But, I have only slept three hours per night!

————Actually, I was so tired, so I fell a sleep writing this, which means, three more days, we have gone from Cusco to Puno to Lima, where I am sitting at the hotel waiting to finish the trip with a half day tour of the town which Fransisco Pizarro made the capital of Peru, Lima.——-

There´s so many details, except supplying the group with as much interesting stories as possible and details of everything, but you have to tend to everyone in the group with lots of care, attention and love, plus settle the wake up calls, see to that all the luggage get  picked up and moved to the rooms, see to that you as a tour guide looks neat and clean, always in a good mood, no matter how tired, well, it does work.! But it would be so much harder, without the help of the local guides.the ones in South America is the best in the world. One ends up with quite a few new good friends! They´re knowledgeable, funny, helpful and kind. And you learn so much from them yourself!

Well, this trip has been really great, and this is due to the clients and the local guides. Of course, Peruvians and Ecuadorians are really great in every way as a people as well. Best of all was Metropolitans great Faride Altamirano which made our trip a dream!

Aah, as regards to the negative sides of travelling the world, passing through Schiphol in Amsterdam is a really bad experience. The border police there, is becoming as unfriendly and arrogant as the Americans in the US, which by ease are the unfriendliest on earth. These two countries must have misunderstood the meaning of officers being employed by the people.

Naw, better you watch the videos and see the photos here!

My answer to this email was simple and direct: “You lost motivation and you hadn’t prepared enough!”

His email was similar to hundreds I have received in the last 25 years. After reviewing all of them at length, I realised these failed expeditions often had three things in common: Explorers had lost motivation, and they had failed to understand the need for good sleep, and the benefits of good food.

When the going got too tough, they proved not tough enough to keep on going! Key to any successful expedition is understanding why you go through all these hardships – at the most difficult of moments remember what it is that drives you, and draw on this, it can be your motivation.

Good sleep and good food are the two most important pillars of a successful expedition. If you don’t know how and where to pitch your tent, you will eventually fail due to lack of sleep.

The tent is your fortress and your home, where you spend most of your exploring life. This is where you rest, feed and recuperate. Don’t set off on an expedition until you can sleep very well in your tent. I have spent over 2500 nights in tents – many of them before even setting off.

As important, is being able to cook a great meal. You need energy and rest to be able to make the right decisions. So don’t leave before you know how to cook a gourmet meal on your petrol stove!

That said, you could just get out there! Trust me, this advice is only complementary; you really need to be out on the ground learning the lessons of exploration, if you want to succeed.

However, after reading Parker´s article and looking into more what he has done, his thoughts, well, ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a genius coming up here who really knows what he is doing. He is ambitious, knowledgeable and just the explorer who should get involved with these issues of climate change. He has burned for since before the time of becoming a teenager. In my mind, this is extra ordinary. I love his article and all you young people out there with thoughts about the meaning of life or how to find a life you went, you have the blue print here!

Thoughts from a young explorer

By

Parker Liautaud

How I got into this field probably differs from the backgrounds of most adventurers or explorers. While I did start off small – the occasional trip in the Rockies or in the Atlas Mountains – and gradually stepped it up, my expeditions in the Polar Regions were inspired by an interest in how the planet was changing, and what it meant for the people living on it. I’m talking, of course, about climate change, a topic so ubiquitous in the media nowadays that the majority of us no longer absorb it. At around 12 years old, I started to become increasingly frustrated that my interest in climate change was underlain by a lack of understanding of the fundamental science behind the issue. I began to spend a lot of time outside the classroom trying to get to grips with a very complex matter that was, and still is, far outside of my league. It was from this perspective that became interested in exploring the world around me, but it wasn’t until I joined an Antarctic expedition at 14 years old, aboard the Russian scientific vessel the Akademik Ioffe, that I concretely decided to devote my time (for the foreseeable future) to projects in the Arctic and Antarctic.

The next two and a half years of my life, up to this point, would be turbulent, exciting, and at times, bitterly disappointing. Being young in this field, and starting from scratch, has its advantages – notably the media and sponsorship “hook” – but it certainly has many drawbacks. When I decided back in 2009 that I wanted to try to become the youngest to walk to the North Pole (in an expedition admittedly not as ambitious as one starting from Canada or Russia), I quickly realised that funding was the big problem. Most of you reading this will already know what I’m talking about. But I needed to find the money both for the expedition and the organisation. As a 15 year-old, I found it almost impossible to find the right “tactic”. With no experience, contacts, money or credibility, I hardly expected otherwise. The problem, therefore, was that I resorted to “cold calling” (by email and post). And, as I’m sure most of you who have done similar things will know, being rejected several thousand times really takes it a lot out of you.

Throughout the process, I was lucky enough to be able to connect with some very experienced explorers– Pen Hadow, Ben Saunders, Eric Larsen, and countless others. All gave me invaluable advice. And, with my self-esteem at an all-time low, I somehow found a fantastic corporate sponsor, General Electric. However, as a young person at the moment, I feel like we (young people) are constantly being called upon to justify irrelevent characteristics and what other people are doing. GE did a lot for me, and helped me to launch the organisation of my dreams (for which I cannot thank them enough), The Last Degree (named after my first expedition, but oddly enough is remarkably well suited to a climate change project). The tabloids tore me to pieces for being an Etonian, which gave a lot of people the wrong impression. The owner of a blog named “Venture Beat”, quite a well-known business blog, decided to announce publicly, without the slightest bit of research, that my father had paid for the whole trip and/or had used his contacts to get me sponsors (a completely false assertion, in every way), a piece of “news” that spread like a tidal wave through the web (especially when we partnered with Foursquare). The Daily Beast wrote an article that had the title “10 young people with parents that deserve to be shot”. I was number 2 on the list. My point is that from my perspective, it appears many people are inherently sceptical of young people taking initiative. This is fine, to an extent, because it is justifiable to be worried about the safety, experience, or motivation of a young person. However, there comes a point where the line has been crossed, and that point, in my opinion, is when you’re willing to openly declare a lie (I’m still confused as to why it was written) to bring a person down.

I am not one to complain – how this whole project has panned out has been incredible. My first North Pole expedition, thwarted by abnormally high temperatures, southward drift, and other factors, opened a lot of doors for me (I was in for a surprise though – I thought the first round of financing was difficult, but I had no idea what was to come for my second attempt). Apart from the fundraising, much of the logistics, training and other factors fall primarily under my control, and I greatly enjoyed the feeling of being in control in such an unpredictable project. However, the climate change mission (The Last Degree was launched on my first North Pole expedition) proved to be tricky to handle. As is the case for young people starting initiatives all over the globe, credibility is a significant issue. The bottom line is that it is hard for someone that is very young to become credible enough to be trusted with such a controversial issue, especially with the science behind it. Creating a social movement is one thing, but taking the next step to doing real scientific work proved to be problematic for me. It is worth noting that at the point where I decided to take this step, I had essentially failed in my North Pole expedition, so my credibility was at an extreme low anyway. Understandably, few institutions wanted to trust me with doing research on the ice. This seems to be a recurring problem for young people everywhere, and from what I’ve seen, there are only two extremes when it comes to this issue. There are those that really encourage young people to go out and make an impact, to not give up on their ideas and dreams – and then there are those that believe that exploration, and climate change science, should both remain the concern of older men and women who have seen it all before, know the risks, or have a concrete and reputable academic background in oceanography, [paleo]climatology, or something of that sort. I found myself caught in the middle of both of these arguments, as have many other young people. I felt very honoured when I was asked by the University of Alberta and the European Space Agency (for the CryoSat-2 satellite) to do research on the ice, a request that completely fulfilled the purpose of my second North Pole expedition (which reached the pole on April 10^th of this year).

