenges the Steger team encountered on its 1,000-mile zig-zag route to the pole were monumental. Team members Mantell, then from Ely, and Bob McKerrow of New Zealand both were airlifted out — Mantell with frostbitten feet and McKerrow with broken ribs suffered when a sled careened into him. They flew out on chartered planes that came in to take out sled dogs that no longer were needed as loads diminished.

The team started the expedition with 49 dogs, and 20 reached the pole. No supplies — or even notes from loved ones — were brought in by those chartered planes.

On day 38, Bancroft fell into the ocean as she approached a lead.

“I shivered for three days,” she said. “We didn’t have a lot of dry clothes. I was really vulnerable. The team kept me safe and warm and moving.”

Do or die

At one point more than a month into the trek, the entire team could see that it would have to make faster progress or risk running out of food.

“We made a plan that we had to get to a certain point,” Steger said. “We had 17 days of food, and if we didn’t make it to that point, the others agreed they’d be flown out, and Paul and I would go forward.”

That prospect caused predictable dissension among team members. In one team meeting, characterized in “North to the Pole,” Canadian team member Richard Weber is quoted as saying, “The plan stinks. No way will I get on that plane.”

“Three or four days later,” Steger said in his recent interview, “we hit good ice, and all of a sudden we were in the game again.”

Each team member has images that remain from the arduous trek.

“I never remember being cold,” Schurke said. “We were working so hard that we were often too warm and worried about sweating out our clothing systems, even at minus 70. Mostly I remember the beauty of the frozen sea and the poetry that our New Zealand team member Bob McKerrow often shared during tent time. An experience that was probably pretty brutal now just seems ethereal and sublime.”

Bancroft, too, recalled a sublime moment.

She was riding a sled with Steger near the end of the trip after shuttling part of their load ahead.

“The sled no longer has handlebars,” Bancroft said, “It’s evening. We’re not with the rest of the group. The dogs know where to go. We just hopped on this sled, which is really rare. We’re leaning on each other, back to back, bumping along in our sealskin pants. I just felt like a little Inuit woman, this bony back next to mine, this canopy above us. In all of that work, you have these little moments, a little bubble of loveliness. I’ve got a treasure trove of those.”

Eyewitness Voices: North Pole Expedition Team on Climate Change Impacts ...

In 1986 I was a member of an 8-person expedition to the North Pole using 49 dogs and sledges and we became the first confirmed unsupported expedition to reach the geographic North Pole.

Last year we met in Minnesota to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the event, and also to draw the world's attention to climate change.

Here is what the Will Steger Foundation website had to say about what each of us has observed in terms of climate change in our respective professions.
"We were impressed by the wealth of knowledge team members shared and their own eyewitness stories: Canadians Richard Weber and Brent Boddy talked about a loss of thick, old, multi-year ice, shortened dogsledding seasons and the loss of the summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean; wildlife biologist, Geoff Carroll provided his insight into impacts to Alaska's large land mammals he studies, like caribou and musk ox; New Zealand team member Bob McKerrow, who now works for the International Red Cross in Sri Lanka, talked about communities in the Bay of Bengal being squeezed out by rising water levels; and Bob Mantell talked about the impact of the BP oil spill on communities in New Orleans, where he lives. Paul Schurke joined Will with a call to action to address climate change; and Ann Bancroft acknowledged the impact the expedition had on her career and thanked the team and all of Minnesota for the gifts afforded her and the entire team."
 Visit   the Will Steger Foundation for more information.

Twenty five years later: Photographic comparisons.

This is the first reunion I have participated in my life. I have avoided them like the plague. However, haven come together as a team in 1985 and again in 1986, we bonded together through minus 70 degree temperatures and incredible hardship. So for me, going to Minnesota, USA for the 25th anniversay of our 1986 North Pole expedition, starting on 15 May, was a real joy. . Here are classic before and after photos; 1986 and 2011.

Back row: Bob McKerrow,Will Steger, Paul Schurke, Richard Weber
Front row: Geoff Carroll, Brent Boddy, Ann Bancroft, Bob Mantell.

Note that in both photos we are in identicle positions, and the hair a little greyer.

Dogs licking our plates clean. North Pole Reunion

Mary O'Donnell, Geoff Carroll, Gaile Antanaitis, Bob Mantell,  Indre Antanaiti, Richard Weber and Bob McKerrow.

Perhaps if we all got our dogs to lick our plates clean, we would save so much water and detergent, thereby slowing down the rate of climate change. Read on..... Brent Boddy

Monday was another wonderful day for the 1986 Steger International Polar Expedition that reached the North Pole on May 1 1986 using 49 dogs and eight people. Our 25th anniversary celebrations continue.

