Shadows on the Wasteland: Crossing Antarctica with Ranulph Fiennes

Englishmen Ranulph Fiennes and Mike Stroud together made four failed attempts on the North Pole. Their major success was an expedition both inwardly expected to fail - the unsupported (carry everything) crossing of Antarctica. There had already been an unsupported trip to the South Pole. Indeed, as they were making their crossing, the Scandinavian explorer Erling Kagge - who claimed the first unsupported trip to the North Pole, disputed by his rivals Stroud and Fiennes - was making the first solo unsupported trip to the South Pole. The crossing of the Antarctic continent, however impractical, was the next logical goal. This account, and another by Fiennes entitled "Mind Over Matter," stress the grinding wear and tear on the human body, the bleak, black thoughts that accompany every labored step, and the life-threatening hazards of weather, crevassed terrain and starvation. The difference in their stories is entirely point-of-view and personality. Fiennes, the leader, sounds a practical, matter-of-fact note - his appendices on leadership, equipment, history and topography are nearly as long as his personal account. Stroud, the younger and smaller man, is more volatile and impassioned, resentful of the very notion of leadership in a two-man expedition. They began the trip unsure that they would even be able to budge their sledges - loaded with 485 pounds of food, fuel and equipment. "It would be so embarrassing if, once in our harnesses, our efforts came to nought and the sledges refused to budge," says Stroud. After four hours they had moved only a couple of miles on their 1,700 hundred mile journey. And the next day they had their first equipment failure - a thermos that left one of the major respites of their day, hot soup, cold and full of gelatinous fat globs. On they went. Sails, parachutes inflated by the wind, had been an early bone of contention between them. Stroud was insistent, Fiennes, dubious about their usefulness and the added weight, agreed reluctantly. On their first try both found them terrifying and exhilarating. Says Stroud, "Compared with the toil of manhauling, to be pulled forward at high speed was a delight so intense that to ignore it, merely because it was difficult and dangerous, was near impossible." And Fiennes, "After a hectic ten minutes of being dragged over ice ridges, crossing ski tips and being struck in the back by the sledge....I suddenly spotted a blueish shadow some forty feet ahead." Fiennes threw himself to one side. Stroud, used to seeing his companion fall, started to go around. Going too fast to stop, he plunged into the crevasse. Says Fiennes, "Appalling thoughts crowded my mind: chiefly how I would explain Mike's death to his wife and mother." But Stroud had landed on a precarious snow bridge. The description of extricating him and his sledge is harrowing. The sledge was permanently but not crucially damaged. On they went. Black thoughts, with no other outlet, turned on one another. Their c

Adverturers come in all shapes and sizes - of ego, that is! And this book is an excellent opportunity to see the diversity of people who succeed at extremely challenging outdoor pursuits. I thoroughly enjoyed this account from a relatively modest style of person, who took on and succeeded at a challenge, the difficulty of which left me aching and bleary eyed just thinking about it.In an era where many traditional sports have taken on some kind of "extreme" variant, this book defines "extreme" in a way that makes other pursuits pale by comparison. I was gripped that it provided an interesting insight into what life is like when you take on the genuinely extreme challenge. People that merely, say, base jump from a helicopter onto the top of a snow-covered mountain in order to snowboard from apex to base, are amateurs compared to these chaps. They - voluntarily! - walked across the Antarctic continent via the South Pole just because they thought they could. Of course, they did raise a legendary amount of money to benefit research into multiple sclerosis, but that is not central to the story told in this book.Mike Stroud gives one side of the story, in a manner that reveals his concerns over his own fallibility, whilst at the same time providing a case study in how an apparently ordinary bloke does an extraordinary thing. He is clearly not the ego-on-two-legs-type that many imagine these guys would be - but the writing reeks of someone committed to his views and those views involving a huge amount of thought. So, despite a self-effacing style, he seems unlikely to lack belief in himself - despite acute and moving accounts of his struggles to retain focus on a harrowing and debilitating slog across the most incredibly inhospitable tract of terrain. I liked the fact that he did things well beyond ordinary, despite not being ten-foot-tall-and-bulletproof the way we imagine many of these guys to be!The other side of the story is told by his trek partner, Ranulph Fiennes (Sir, actually, with a bunch of that English stuff about being a Baronet and all), in his book "Mind over Matter". In many respects of style and personality, he is most things that Mike Stroud is not, so anyone with a picture of the larger-than-life-ego-on-two-legs kind of adventurer might well here some bells ringing when they read this account. The contradictions between the two accounts are not black and white, but, in the shades of grey, there was enough interest at the time of their publication to put them both into that elite class of public figures - where they were the subject of a newspaper cartoonist's pen. Another thing that I like about Stroud's account is that he highlighted this, rather than papering over it.Frankly, I liked Fiennes' account of the trip as well, but it was more predictable in a curious sort of way. Possibly the most can be gained from Mike Stroud's book when Fiennes' acount is read also - classic stuff where neither is completely right or wrong,