The issue, however, is broader than my project. A big part of the work that I try to do is aimed at getting young people to take responsibility for the current state of the world we live in, and become leaders for positive change (http://www.facebook.com/thelastdegree). Attitudes towards young people have stuck for a long time, and only in the past couple of years have the older generations come to realise that how well educated, connected, or influential a person is are factors no longer defined by the ranking of one’s school. Instead, it has much more to do with how proactive a person is, especially online. My generation has grown up with this at the front of their minds, and it is in this way that young people are becoming world leaders (take the chain of Middle Eastern revolutions that have arisen in the past year as an example).

In the end, being very young (and comparatively very inexperienced) means that I have to approach what I do in a very different way than an experienced explorer would. I don’t see this necessarily as a negative thing, because the process has taught me an enormous amount. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of those explorers, some of whom may hopefully be reading this, that gave me some very useful advice from the very beginning. I know I would not be in this position if it were not for them.

South Pole Ponies part 2

The Forgotten Story of Antarctica’s Meat-Eating Horses

by

CuChullaine O’Reilly FRGS

Unlikely Equestrian Allies

Modern folklore delights in focusing on the intense rivalry which existed between the Norwegians, led by Roald Amundsen, and the English, led by Captain Robert Scott, with the former relying on dogs to pull their sleds, while the latter obstinately preferred to “man haul” their equipment across the ice. That story sold reams of newspapers in its day and continues to fuel a lucrative niche publishing industry. Nevertheless, this is an erroneous simplification of events perpetrated by pedestrians, one which overlooks an astonishing series of under reported equestrian event.

Disregarded is the fact that this was not a two-horse race between two bitter nationalistic foes determined to champion different methods of travel. Prior to Scott’s departure for Antarctica, Germany and England were still on such friendly terms that it was agreed their explorers would simultaneously use horses, some of whom it was later discovered were meat-eaters, to try and meet each other in Antarctica.

This decision was brought about in 1912, when Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II authorized explorer Wilhelm Filchner to travel to the South Pole. The young German had already made successful explorations across Central Asia, most notably when he rode from Baku to the Pamir Mountains in the late 19th century.

Having received his nation’s commission to explore the southernmost continent, Filchner journeyed to London in search of first-hand knowledge regarding polar travel. Here he was befriended by Captain Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton, both of whom encouraged and helped the amateur Polar explorer.

After a series of meetings it was agreed that somewhere in the vast white expanse of Antarctica, the Germans, led by Filchner, would locate the British team, led by Captain Scott, whereupon the two nations would exchange personnel before retiring to their respective camps on either side of the continent. Both expeditions were to use horses, in addition to sled dogs. The British also relied upon motor-driven tractors, and in extremis, man hauling.

Neither team leader realized at the time that both their expeditions would rely on meat-eating equines in this effort. Nor was it known that the Norwegians were even planning on being anywhere near Antarctica, as Amundsen had announced he was trying instead for the North Pole. Therefore, if events had gone as planned, German and English equestrian travellers would have met as friends somewhere in the vast frozen continent.

Sadly, this did not occur. Filchner’s role was air-brushed out of popular history. Germany’s involvement was ignored, as it distracted from the unexpected rivalry brought about by Norway’s explorer showing up to thwart Scott’s role. Nor were the equestrian events, either before or after Scott’s death, fully understood or documented.

To begin with, a profitable modern industry has arisen which delights in highlighting the personal and professional dispute which had arisen between Scott and his former lieutenant, Shackleton. All too often it is forgotten that on their first expedition to Antarctica, Scott had saved Shackleton’s life.

Consequently, while they were indeed rivals for the Pole, what the opponents of either camp neglect to appreciate is that both men main­tained an abiding respect for each other’s talents.

Moreover, thanks to Filchner’s unexpected appearance in London, a significant moment in equestrian travel history soon occurred, when Scott was preparing to leave England’s capital. His slow ship and her crew had already departed for Antarctica. Having concluded last-minute fund-raising, Scott was now taking a train to the coast. There he would board a fast sailing passenger liner bound for New Zealand, where he would rendezvous with his expedition.

When Scott boarded the train, Shackleton and Filchner were waiting to bid their fellow explorer farewell.

Thus, Shackleton and Scott, the two former expedition comrades, shared a poignant final meeting. Any residual antagonism which existed between the Irish and English explorers was temporarily laid to rest, as the two experienced polar travellers expressed what were un­knowingly going to be their last farewells.

Ironically, as the train pulled out of the station, Scott’s final words were aimed not at Shackleton, with whom he had shared many desperate adventures, but at his fellow equestrian explorer, Wilhelm Filchner.

“See you at the South Pole,” Scott yelled to Filchner, as the train pulled away from the London station.

As Scott departed, none of the three explorers could have realized that this was their last meeting. The lure of the South Pole would soon kill Scott. It would then seriously imperil the lives of Filchner, Shackle­ton and all the men involved in both their own expeditions.

South Pole Ponies

What is seldom remembered today is that like Shackleton and Jackson before them, Filchner and Scott were also using Siberian and Manchurian horses to assist them in their push to the frozen end of the Earth.

Upon departing from London, Filchner returned to Germany, convinced that he and Scott were in agreement on an extraordinary plan which incorporated the themes of international cooperation, scientific advancement and horses. There had been no hint of commercial, national nor personal competition.

Filchner never met Scott. Paradoxically, he encountered his nemesis instead.

After setting sail for Antarctica with his ship and crew, the German stopped at the harbour of Buenos Aires. There Filchner chanced upon the Fram. This was the Norwegian ship captained by that country’s famous polar explorer, Roald Amundsen. Unknown to Scott, this Norwegian rival had unexpectedly launched what was to become a nationalistic race to the South Pole. Thus, before Scott had any clue as to what was afoot, the Germans realized that a three way national effort was now under way.

The Fram, with Amundsen’s large contingent of sled dogs, sailed first. Afterwards, Filchner and his German expeditionary force also departed for Antarctica, bound for the opposite side of the continent than that which the Norwegian and British expeditions had chosen. Filchner landed on Antarctica, where he unloaded the horses and dogs he had brought for his team’s push to the Pole. Unfortunately, the ice on which he set up camp was unstable and the expedition was unable to proceed.

Nevertheless, in stark contrast to modern dogma, which insists that it was a race to the Pole that pitted British man-haulers against more competent Norwegian dog-sledders, there were in fact two equestrian expeditions, camped on opposite sides of Antarctica, at the same time, and they had planned to meet !

Like Scott, prior to his departure Filchner had purchased Manchurian horses to explore Antarctica. Upon arriving, he was surprised to learn that because the dogs viewed the ship as a home, they had to be separated by force from the ship, unlike the horses who eagerly went ashore and “when they felt terra firma under their hooves; they bit, kicked and pranced from high spirits and joie-de-vivre.”

Filchner also remarked on the ease which his horses pulled sledges weighing 1,200 pounds.

“As draft animals the ponies achieved miracles.”

Though the Germans were unable to either reach the South Pole, or locate Scott, nevertheless they enthusiastically rode their horses in Antarctica. One German, the Historical Long Rider, Alfred Kling, regularly explored on a Manchurian horse named Moritz.  Another of these horses, Stasi, eagerly ate dried fish and raw seal-meat.

Meat-eating horses, such as the one ridden by the German Antarctic explorer, Alfred Kling, were used by the Kaiser’s expedition to the South Pole.

Captain Scott – Equestrian Explorer

While Filchner had problems, Scott was facing a disaster on the other side of the continent.