Today I had a long talk with Will Steger (Will left and me right) our expedition co-leader in 1986 about the remarkable work he is doing for climate change through the Will Steger Foundation

Steger has been an eyewitness to the on-going catastrophic consequences of global warming. A formidable voice calling for understanding and the preservation of the Arctic, and the Earth, Will is best known for his legendary polar explorations. He has traveled tens of thousands of miles by kayak and dog- sled over 40 years, leading teams on some of the most significant polar expeditions in history.

Will was also very interested in the climate change work I have been doing in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Maldive Islands for the International Red Cross.

Tracked vehicles camping on the sea ice en route to Cape Pointsett from Wilkes Station — the outpost that would become McMurdo — in 1957. (Olav Loken, National Science Foundation)



Martin Loken, the Canadian Consul General in Minneapolis put on a delightful lunch for the expedition today and invited a group of very interesting people. Martin's father Olav, was a member of the IGY in 1957 (International Geophysical Year) and spent a year at Wilkes Station in Antarctica and did amazing scientific work as a glaciologist. (The photo above is taken by his father in 1957) By setting up many meteorological stations on the continent, especially at the remote Wilkes Station and measuring the movement and size of glaciers, he was one of the pioneers in starting recording information that would coin the phrase Climate Change.

So the grouping at the Canadian Consul General's residence had a polar flavour and excellent food was served. We had lunch outside in a beautiful garden overlooking the lake. See photo below

The other highlight for me today was being reunited with Mary O’Donnell, Gaile and Indre Antantaitis, three volunteers who were the backbone of our 1986 expedition. They volunteered about a year of their lives to make our dream possible. It is the backroom and seldom heralded people who make these expeditions possible.


Three people I admire greatly, are Dick, Debbie and their daughter Ann Bancroft, the only woman on our North Pole Expedition. Ann went on to be the first woman to reach both the North and South Poles. Next year Ann is off on another expedition to the South Pole with a group of women from at least ten countries.


Ann, Dick and Debbie Bancroft.

After the buffet luncheon, Six of the team, and Geoff's son Quinn, and my son Ablai, went for a walk around Cedar Lake for about two hours.

We felt the need for a drink so we find a nice upmarket coffee bar, which backed on to a super-market. For a few minutes Brent disappears and comes in with a plastic bag of fresh carrots with stalks still on them. He pulls one out of the bag, and starts eating it and says. “ carrots are expensive up in Cambridge Bay, and these taste great.” He passess them round and only Geoff takes one. He reassures us that he washed the dirt off the carrots in the bathroom. Later while walking with Brent, I said “ did you do a good job washing the dirt of the carrorts,” and he replied he did, and told the story about his last dog sled trip in the Arctic where one of the dogs would sleep in the tent and to save water washing their plates and saving detergent, the dog would lick them clean.”
Bent lives close to nature and I admire his simple life style living in the Arctic, with his charming Innuit partner, and basically living off the land

Ablai helping Paul Schurke put skiis on the roof on the van. In two days time we join Paul and Sue Schurke at Wintergreen dogsleding

In the evening Wilderness Inquiry (WI) put on a BBQ for us. Paul Schurke was the co-founder of WI which is an organization dedicated to sharing the outdoors with others. They provide adventures for a wide variety of people. They offer canoe, kayak, hiking, horsepack, and dogsled trips throughout North America and the world. Each year we conduct over 250 events serving more than 16,000 people.

Left: Canoes stacked inside the WI store room.

The trips are designed for everyone from novices to seasoned outdoor veterans. Over the years, we have found that attitude is far more important than experience or ability. By their very nature, WI experiences have a way of fostering positive attitudes.

This is what they say on their website:

We are a nonprofit organization founded in 1978 and headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. WI is run with 10 full-time staff, 60 part-time staff, and a volunteer board of directors of 21 people. We are not a subsidiary of anything, nor are we officially affiliated with any group or organization. We do partner with many organizations and our trip participants come from all 50 states and many countries around the world.

Our passion is making high-quality outdoor experiences accessible for everyone, including those who do not typically get out and enjoy the wilderness. In addition to trips, we have a variety of programs and activities that help fulfill our mission. We provide training for other organizations and outdoor skills workshops at community events. We also raise money to provide scholarships to make our programs financially accessible to everyone. see website wilderness inquiry

So the BBQ ended a memorable day. I enjoyed meeting the instructors and talking about their programmes, their dreams and aspiration.

Tomorrow we are going to canoe down part of the Mississippi River with some of the young instructors
' Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.......Proud Mary keeps on turning......

POLAR EXPLORERS TO TREK 500 MILES BY DOG SLED

A few people have asked me about our 1986 North pole expedition. Here is an article from the New York Times.

