chapter one

Hell

Every expedition has a reckoning point, the moment when an adventurer must navigate her own inner tumult and find strength to continue. Sometimes, discovering the will to go on is not a single event, but an equation that must be calculated with each footfall on a given trek. The true journey of any expedition is the journey of the mind. Navigating that terrain depends not on physical skill or muscle, but on character. Where one finds that hidden reserve of motivation is a litmus test of human nature. Does it come from the thirst for fame? Love of family or competition? Or from the beauty of the very terrain that might prove deadly? Because the will to continue isn't about choosing reasons to take the next one hundred steps; it's about connecting with the forces that give one's life meaning, that which one values above all else. Success on an expedition (as in life) isn't about brute strength, or even endurance, but resilience: the ability to remind oneself, over and over, of the joy of living, even amid the greatest hardship.

On February 7, 2001, having traveled more than two-thirds of the way toward their goal of traversing the continent, Ann and Liv had reached one of those reckoning points.

Ann

I was as close as I'd ever been to breaking, emotionally and physically. My knees ached so badly that I wanted to groan out loud with each step. The pain had become a constant presence, often causing tears that froze inside my goggles. The temperature hovered at -15°F (-26.1°C), but the harsh wind made it feel much colder. Exposed human flesh here would freeze in less than a minute. I longed for the relative warmth of the Minnesota winter I was missing back home. The Antarctic cold tortured the new pink skin on my cheeks, peeled raw by the intense sun and bitter wind. But at least I could still feel my feet. And how. With each downhill step, my toes jammed into the ends of my boots. I knew from experience that when I pulled off my socks that night, my toes would be purpled knobs. I would lose all my blackened toenails in a few days. Still, that was better than frostbite.

I wanted to put on my skis, but the ice was too rough and slippery here. Instead, I wore metal spikes-crampons-strapped to my boot soles for better footing. Both Liv and I had walked more than eight hours so far that day, dragging our 250-pound (113-kg) supply sleds behind us. We'd traveled less than 7 agonizing miles (11 km). On good days, when there was enough wind to use our sails and skis, we might gain 60 miles (97 km) or more in a day. Not today. Just the previous night I had written this in my journal: "Despite the pain from injury, it seems doable today! I feel as if I can endure. We will make it!" How things had changed in just twelve hours.

This was supposed to be the easy part of the journey. We were on the Shackleton Glacier, a frozen river of ice named for the very polar explorer who had inspired both of us as little girls. I was twelve years old when I'd first read the story of Ernest Shackleton. That brave expedition leader failed in his attempt to cross Antarctica in 1914 but did not lose the life of a single man in his command through more than a year of living on the ice and a daring sail for help. His inspiring drama, played out decades ago on this frigid, icy stage, had led me to seek out the same path-not to explore, as this continent was discovered long ago-but to journey inside myself. To see what I had to offer in this incredible test of mental strength and physical skill. It seemed that just as Shackleton had been the one to launch my dream of crossing Antarctica, the glacier named after him might be the end of it.

I'd been counting the miles to this glacier for weeks, thinking that once we arrived there, we would find smooth snow and a gentle downhill grade. We hoped, too, that the wind would pick up so that we could ski-sail across the final miles. But the Shackleton was proving to be one of the most punishing landscapes of the trip.

Until now, we'd seen plenty of crevasses, giant cracks in the ice that can widen into gaps that go down hundreds of feet, even miles, below the surface. But here, the crevasses were gullies, trenches, craters. They were wider than the 6-foot-length (1.8 m) of our fiberglass sleds, the ice ridges between them barely a few feet wide. Avoiding these crevasses was like trying to hop from rock to rock across a river without falling in the water. Except our "rocks" were made of slick ice and our "river" was a sheer drop-off of at least 12 feet (4 m) in many places. We kept leaping from ridge to ridge, hoping all the while that the terrain would get better. At least once or twice every few minutes one of our sleds slid into a crevasse. Sometimes we could tug them out alone, but more often than not, one of us would have to unhitch from her own sled and help the other pull out the errant sled. We were battling for every inch. And the flat light and vast distance of Antarctica played tricks on our eyes. The ice just ahead would tantalizingly appear to flatten out, but as we came upon it, we found it just as turbulent as the trenches we'd just struggled across.

I could see Liv was in pain as well. One fingertip on her right hand had turned yellow on its way to frostbite. She had soaked her fingers in her oatmeal that morning in an attempt to get some feeling back into them. But her mood was worse than her physical condition. She didn't seem to care that the ice had torn a gash in the side of her sled. I could see one of the food bags through the hole.

We both felt the time pressure. We had only fifteen days to finish our trek across Antarctica before we were scheduled to meet our ship in McMurdo Sound. In that time, we still had more than 500 miles (805 km) to cover. Pushing beyond our cutoff date would mean stretching the trip into the beginning of the Antarctic winter, when the weather would become too dangerous for us and for the ship. Already, the windows of respite between the blizzard-like conditions were narrowing. If we had hit Shackleton glacier even a few days earlier, when the snow and wind had whirled until all visibility was gone, we could easily have fallen into one of these crevasses and broken legs, arms, or worse.

We simply had to go faster. And that would be impossible unless the ice smoothed out. Unless the wind picked up. Unless, unless, unless. This trip was starting to feel doomed. It seemed we hadn't had a break in our bad luck at any point in the journey.

Crunch! I felt something snap under my right foot. My crampon had broken. Now I would have to stop and spend precious time to fix it, if that were even possible. I called to Liv, who was a few steps ahead of me, and we both stopped for a meal break. Even with our many layers and windproof parkas, within a few minutes we would go from sweating from exertion to shivering with cold.