Unlike Jackson and Shackleton, Scott took a different view on equine nutrition. He brought none of the high-energy Maujee ration for his horses, deciding instead to feed them compressed fodder made of wheat. He also gave the horses hot bran mash with either oats or oilcake on alternate days.

Despite their traditional diet of hay, oats, bran and oil cake, the equestrian report compiled after the English expedition concluded, “The nutritive value was insufficient under the conditions of sledging and the ponies became very weak and lost flesh markedly.”

Regardless of his well-meaning efforts, Scott’s horses “lost weight until they were just skin and bone.”

Nevertheless, even though they lacked the tasty Maujee ration, eyewitnesses recorded that at least one of Scott’s horses was an avid meat-eater.

“One of our ponies, Snippets, would eat blubber and so far as I know it agreed with him,” Cherry-Garrard wrote.

Snippets, the meat-eating horse who Captain Scott led on his journey across Antarctica.

Cherry-Garrard was later part of the rescue party that found the frozen bodies of Scott and two of the men who had accompanied him on the final push to the Pole. Once again, the equestrian portion of that tale has been almost entirely deleted from popular cultural records.

Prior to his fatal departure to the South Pole, Scott had written to the British army authorities in India asking them to authorize the use of mules which had been specially trained in the Himalayan Mountains. In accordance with that request, seven of these carefully trained mules travelled from India, down to New Zealand, and on to Antarctica. Accompanying them was special equipment based on ideas formulated in the Tibetan Himalayas. This included equine snow shoes and tinted snow goggles.

These valuable animals accompanied the rescue party, led by the surgeon Dr. Edward Atkinson, which set out to locate Scott and his missing men. The snow shoes sent from India worked so well that the mules were able to cross crevasses with them.

In a special equestrian report later authored by Atkinson, he stated that “the mules covered nearly 400 miles and were in such good fettle they could have done it again…..They were obviously stronger and better trained than the ponies and would have done even better than the ponies and pulled longer distances.”

(Notes on the Ponies and Mules used during the Terra Nova expedition of 1910-12 by E.L. Atkinson)

Nevertheless, Atkinson noted that when it came time for the English expedition to leave Antarctica, the perfectly healthy mules were killed rather than returning them to either New Zealand or India.

Equestrian Antagonism

There is still an entrenched dog-friendly view of polar history which has been written by those lacking any appreciation or under­standing of equestrian history.

Though three Antarctic expeditions used meat-eating horses, recent books have continued to denigrate and erase this portion of equestrian history. One volume states, “No horse that set foot on Antarctic ground ever returned.”

(Antarctic Destinies by Stephanie Barczewski, published by Continuum Books, London, 2007.)

This statement is misleading, if not inaccurate, because even though the German expedition was unable to proceed off the ice and onto terra firma, upon the completion of his journey to Antarctica German Long Rider Wilhelm Filchner did indeed save all of his horses. He released the still healthy Manchurian horses on South Georgia Island, allowing them to run wild on the Hestesletten (Horse Plain). The descendants of these horses remained on the island for decades.

Another striking example of this antagonistic philosophy is provided by The Antarctic Dictionary, A complete guide to Antarctic English. Authored by Bernadette Hince, and published in 2000 by CSIRO Publishing, this so-called “complete guide” has no mention of horses, ponies or mules. There are a total of 394 pages, most of which consist of quotations from various books on the subject, yet the author has eliminated equestrian events, and any reference to meat-eating horses, out of her dictionary.

With the death of Captain Scott, and the failure by the Germans to reach the South Pole, the curtain drew down on the role of meat-eating horses in Polar exploration history; nevertheless these astonishing episodes raise intriguing questions.

What would have happened had Scott and Filchner managed to join up their expeditions?

For example, Scott’s equestrian expert, Captain Titus Oates, was a noted xenophobe who could barely manage to be civil to the English expedition’s sole foreigner, an easy-going Norwegian. Consequently, the idea of Oates having to interact with the Germans, or be transferred under Filchner’s command, will unsettle traditional Antarctic dogma.

Deadly Equines reveals that Polar expeditions which used horses equipped with equine snowshoes, and trained to eat meat, could have travelled to the South Pole before dog sleds reached that elusive goal.

If you have additional personal or historical evidence, please contact CuChullaine O’Reilly at

longriders@thelongridersguild.com

To learn more about the “Deadly Equines” research project visit -http://www.lrgaf.org/deadly_equines.htm

To participate in the international discussion regarding “Deadly Equines” visit -

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Deadly-Equines-The-Shocking-True-Story-of-Meat-Eating-Murderous-Horses/226312534070463?sk=photos

To order the book visit – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deadly-equines-cuchullaine-oreilly/1104580837?ean=9781590480038&itm=1&

South Pole Ponies

The Forgotten Story of Antarctica’s Meat-Eating Horses

by

CuChullaine O’Reilly FRGS

There is a widespread belief in a warm and comforting story which states the horse is a gentle herbivore which fears predators.

A shocking new book, Deadly Equines, reveals instead that horses terrified our ancestors and are still killing us today. Accounts include stories about the English stallion that eagerly killed and ate the citizens of Lucknow, a French mare that slew Russian soldiers and a Japanese horse who slaughtered samurai.

Unfortunately, the average human being’s daily knowledge of equine nature has diminished to an alarming extent. It has been replaced by a Disney-esque version of events where there is no dark side to nature. This is particularly true in Anglophone countries, where books and films now commonly depict horses in romantic terms.

What has been overlooked is that mankind has known about meat-eating horses for at least four thousand years, during which time horses have consumed nearly two dozen different types of protein, including human flesh, and that these episodes have occurred on every continent, including Antarctica.

Examples of murderous and meat-eating horses have been found on every continent.

Because of this pervasive equestrian amnesia, the vital role played by meat-eating horses in exploration history has been lost to modern man.

That strange tale began in the late 19th century when Sweden’s most famous explorer and Historical Long Rider, Sven Hedin, reported that Tibetan horses were fed meat in the grassless Himalayan Mountains. Shortly afterwards the celebrated French Long Rider, Gabriel Bonvalot, not only confirmed that these horses, “feed on raw flesh,” he rode them across Tibet in 1889.

Nor was the practice of training horses to eat meat restricted to Tibet or the past.

The first CIA spy to die in action, Douglas MacKiernan, was murdered in 1950, shortly after he rode across the Gobi Desert on a meat-eating horse. And though the last Long Rider to ride one of these strange animals has just died, the Kazakh tribesmen who train these horses recently offered to sell one to England’s modern explorers.

(http://www.thelongridersguild.com/bessac.htm)

While new evidence continues to be uncovered, including how the Bhutanese are still feeding their horses tiger’s fat and yak meat, the most astonishing exploration story has been buried by scholastic neglect under the snows of Antarctica.

North American Long Rider Frank Bessac was the last known Long Rider to own and ride one of the legendary Kazakh meat-eating horses.

North Pole Horses

While it is now commonly agreed that dog travel in winter con­ditions is an excellent methodology, abundant evidence demon­strates that this view was not shared by all polar explorers at the beginning of the last century. What has also been overlooked is the simultaneous use of meat-eating horses in trying to reach both the North and South Poles.

Likewise, it is wrong to think that the lack of any equine fodder in the Antarctic interior automatically ruled out horses, as once the explorer moves away from the seal and penguin populations there is also no meat for the dogs. Advocates of dog travel argue that as the expedition journeys further inland, dogs can be sacrificed and fed to their companions. Horses, it was believed, had to rely on grass or grain, brought at great effort from the coast.