POLAR EXPLORERS TO TREK 500 MILES BY DOG SLED
By CHRISTOPHER WREN, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: February 25, 1986

One of five teams of dogs that started out for the North Pole. Photo: Bob McKerrow

In early March 1986 when the dormant winter sun first glimmers on the horizon, 58 hardy travelers will set out from the northernmost point in North America for the North Pole.

The grueling 500-mile trek from Ward Hunt Island in subzero cold will take seven men, one woman and 50 sled dogs through a maze of ice ridges and across channels of open water that appear and vanish as the ocean currents shift the polar ice.

In a throwback to the early years of Arctic exploration, the expedition is making the trip without outside support along the way, except for emergency two-way radio contact.

The American explorer Adm. Robert E. Peary reported that he discovered the North Pole on April 6, 1909. His claim was challenged by a rival, Frederick A. Cook, who said he reached the North Pole nearly a year earlier on April 21, 1908. Inconsistencies cloud both accounts, though Admiral Peary's is more generally accepted.

The North Pole has now been visited by airplane, snowmobile and even submarine. While the newest explorers would be the first confirmed travelers to arrive at the Pole on their own without mechanical means, the trek is as much a test of science as it is a test of their courage.

Each of the explorers will live for two months on a daily diet of 7,000 calories, three times the intake of a regular adult. The diet is deliberately high in fat as part of an experiment on the health effects of cholesterol.

''This pole trip is probably the ultimate in self-reliance,'' said Will Steger, the leader of the Steger International North Pole Expedition. Mr. Steger, a 41-year-old former science teacher who lives in a log cabin near Ely, Minn., has logged 12,000 miles of Arctic travel. He said the trip to the North Pole left little margin for error.

''The average person who'd go up there probably wouldn't last a day,'' Mr. Steger said at his base camp on Baffin Island in Canada's Eastern Arctic. ''The eight of us doing it are specialists. We've looked at the obstacles and we've developed systems to overcome those obstacles safely.''

The five Americans, two Canadians and one New Zealander have a 60-day ''window'' to reach the North Pole before the ice starts breaking up, meaning that they have to average about 15 miles a day. While the distance is 500 miles on the map, detours could double it. For that reason, Mr. Steger said, ''I wouldn't want it any warmer than 40 below.''

The expedition spent two months training on Baffin Island before setting off to the North Pole. Photo: Bob McKerrow


Three Major Obstacles

Mr. Steger foresees three obstacles. The first are the ''pressure ridges'' formed of ice thrust upward as plates of pack ice collide and buckle. He expects to confront ridges as high as 30 to 40 feet. His team must hack trails over them that five dog teams hauling two tons of supplies can follow. ''We look at this in a way as a road construction project,'' Mr. Steger said.

Another obstacle will be ''leads,'' or patches, of open water formed in ''shear zones'' where ocean currents crack and separate the ice. The leads can range from a few feet to several miles wide. The expedition is carrying a small boat to scout a way around the water, but may have to wait overnight for it to freeze. There is another risk that unstable ice could break up under the travelers, even while they sleep.

The last difficulty is finding the northernmost point on earth, which lies beneath a layer of moving ice. A point marked as the North Pole one day could be 10 miles away the next, putting an exhausted team in danger of missing its objective. The magnetic North Pole on which compasses rely lies south, and limited visibility or a storm would obscure a sextant reading from the sun.

Paul Schurke (l) and Bob McKerrow (r) taking a noon sunshot with a sextant on the training trip. Photo: Bob McKerrow


A reporter who traveled with the team for two days on a rehearsal run across the ice of Baffin Island's Frobisher Bay confronted more basic problems. In extreme cold the simplest tasks, from boiling water to erecting a tent, become clumsy, even painful. The enemy is not so much the cold as the bitter wind, which deadens exposed flesh like an overdose of Novocain.

The previous year, five of the expedition did a 1500 km training trip from the MacKenzie River delta in Canada to Point Barrow Alaska. Taken on that trip. Photo: Bob McKerrow

Carelessness Can Be Disastrous
Carelessness can prove disastrous. On one training trip, matches used to light the stoves that cook food and melt ice for drinking water were mislaid briefly.

''Moving along on a day when it's 40 or 50 below, your attention funnels down to a fingertip or an earlobe that's been bitten by the wind,'' said Paul Schurke, another Minnesotan who is a coleader of the expedition with Mr. Steger. ''We're working on taking an inventory of each other throughout the day, tuning in to each other's level of alertness.''