We drank thermoses of hot sports drink and ate chocolate in exhausted silence. I thought about the schoolgirls we had met in South Africa before starting our trek, the Norwegian kids writing letters to our base camp in Minneapolis, the children in Ecuador who were running every day, trying to add up their miles to total the length of our journey as a way of traveling with us. The image in my head of the hopeful faces of the children excited by our expedition had propelled me across the first 1,000 miles (1,610 km) of ice. Now, they haunted me. Our team back at base camp had told us that more than 3 million kids were tracking our journey on our Web site, listening to our recorded voices giving updates by satellite phone and following the online curriculum we developed. How could I tell those kids that I just couldn't make it? The very point of the trip had been to show them that dreams can become reality. What kind of message would I be sending them if I failed in my lifelong dream to cross Antarctica? I had been fundraising and planning and believing for eleven years. This was my last chance. And it now seemed that I might not make it after all. The thought of disappointing all those kids put a knot in my chest that hurt more than my knees.

Liv

I was sure that Ann was furious with me. It had been my suggestion to trek closer to the moraine of the glacier, closer to the edge, where I had thought it might be smoother. I was wrong. We had wound up in an area even worse than where we had started. We were stuck in a place where two other glaciers met the Shackleton. If these glaciers melted completely, the area would be churning with waves and rapids. The same forces were present, except that the turbulence was frozen. Everywhere we looked, the ice rivers were colliding, slowly grinding against each other and the ground.

Before our trip began, I had talked to the Australians who had traveled in the opposite direction up this glacier two years ago. When they traversed it in November, early summer in Antarctica, everything we were seeing had been covered with snow many layers thick. And heading uphill provides a clearer picture of the terrain that lies ahead. Ann and I were the only living beings to navigate down the glacier. We were arriving at the end of the Antarctic summer, when twenty-four hours of sunshine had been melting this place for three months. It had changed dramatically.

Still, I was annoyed with myself for picking this path, frustrated that we were losing too much time, and, most of all, I was sick of my sled. The tow bar, a short ladder section made from titanium meant to keep the sled in line at a set distance behind me, had broken shortly after we began our trek, so I was pulling my sled with a rope. There was nothing to stop the sled from drifting from side-to-side or crashing into me. When I headed downhill, my sled came chasing after me and slammed into my legs if I did not leap out of the way fast enough. I started to think of the sled as a living thing, an animal stalking me, waiting for my weak moments. Sometimes, I could feel it shimmying behind me, jerking against the rope like a wild horse. I became very good at hearing the sound of the runners skittering on the ice as the sled attacked. I could tell whether it was coming from my left or right, and then jump!-just as it was about to hit me. Beaten, it would slide past sullenly to wait for its next chance to push me into a crevasse. I wanted so badly just to let the damned thing fall into one. I kept thinking how satisfying it would be to listen as it shattered into thousands of pieces. I began to think about just letting it go; but instead of following that negative thought, I remembered the good things the sled contained, items that had sustained me for so many days: my fleece jacket, my warm down sleeping bag, the stove, and all the cups of hot chocolate. Not to mention the tent!

We walked on for two more hours after Ann had fixed her crampon. Then we stopped for a scheduled interview with CNN on the satellite phone; but there was breaking news, so our interview was bumped. It was funny to think that the rest of the world was so accessible to us through this modern technology, and yet, if Ann or I were to be injured in this area, no plane could land here to save us. The terrain was too rough. We were completely connected and completely isolated at the same time. When Ann had finished the phone call, she looked at me with an expression so tired. It was better that the interview was cancelled. Describing our difficult situation to thousands of television viewers would not have made her feel much better. We didn't know which way to go. We had lost so much time in this mess. I suggested that we make camp there. Perhaps things would look better after some sleep.

We set up our tunnel tent on a ridge barely wider than the tent itself. Ann's flap opened to a deep crevasse. We had only four ice screws to secure the tent, so we searched for rocks the glacier had churned up and chunks of ice to weight it down so that it wouldn't be carried away by the wind (along with us inside it) if a strong storm should come. Ann gathered ice to melt for drinking water while I lit the stove to make dinner. We sat down to hot soup and a can of crushed potato chips apiece, followed by rehydrated fish stew and more chocolate. Tired and discouraged, we decided to call this place we had stumbled into "Hell."

That evening, we watched the high Antarctic sun dip slightly and the sky grow pink, a clear indication that winter was coming. The sun never sets during the summers, so the evening hour is a long flirtation between the sun and the horizon, like lovers who gaze at each other from across a room but never touch. Wisps of cloud turned violet and streaks of sapphire blue appeared behind the peaks of the white-capped mountains with giant glaciers suspended between them. Just beyond the black, rounded humps of the mountain called the Matador (for it looks like a bullfighter's cap) there was even a bit of red in the rocks. I would not have traded this sight of the Antarctic sky for a thousand Caribbean sunsets. For in Antarctica, there is nothing between you and the sky-no trees, no buildings, no poles, no electric lines. You can see for hundreds of kilometers along the horizon, where the sky meets the ice under your feet. It seems that the sky is not only above you, but also next to you and in front of you. You are walking into the sky as much as you are walking on the snow and ice.

Even the dangerous jagged crevasses around us reflected light and shadow in beautiful patterns. That is the paradox of this continent, so gorgeous and so dangerous at the same time. Ann looked at me, and I could tell she was thinking the same things. She smiled and said, "Who could've known that Hell would be so beautiful?"