Recent discoveries demonstrate instead that a meat-eating horse would have reached the South Pole years before dogs did so, had he not fallen victim to an accident en route.

The decision to incorporate equine strength into Polar exploration was based upon the fact that the Siberian equestrian culture had a centuries-old tradition of winter-time horse travel. Despite having the coldest climate in the northern hemisphere, the Siberians routinely travelled along the great post road which criss-crossed that portion of the Russian empire.

These horses are able to survive because they have specialized hair which has a special core that greatly increases its insulating charac­teristics. Additional insulation is provided by a sub-dermal layer of fat. Plus, the Siberian horses have the special ability to alter the rate of their respiration, thereby helping them to further adapt to extremes of cold weather. They were even known to function well while being covered in sheets of ice, which actually acted as an insulating agent.

(http://www.thelongridersguild.com/yakuts.htm)

During his crossing of Siberia, in the winter of 2004, Swedish Long Rider Mikael Strandberg, documented the still thriving Yakut equestrian culture. This local rider and his horse were photographed before setting off during minus sixty degree weather.

In 1893 a renowned British explorer and Long Rider, Frederick George Jackson, used these remarkable Russian horses to make a 3,000 mile winter crossing of Siberia. Thanks to the success of this expe­dition, in 1894 Jackson was asked to head an international expedition whose goal was to explore Franz Josef Land, a remote archipelago located north of Russia in the Arctic Ocean.

While Jackson did take dogs, he also brought four Siberian horses with him to explore this inaccessible part of the world, thus setting the stage for a remarkable set of equestrian events which would later conclude in Antarctica.

During Jackson’s journey in Franz Josef Land with his robust horses, it was 30 degrees below zero. Yet he travelled “night and day” for twelve days with a sledge weighing 700 pounds, covering 240 miles along “abominable tracks.”

“And such are the courage and stamina of these hardy little Russian horses that although we had only given them two rests of two hours each during that time they were full of spirit at the end.”

He later writes, “We had travelled 470 miles in seven and a half days; and I think this speaks volumes for the little Russian horses. We had two sledges, and one horse to each sledge; we went at a spanking pace nearly the whole way, yet they trotted into camp as fresh as paint.”

In his book, Jackson recalled how one of these animals, a mare named Brownie, “appears to be doing very well on her miscellaneous diet. In addition to her regular feed of Spratt dog biscuits and hay, she shares the scraps left from our meals with the dogs, and very frequently helps herself to their polar bear meat, and shows a fondness for picking at bird skins lying around the hut.”

(A Thousand Days in the Arctic by Frederick George Jackson, published by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1899.)

Frederick George Jackson traversed Australia on a Brumby, sailed across the Atlantic on a whaler, made a legendary winter crossing of Siberia, then used meat-eating horses to explore the Arctic Circle. This illustration shows his favourite mare, Brownie, who ate polar bear meat.

Further horse journeys were to follow.

In 1901 and 1903 two American expeditions also explored the Arctic Circle, both of which used Siberian horses. The second attempt was led by a talented photographer, Anthony Fiala. The equestrian needs of that expedition were handled by veterans of the United States cavalry. These former Indian fighters “led the expedition in mounted drills and exercise rides on the Arctic ice.”

Once again the horses proved to be of immense help.

“The ponies were less troublesome than the dogs and more powerful, dragging loads that astonished us all,” Fiala reported.

(Fighting the Polar Ice by Anthony Fiala, published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1907.)

In 1903 former United States cavalry soldiers were recruited to explore the Arctic Circle on horseback.

Shackleton and Socks

With these equestrian expeditions serving as a background, and thanks to positive personal experiences with his own meat-eating horses, Jackson encouraged Sir Ernest Shackleton to also use horses in the latter’s bid to reach the South Pole. When the Irish explorer set out to explore Antarctica in 1907, he took ten Manchurian horses, thereby creating an exceptional chain of equestrian events which led from Siberia to the Arctic Circle, and then south to Antarctica.

Though it was later learned that horses will eat seal meat, Shackle­ton had no way of knowing this prior to his departure. In need of dietary advice, the sailor turned horse explorer turned to the military for assistance. What he found may surprise modern explorers.

It has now been largely forgotten that when the British War Office published Animal Management, a manual prepared by the veterinarian department for His Majesty’s Cavalry and Artillery, the index had a listing for “meat as horse food.”

(Animal Management, Prepared in the Veterinary Department for General Staff, War Office, London, HMSO, 1913.)

Thus the British military high command was aware that horses could consume meat-based rations under certain circumstances. The grassless ice fields of Antarctica would certainly have qualified.

To overcome the horse’s need for bulk grass based feed, Shackleton arranged to purchase ten tons of compressed fodder consisting of oats, bran and chaff. He also took a large stock of corn. Yet upon the advice of the British military establishment, Shackleton decided to enhance his horses’ normal diet with a special meat-based supplement known as “Maujee Ration.” This was a distinctive type of equine pem­­mican developed at Aldershot, one of England’s most important military establishments.

Sir Ernest recalled, “It consisted of dried beef, carrots, milk, currents and sugar, and was chosen because it provides a large amount of nourishment with comparatively little weight.”

(Heart of the Antarctic by Sir Ernest Shackleton, published by William Heinemann, London, 1909.)

Shackleton set off for the Pole with three comrades and four of the original ten horses. Each of the Manchurian horses pulled a twelve-foot sledge carrying an average of 650 pounds. Like Jackson before him, Shackleton praised his horses.

He wrote, “compared to the dog, the pony is a far more efficient animal, one pony doing the work of at least ten dogs and tra­vel­ling a further distance in a day……It was trying work for the ponies but they all did splendidly in their own particular way.”

The harsh weather and unforgiving terrain caused the men and horses to struggle alike through the cold and snow. Nevertheless, Shackle­ton made a startling observation. The horses preferred to eat the meat-based ration rather than the traditional fodder. They even threw corn out of their nosebags, scattering it on the ground, in anger at being denied the Maujee ration.

On November 6, 1908, Shackleton first noted, “They all like the Maujee ration and eat that up before touching their maize.”

A few days later, both men and horses had begun taking special notice of the meat-filled horse food. On November 9, Shackleton wrote, “Tonight we boiled some Maujee ration for the ponies, and they took this feed well. It has a delicious smell and we ourselves would have enjoyed it.”

Because of the dangers and hardships of the journey, three of the gallant horses had to be put down on the outward journey. Never­the­less, Shackleton, his men and the remaining horse, Socks, pressed ever onward towards the South Pole.

On December 3, 1908, at 7 p.m., Sir Ernest Shackleton, his three human companions and Socks pitched camp – and made history.

Because the four men and the sole surviving horse were “tired and hungry, we made a good dinner which included a cupful of Maujee ration as an extra.”

By sharing the Maujee ration, Shackleton and Socks became the first known horse and human to consume meat together, demonstrating that both species are omnivores.

Socks the Manchurian pony holds a special place in equestrian history for two reasons. No other horse ever came as close to reaching the South Pole and he is the first recorded horse to have shared a meat-based meal with his master.

Sadly, neither Shackleton nor Socks gained the South Pole. On December 7, Socks fell into a “black bottomless pit.” Had Socks not died, a meat-eating horse may well have helped Shackleton reach the South Pole.

Shackleton and his men marched on for an additional month, coming remarkably close to their elusive geographic goal. Never­theless, he had opened the door to a remarkable series of events – a dual equestrian exploration of Antarctica by Great Britain and Ger­many, both of which also employed meat-eating horses.