Even in rough pack ice only a few feet high, sleds career, snag and tip, making them hazardous to ride. The dog handlers run or ski alongside to keep the weight to a minimum. ''If you're not alert or agile, it's easy to get your leg pulverized under the sled,'' Mr. Steger warned.

But such travel can also be exhilarating because of the dogs, which, once harnessed to a sled, pull so relentlessly in the white Arctic silence that a metal anchor must be thrown overboard to bring them to a halt. Left to themselves the dogs will trot for hours without coaxing. At night they sleep contentedly in the snowdrifts.

''The worst punishment you could do to our dogs is to leave them behind,'' Mr. Steger said. ''They live to pull. They live to travel on expeditions.'' The howls emitted by several dogs who were left behind on the practice trip proved his point.

Mr. Steger bred some of the the expedition's dogs in Minnesota. ''I took the size of the Eskimo and the spirit of the Alaskan dogs and mixed in a little wolf for endurance, intelligence and spirit,'' he said.
Another 35 dogs have been leased from two Arctic communities. The Eskimo dogs, at about 80 pounds, are a little heavier, shaggier and wilder than the American dogs. All those making the long trip are male - to minimize distractions.

Mr. Schurke, who has worked with dogs for eight years, called the relationship between man and dog synergistic. ''You draw a lot of energy from your dogs beyond the pulling power on your sled,'' he said. Dogs to Be Airlifted Out

Each dog team will haul a 16-foot wooden sled with 800 pounds of provisions and gear, most of it food. Once a sled-load of food is consumed, the sled will be left behind. The Peary expedition killed and ate its spare dogs, but Mr. Steger said he would not consider doing that. So, in the only departure from the self-reliance of the expedition, a plane will fly in after three weeks to carry out half of the dogs.

Dogs in the Arctic are usually fed frozen seal and other game, but on this expedition they will eat a special diet of dry meat rations developed for military dogs performing under great stress.

The humans will also be on a special diet of 7,000 calories a day, prepared in two bland meals a day of butter and peanut butter, cheese, fatty meat pemmican, noodles and oatmeal.

''Seven thousand calories is marginal, just enough to get you through,'' said Mr. Steger, who consumed 10,000 calories a day on a solo trip through the Western Arctic last year. ''We have no outside source of heat, so we're depending on our body heat to keep us warm.''

Fat accounts for 70 percent of the diet, and Mr. Schurke said the serum cholesterol level of team members was being monitored as an experiment. He and Mr. Steger have been on high-fat diets before, and when they underwent medical tests at the University of Minnesota before leaving on this trip, Mr. Schurke said, their cholesterol levels were found below the minimum for their age groups, suggesting that they had burned the excess cholesterol.


World class skier Richard Weber cooking pemmican in the tent. Photo: Bob McKerrow


Bob McKerrow, the New Zealander, pointed out that other medical tests had focused on the negative aspects of fat and cholesterol. ''I believe that we'll be better off with a high-fat diet,'' he said. ''Sugar carbohydrates are very fast release, but we want the slow-release effect that can keep us going for 24 hours.''


Bob McKerrow checking emergency radio equipment on a training expedition. Note his seal skin boots ( Mukluks) made by Inuit women at Frobisher Bay. Photo: Bob McKerrow


The team is leaving salt and sugar behind. ''Extra salt means drinking extra water. Extra water means extra fuel, and we can't carry it,'' Mr. Schurke said. The disciplined Mr. Steger also ruled out candy bars, over the protests of some members, arguing that the prospect of such a treat ahead might distract team members and contribute to an accident.

The sleeping bags, parkas and long underwear of the dogsledders are insulated with synthetic fibers developed by Du Pont, which is an expedition sponsor. But team members are sticking with beaver-skin mittens and floppy sealskin or caribou-hide mukluks. ''My alertness resides in my fingers,'' said Mr. Schurke said. ''If my fingers are warm, my head is where it should be.'' First Woman to Pole

Ann Bancroft, a 30-year-old physical education teacher from Minnesota, could become the first woman to reach the North Pole unaided, but the prospect, she said, ''is not something I dwell on a lot.'' On the recent trip she kept up with the men in moving her dogs and sled through the rough ice. ''I think if I pace myself and go steady, I can chop all today,'' she said.

The team members play down the notion that they may become the first people to prove that they got to the North Pole. Some scholars question whether Admiral Peary could have covered more than 30 miles a day in his final dash as he claimed, or whether he found the North Pole using limited navigational readings. Others have wondered why Dr. Cook referred to islands and other landmarks that do not exist.

Mr. Steger, who has studied the journals of the early Arctic explorers, avoided speculation about who reached the North Pole first. ''The main thing is that we do the trip unsupported,'' he said. ''This controversy will never be solved.''

The expedition at the North Pole, 1 May 1986.