If you have additional personal or historical evidence, please contact CuChullaine O’Reilly at

longriders@thelongridersguild.com

To learn more about the “Deadly Equines” research project visit -http://www.lrgaf.org/deadly_equines.htm

To participate in the international discussion regarding “Deadly Equines” visit -

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Deadly-Equines-The-Shocking-True-Story-of-Meat-Eating-Murderous-Horses/226312534070463?sk=photos

To order the book visit – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deadly-equines-cuchullaine-oreilly/1104580837?ean=9781590480038&itm=1&

CuChullaine O’Reilly is an equestrian explorer, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorers’ Club, one of the Founders of The Long Riders’ Guild, Director of the LRG-AF, publisher of the LRG Press and author of Khyber Knights.

Please visit my sponsors Termo who are making it possible for me to write 2 blog reports per week. Just click the logo to find the best underwear on earth.

The why and how I made interactive Google Maps of Historic Events

by

George Stiller

I began making interactive maps of historic events because I kept going to Google Map to find the locations in the various books I had been reading. It struck me that it would enhance my reading if I created my own Google Map of the book.  Thus, I was able to zoom in on and track the locations and people while I was reading  about in both fiction and non-fiction books. Having developed several of these maps, I decided that I should share them with others who might find them interesting and try to teach others to map their reading. So I created my blog MyReadingMapped.

After a period of time, I noticed that the maps that got the most attention were those of historic events. So, I modified my blog to contain only maps on historic events. Then it dawned on me, that without a college degree, I have no credibility and that I am not a recognized authority on history. To solve that problem, I decided to find 100+-year old eFree Google Books, or online journals, written by the explorers themselves and even Wikipedia pages on the exploration that my map locations could be linked to on a by page basis for credibility.  Thus, the map becomes a library portal to all the knowledge on the Internet.

My first map of this type was the Interactive Civil War Map. I knew there would be great interest in the subject and I found the links and coordinates I needed on Wikipedia’s List of Civil War Battles, which was very confusing to use and required the visitor to use a complicated and time consuming process to get to a Google Map for each and every battle one-by -one. On the other hand, my map was designed to be easy to use, enabled you to zoom in on the battle and made all the battles visible at once so you can see how they relate to each other without the complicated process.   These maps enable you to zoom in on the actual locations, see the buildings, the forts, the ancient ruins, etc. and read the actual words of the explorer, see the terrain as they saw it 100+ years ago in terrain mode, and what it looks like today in satellite mode. These maps can even provide directions, hotels and other points of interest. Some maps include links to National Archive photos, Wikipedia pages, and animations from CivilWarAnimated or AmericanRevolutionAnimated.

After placing a few referrals on various online forums, interactive maps of historic events began to take off. My hope is that teachers would use it to inspire reading and writing to students who are currently fixated on an online media, and that travelers and followers of explorers would use these maps to plan their next vacation.

My most popular maps are the following:

• Interactive Civil War Map
• Sunken Ships of the Atlantic
• Explorations of Charles Darwin, Marco Polo, Mungo Park and Henry Morton Stanley
• The American Revolution
• Environmental Disasters

Until recently, all my maps were about explorers who had died a long time ago. The map on Mikael Strandberg’s 2004 Siberian Expedition was my first living explorer who was kind enough to allow me to do so and provided the materials I needed.  I now have twenty-nine Google Maps on historic events and two Google Map games called “Day of Atonement” and “Prag’s Google Street Road Rally.” It is of interest to note, the research involved and the creation of these maps has uncovered some errors in commonly held facts on history. I have found what I believe are errors in traditional exploration maps on Wikipedia in regard to Marco Polo and Cortès, and located odd details mentioned in books that affected history and you can read about them on my blog.

So today, start experiencing history digitally by making your own maps of an historic events and uncover your own discovery of little known facts that only a Google Map can reveal.

George Stiller is a retired marketing communications manager who began his 35 year career in advertising and marketing as paste up artist. As an ad agency art director, George has helped to establish Agfa-Gevaert as a worldwide leader in diagnostic medical imaging systems. As a corporate graphic design manager, George’s workflow improvements helped United States Surgical Corporation to become one of the fastest growing companies worldwide.  As a marketing communications manager for MechoShade Systems, George helped to establish the MechoShade brand as the third most recognized brand in the commercial shade industry and helped to develop the ImageShades you have seen at Levis and the Gap. Now that George is retired, he developed his blog, MyReadingMapped, and its 30+ interactive Google Maps on history.

Visit him on Facebook!

Please visit my sponsors Termo who are making it possible for me to write 2 blog reports per week. Just click the logo to find the best underwear on earth.

Why ‘I’ climbed Mount Everest, and maybe why you shouldn’t

by

Ben Thackwray

This is an abridged extract from a chapter of the book I’m writing that also includes the stories of how ‘a whale’ smashed our rudder off our ocean rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic and how we were hunted by two Polar Bears for two days in Greenland:

I’m not going to lie to you; I’m not the first person to climb Mount Everest!

For me climbing Everest wasn’t about doing something that would grab the headlines and it wasn’t about doing something completely contrived or exaggerated to seem more interesting or grandiose than it actually is.

I wasn’t going to ‘do it for charity’ (I worked hard and saved up for it for ten years and still had to borrow a large amount from the bank as I didn’t pursue any sponsorship), and I wasn’t going to do it on a pogo stick or be ‘the first person to carry a bottle of Reggae Reggae sauce to the summit’. (And now I’ve done it I’m not going to claim some stupidly specific title like ‘first man to row the Atlantic, ski across Greenland, run the Marathon des Sables, traverse Denali, climb Mount Everest, be 5’ 8” and live in Leeds’, because I don’t know, or care if I am or not’!)

I climbed Mount Everest purely for the love and experience of doing it.

Climbing Mount Everest has simply always been something that I have wanted to do ever since I can remember, but I remember specifically when I committed to it. It was the 13th of May 1995 (my 15th birthday) and there was a piece on ‘Newsround’ about Alison Hargreaves reaching the summit of Mount Everest. I remember standing there watching it, knowing, that I was going to do that one day (and secretly hoping to summit on my 30th birthday).

Climbing Mount Everest was actually part of a long list of things which formed naturally through childhood that I ‘knew’ I was going to do and which I’m working my way through. The big three (which are public knowledge) of the longer list were to Row the Atlantic, climb Mount Everest and Ski to the South Pole, which I grouped together into a personal project which goes by the name of ‘The Adventure Trilogy’. The idea with the Trilogy was that I would have to, ‘to some extent’, master three very different disciplines in three very different dangerous environments and I would get to experience firsthand everything that goes with that. It’s never been about doing ‘something’ out of the ordinary for me, it’s always for me been about certain specific things and I’m pretty sure once the list is finished I give it all up and go and live in a log cabin somewhere away from everything. I think if you don’t inherently already know what the majority of your next c10 projects are going to be, and you’re searching around to create ‘something’ to do, maybe whatever you end up doing perhaps doesn’t mean that much to you and maybe, you’re just doing it for a different reason? – Which is fine, I understand that, and each to their own.

Having rowed the Atlantic in 2008 I had planned to go to Everest in 2010 but due to a set back out in Greenland in 2009 on an expedition we were using as a precursor to our South Pole attempt (The ENDURE MORE expedition), Everest had to be put back to 2011. When I finally got to base camp this year in Tibet it was everything I had imagined and planned for, for all those years.

Sitting back at home now feeling fine I could find it easy to say it was a piece of cake but I have to admit it was a lot more difficult than I was expecting! It is difficult, anyone who thinks because it’s a popular mountain these days that it is easy, is an idiot. (And as you can probably tell I’m pretty tired of hearing things like ‘more people have climbed Everest than….rode a bike along this obscure coastal track whilst wearing a tutu’, or something to that effect).

I climbed Everest via the North East Ridge which is the route made famous by Mallory and Irvine’s 1924 ill fated attempt. For me because of the history and the actual climbing en route to the summit this offered the most interesting climbing option as opposed the southern route first climbed by Norgay and Hillary in 1953. (Who along with Mallory and Irvine, having been there now myself, my already gushing admiration for has grown significantly).

Above the mass of crevasses, over hanging seracs, avalanche hazards and ice walls that is the North Col and the deceptively steep (and seemingly never ending) snow slope of the North Ridge, the climbing really gets interesting! But I can’t really tell you anything about the route that you can’t find in a book somewhere else, other than maybe; there is “a big rock” at c7200m!

What I can tell you is that my summit day and the events that unfolded I’ll never forget and may have changed my life a little.

Summit day really starts from camp 2 at 7800m as you spend so little time at camp 3 at 8300m (the highest campsite in the world) before the final push for the summit. When we started out from 8300m in the dark at around 21:00, it was cold but not too cold (about -20 centigrade) it was snowing a little but there was hardly any wind. Even though I was already tired, being well above my previous altitude record I started strong, but it wasn’t long before things started to go ‘downhill’.

There are around 12 dead bodies of climbers on this route above 8300m, one wrapped in a tent just a few yards from where we started in camp 3 but mostly they’re up high on the ridge above 8500m. After a few hours we made it up onto the North East Ridge itself and ‘took a right’ just before the famous ‘landmark’ of the body of an Indian climber, Tsewang Paljor, now referred to as ‘Green Boots’. I’m not going to sugar coat this, the route is so narrow at this point you have to pass within 2 feet of his body, and although I’m not squeamish or affected by things like this it is a very real reminder that you are pushing the limits and should things go wrong in the next 12 hours this is where you’ll stay!

After passing Green Boots, on the ridge there are just the three famous rock ‘steps’ to negotiate and over a mile in length of highly exposed ridge. “What could be simpler, there are fixed ropes and ladders, it’s just a walk” – I have to say that this view which I’ve heard a few times is not only flippant and uniformed it’s a little bit stupid!

The three steps each produced events that I will never forget. It was still night as I made it to the first step and below us, a long way below us, we could see the flashing and cracking of thunderstorms in the clouds over in the distance towards Cho Oyu.

I committed to climbing the first step in my smaller gloves as it appeared a lot more difficult than expected and as it wasn’t particularly cold I’d benefit from the added dexterity. Unfortunately climbing the first step took longer than expected and my hands got extremely cold due to a combination of a number of contributing factors, and because of where I was, hanging off the mountain over a substantial fall I couldn’t stop to either warm my hands properly or get my biggest mitts out. I was a little bit unlucky, and by the time I reached the top of the step and a place where I could stand and stop, my hands were frozen! When I removed my gloves to assess the damage I could see my right hand in particular had no blood in any of the fingers past their base at the palm of my hand, I had frostbite!

I now had the difficult decision to make, do I go back down and try and save my fingers, or do I carry on to the summit and risk losing them all?! After warming my hands the best I could, stood there on a knife edge ridge over 8500m in the dark, I managed to get blood back almost right to ends of my fingers, and as I was alone at the top of the step I simply radioed into Advanced Base Camp, “Just climbed the first step, moving on toward the second’. I decided to carry on toward the summit.

Although the summit was still around 7 hours away at this point and the decision resulted in me losing the distal phalanx of two fingers when I got back home (which I’ve had made into a very nice, albeit macabre, pair of cufflinks) I don’t regret it one bit, because to me, it was worth it! (Anyone that says climbing Everest isn’t worth losing the ends of a few fingers for maybe isn’t as passionate about climbing it as I was, or maybe to them it isn’t worth it, which I understand. To me it was. I certainly wouldn’t advise making the same decision as I did to someone else though, I’d tell them to go down immediately, as would the guys I was climbing with, absolutely, which is why I kept it to myself!)

So with a frozen hand I moved along the ridge towards the second step, famously the crux of the route. Because it is the crux, it is a lot more discussed than the other two steps so before you get there, you will have seen pictures of it and discussed it in more detail, and generally will be well prepared for it. What I wasn’t prepared for was what happened whilst I was climbing it.

The oxygen masks we were using which are the best performers at high altitude have a rubber valve on the right hand side to allow ambient air flow into the mask to mix with the flow of oxygen from the oxygen system itself. The valve itself is covered by a small piece of plastic which keeps your down jacket from obstructing the valve. When I was climbing the second step I noticed that this plastic cap had fallen off, and the reason I noticed it was missing was because the rubber valve which it covers was now completely frozen and not allowing any air into the mask at all. I was gasping and again found myself in a position not conducive to sorting problems like this out.

Then, when not only was I climbing the most strenuous section of the route, with a frozen hand, and a broken oxygen system in the dark at c8700m, all of a sudden my guts woke up for the day! I’d had the shits for the last few days and at this point with everything else going on I wasn’t going to be able to stop here, loosen all my  down clothing and under garments and relieve myself (at least, outside my clothing). So I literally, and quiet happily at the time, shit myself!

At the top of the second step I managed to unfreeze the oxygen masks valve by removing the mask completely and breathing as hard as I could onto the valve to defrost it. This was only a temporary fix though and every 20 minutes or so from then on I had to stop as the mask collapsed against my face as it repeatedly froze , inevitably when I needed air the most, and try again and again to defrost it. This was a less than ideal situation to be in above 8700m at the top of second step where there is an obvious scattering of dead bodies, most of whom I believe were attempting to summit without oxygen, and again I had to assess this time whether my now less than perfect oxygen supply was reason to continue or to retreat. This will sound bad but, I never had any doubt that I was going to reach the summit so even though things were going far from ‘the plan’ this was just another thing at the time to accept and deal with, and I carried on.

Shortly after this the sun came up and we could see the curvature of the earth and how beautiful everything was so far beneath us, although this was only appreciated in hindsight looking back at photos taken, because at the time, as everyone is at this point, I was pretty much on my last legs and really pushing myself to the limit and it was intense focus, at least for me, that seemed to mask any sentimentality or appreciation for the beauty of where I was.

By the time you get to the third step it feels pretty close to the summit and I climbed this with relative ease only to discover that above this, on a very exposed knife edge section where there’s an enormous serac over hanging the 13,000ft, almost vertical, drop of the Kanshung face; there was no pre-fixed rope and the section needed to be traversed free (and very carefully). It wasn’t until on the descent that it became apparent there was actually a rope, but it was pulled off the ridge down the north face by the body attached to it of an Irish climber we had met alive and well just a few days before down in Base Camp.

So after another hour or so, and a very exposed final traverse of the highest part the North Face at c8800m I finally made it to the summit ridge and set foot on the summit of Mount Everest on the 26th May 2011, 16 years after I committed myself to it.

Exhausted, with a frozen hand, massively hypoxic due to problems with my oxygen mask (and not forgetting the altitude!), sat covered in my own piss and shit having had to literally climb over the dead bodies of people we knew to get there, I didn’t exactly feel particularly triumphant as you might have expected one would do, being able to look down on the rest of the world; and having never had any doubt I would get there I didn’t feel the need to savour the moment or celebrate too much so I only spent a few minutes there before I set off down to ensure that I got down alive and we could call the climb ‘a success’. (Watch video from the summit here)

The descent, as expected, was infinitely harder than the ascent and I was ‘in the hurt locker’ like I’d only been once or twice before, once at the end of a 100 mile nonstop ultra marathon over the Pennines and when we crossed Greenland in 2010 in 15 days, but I do think it was these types of experiences that got me down, because I ‘knew’ I could keep going!

I was completely alone when I descended the hardest part of second step safely and just as I was feeling that I could make it down in one piece my crampon slipped on some loose snow and I took a fall off the edge of the step over the north face and landed flat on my back on a very small ledge about 5-6 feet below where I should have been and about 1 foot higher than where the rope would have broken my fall completely – the drop beyond the ledge was only about 8000ft. I wasn’t hurt but laying there on my back I looked up over my shoulder to see what I think was the body of another climber who I believe had done a similar thing on descent but broken a leg and consequently had not been able to move any further.

It was time to stop messing around at this point and I pushed hard to get down and made it back to high camp a few hours later where I stayed for just a few hours more before setting off again to get below 8000m to camp 2 at 7800m. Camp 2 was a welcome sight but after being on the go for around 20 hours, reaching the summit, getting back down, being covered in my own piss and shit, hypoxic, with a frostbitten hand, I was incredulous to find two European climbers inside my tent on their way up the mountain with no kit of their own! One was even inside my sleeping bag refusing to get out because, I quote, “my hands are cold”!

Thankfully the other guy wasn’t an arse hole, and after 20 minutes of what I’ll describe as ‘polite discussion’ (officially no swearing or threatening each other involved at all), we agreed I was right! (To quote Brian Clough), and he removed himself from my tent and I slipped into my nice ‘pre-warmed’ sleeping bag and went soundly to sleep.

Ben´s CV:

• Climbed Kilimanjaro in 2 days no acclimatisation
• Finished top 10 Brits in the Marathon des Sables
• Ultra marathon runner, max distance 100 miles non-stop and PB for 50 miles of 7hrs 57mins
• Summited and traversed Denali (Mount McKinley) – 1 of the only times in last ten years
• Rowed across the Atlantic – Set the fastest ever crossing from Canaries to Antigua
• Set fastest British crossing of Greenland
• Climbed Everest

He also works as an expedition leader and manager and professional adventurer for Adventure Hub (www.adventurehub.com) and am currently recruiting crews and team members for an Indian Ocean rowing record, the Adventure Hub expedition series and planning for our Antarctic Traverse expedition next year.

Please visit my sponsors Termo who are making it possible for me to write 2 blog reports per week. Just click the logo to find the best underwear on earth.

Bear Necessities

by

Jim McNeill

When I sat down to write this article about my thoughts on polar bears I quickly realised that I could probably write a book about what I’ve learned over the years and the many and varied stories I could recount. Not just mine but friends’ stories as well. Close shaves, wonderful experiences, big mistakes and even funny events (my talks often include my own “funniest” bear encounter but you’ll have to catch one of those to hear it.) So I thought to myself how do I make the most of the limited space I have here? I also didn’t want to just regurgitate the training notes which accompany this so I came up with a bit of further guidance in the form the 4 D’s;

Don’t…; Detect; Deter; and ultimately, Dispatch.

So the first D - Don’t… go out into polar bear country without proper personal preparation and by that I mean having the right experience, knowledge, equipment and training. You can have all the right gear and all the knowledge but if you’re not used to the critical crisis of being faced at close quarters with a bear then it may be of no use.

If you’re not experienced yourself I would urge you to go out with someone who is and learn from them. Now that sounds an easy thing to do but unfortunately these days there are so many people who try and bluff these things that it might be difficult for the novice to tell the difference between who says they know and who really knows. So be carefully selective.

Before I went out on my own for the first time I made sure that I had done my homework. First of all I read anything I could get my hands on (both good and bad I’ve come to learn, retrospectively) about where I was going, what I might come across and who are the real experts in this area. So homework involves everything from reading first exploratory accounts through to sitting for many hours with the Inuit, gleaning all sorts of invaluable advice. Then take a trip with someone who really knows what they are doing.

Don’t go out there without knowing about polar bears. This is complicated by the fact that, like humans, each one is different and behaves slightly differently as a result, so it is always dangerous to generalise unless you have enough experience to justify trends. (Hence a person who has only encountered one or two bears has limited advice to offer).

The critical bit is being able to interpret the behaviour a bear is exhibiting. And that means putting some time in to study and read about the various behaviours. Is it being it curious? Is it predatory? Is it defensive? Has it got cubs? All these signs allow you to assess the situation and react accordingly. If you get this wrong the consequences can be deadly.

Don’t camp in known polar bear territory unless you have to. This is where evidence of bears exists. A trail-way, for example. Despite being naturally solitary, bears will quite often walk along the same paths even across seemingly desolate and uninteresting terrain. They have sort of polar bear highways where you can see a trail of footprints and scats (posh name for polar bear poo!) especially alongside cracks in the sea-ice, open leads, along beaches and the floe edge; all places where they find their food. Get to know the locality and talk to people who have been there or even better live nearby; even if that is a fair distance away. Inuit hunters will travel many miles away from their township. They will also have a wealth of general information for you as well as well as polar bear trends, if there are any.

(There are of course many more Don’ts in the training notes)

So having learnt as much as you can about the bear and the area you’re entering you then need to be able to Detect their presence.

Around the camp itself you can set up all sorts of improvised methods of detection as well as those marketed and talked about in the notes. Use the items around you to best effect. Ropes and skis and poles are all useful in setting up methods of hearing a bear penetrate your camp. Put any attractants such as food and rubbish away from the accommodation tent and put it amongst articles that will clatter and make you aware of bear presence. This won’t scare the bear but should wake you.

If you have to camp in known polar bear territory it is essential to set up a bear watch, much the same as a watch on a boat, and actually something really nice to do. So often when people within a team are preoccupied by the struggle of remaining sane whilst pushing the boundaries of their own endurance that they forget to stop, take a calming breath and take-in the incredible, often surreal, surroundings. The solitude of bear watch is a great place to do this and really begin to enjoy your time.

Then we reach Deter. From the training notes you’ll see a whole range of deterrents. Some work; some sometimes work and others are still of dubious effect. Now you can read all the instructions and have the best of imaginations as to how to use these devices but really you need to practice. It is only then you realise that by mishandling the bear spray you’ve rendered it useless or by being too heavy handed releasing the safety catch you inadvertently let off some of the pepper spray into your own eyes, incapacitating you not the bear! Not taking good note of wind direction and shooting a flare or worse a bear banger (airborne firework) over the bear encourages it into camp instead of away from; all these things you’ll only learn from actually trying them. So, to coin a phrase, practice makes perfect.

Practice, practice, practice! Our Ice Warrior trainees get sick of me waking them up at all hours, day-in and day-out with either a bear encounter or the sea-ice cracking beneath them! It might be painful and they might moan but it stands them in good stead for the real thing; and that they do appreciate.

Finally there is the ultimate; Dispatch. Occasionally, very occasionally, you will encounter a bear which will be intent on attack and there is nothing else you can do but shoot it dead. This is absolutely the last resort but you should be fully prepared to do so, which means armed with the right equipment and know how to maintain, repair and use it. Depending on the likelihood of encountering bears I equip our teams with either a high velocity rifle or shot gun (for those less experienced); or sometimes both. And the number of weapons can be as many as 2 per six team members (a straight line of 3 two man tents).

Just to put this into context I have encountered too many bears to keep track over the years; definitely hundreds. And of those I have only had three that really gave me serious cause for concern. I have never had to shoot at a bear, although I am always fully prepared to.

I also wouldn’t want to put people off. It is inherently dangerous and you should wholly respect that but being in the presence of such a magnificent animal and sensing the overwhelming feeling of being in their territory and seeing that they will do exactly as they want (realising that all you can hope to do is persuade them, gently, that you are not their next meal) is a life-changing experience itself. Venture forth and take good care!

My closest call;

On a solo expedition I once had a bear wake me with his snorting just 6 inches away from my left earlobe through a frail piece of tent material – better than any alarm clock! I was miles away from any open water north of the last landfall of Canada on the Arctic Ocean with absolutely no sign of any bears being around. It was April so there was plenty of open water for him to be feeding around but none near me. If I did encounter one then it would be well fed and therefore more curious than hungry. That was my thinking.

My first reaction was to make an inanimate noise, gently tapping the side of my stove with my thermos flask. This was enough for the bear to question what he was dealing with and back off just a little. Very importantly, not enough for him to get frightened, panic and start lashing out. The last thing you want to do to a curious bear is to appear to act aggressively as you’ll undoubtedly come off worse.

Hoping that he had backed off, I carefully unzipped my tent door (now with bear spray in hand) and moved the material so I could get sight of him who was indeed now some 5 metres away and evidently wondering what he had disturbed.

My rifle was now in reach, loaded and ready, having been left outside the door so as to avoid freezing up with condensation and I worked up the tapping into louder noise and started speaking to him. (It may be that he had been frightened by the sound of humans before so it is always worth trying).

He backed off further allowing me to get out of the tent and reach into my pocket for the pen flares and bear bangers whilst gently but assertively hissing and shushing him away. Now I deployed my flares and bangers and crashing noises (pots and pans and skis are all good) until such time as the bear turned and nonchalantly walked off with an air of boredom and dismissiveness. I had respected him, he had to some extent respected me and the encounter was fantastic.

Ice Warrior´s Polar Bear Manual!

Jim McNeill has clocked up 27 years of polar travelling and 33 years of expeditioning; thousands of miles mostly on nothing but skis and dragging his world behind him. Few, have that breadth and depth of experience in extreme environments. His guiding, safety and survival expertise is employed by BBC TV and Hollywood film crews on location all over the world – hot as well as cold.

With a career spanning environmental science, military, commerce and fire & rescue Jim has selected, trained and led highly successful teams from top-level corporations, through high risk polar expeditions, to critical lifesaving situations where effective leadership and hands-on teamwork are paramount. He has a passion for leadership and getting the very best performance out of individuals and teams, at any level and has regular input to the Senior Police Training College at Bramshill, Hampshire (NPIA).

In 2001 Jim founded the highly successful “Ice Warrior Project” an organisation which gives “ordinary” people the opportunity to become polar explorers and achieve extraordinary feats of endurance and endeavour. Through Ice Warrior, his aim is to develop people, discover change and deliver it to global audiences in a way we can all understand, fostering a much better understanding of the world we live in and on.

In 2006 he was ITV News’ own “Ice Warrior”, reporting the reality of climate change directly from the Arctic Ocean to international audiences. The story will continue next year as he attempts the last, so far unattained, World First in polar expeditioning – to be the first person to reach the very centre of the Arctic Ocean – the Arctic Pole or Northern Pole of Inaccessibility. This expedition will mark the start of an eight year programme of purposeful, worthwhile, extreme expeditions, culminating in 2020.

Please visit my sponsors Termo who are making it possible for me to write 2 blog reports per week. Just click the logo to find the best underwear on earth.

“Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Saamis

and Coffee But Were Afraid to Ask”

by

Moki Kokoris

Despite its perception by outsiders as a barren and inhospitable wilderness, and depending on how the boundaries of the region are defined, the Arctic is home to approximately 4 million inhabitants – roughly one tenth of which consists of a diverse number of indigenous peoples spread across the Arctic territories of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, northern Scandinavia and Siberia. In Alaska, these peoples are known as Iñupiaq and Yup’ik Inuit, Alutiq (Aleuts) and Athapaskans; across Canada, Nunavut and Greenland, they are Inuit; in Scandinavia, the native people are the Saami; while in Siberia, there are as many as 40 different ethnic groups, the Nenets, Yakuts, Chukchis and Dolgans among those.

In general, the region is sparsely populated, with densities averaging fewer than 1 person per square mile. In spite of tremendous social, demographic, and technological changes in modern times, Arctic cultures nevertheless remain vital and resilient, with many small nomadic communities that are closely linked to native wildlife and local natural resources still continuing to follow a traditional way of life.

In this first installment in a series of articles about the indigenous peoples of the Far North, we shall concentrate on the Saamis who have inhabited the northern regions of Fenno-Scandinavia and Russia for at least 2500 years. With the exception of the groups that settled near the coasts, the Saamis generally lead a semi-nomadic or nomadic lifestyle determined by the migrations of the reindeer.

Lapland, more currently referred to as Finnmark or Sápmi, is not a country but a region that stretches across the borders of Sweden, Norway, Finland and northern Russia. From the times of the Greek explorer, Pytheas, who first mentioned it in 300 B.C., this area of land had been given many names, most of which were strange to the Saamis. These included Thule, Ultima Thule, Fennia, Scritfinnia, Finnamarchia and Lappia. Today, the Saami people themselves use the word Sápmi.

Since the earliest years of the Christian era, wondrous rumors of a barbaric people in the farthest North spread as far as Rome. In 98 A.D. Tacitus chronicled that far beyond the Germanic tribes lived the Fenni who had no possessions and were completely wild. They had neither horses nor houses, they were clad in animal hides, they did not cultivate the land but ate only what they could find growing wild, and their beds were the bare ground. Their only protection against wild beasts and weather was a primitive hut made of sticks and skins. They had no iron, and instead tipped their arrows with bone. Thus armed, they went hunting, and women hunted with the men and took their share of the kill.

Later ethnographical and archeological field investigation proved that much of what appeared fantastic to the readers of the ancient writers had some basis in truth, and facts about what had been for a primitive people in this Hyperborean land an existence governed by practical necessity gradually emerged from the world of fable and myth into the light of history.

Although their territory is intersected by four national boundaries, most Saamis speak the same basic Finno-Ugrian language with up to fifty dialects spread over the wide area. Their costumes are also similar throughout a large part of the region with distinct variations mainly in ornamentation and embroidery and hats, which by their patterns and shapes indicate the specific area they are from and even the individual’s marital status.

By and large, the Saamis are divided into three groups according to their occupation and location: the coast-Saamis, the forest-Saamis and the mountain-Saamis. The coastal group is the most numerous and has never been known for reindeer breeding, choosing instead to settle in turf-huts along the shores of the Arctic Ocean. They are trappers and fishermen, boat builders and skilled weavers. The forest-Saamis are regarded as half-nomads, basing their existence on the forest reindeer which remain in the forests throughout the year, moving to higher ground only in the summer. These Saamis migrate between permanent timber huts and their winter camps where they live in tents. The mountain-Saamis, who are regarded as being wholly nomadic follow their reindeer herds between the forests of the Gulf of Bothnia in the winter, the eastern foothills of the mountain range in spring and autumn, and the higher mountains of the northern sea coasts in the summer – all in a regular, annual rhythm. They live in relatively easily transported nomad tents through the entire year.

As can be expected, the Saami diet depends highly on which group they belong to, but consists predominantly of reindeer meat, reindeer milk, butter and cheese, fish, and various native berries. Grains and other items that cannot be cultivated are purchased at regional markets a few times a year. One such staple that few Saamis can live without is…. coffee!

Coffee has had a long-established place in the lives of Saami folk for well over 100 years in most parts of Sápmi, and many customs fluorished around its use. The Saami people probably had their first experiences with coffee from sources in Sweden, where it had been first imported after 1680. By the early 1700s coffee houses were established in Stockholm, and it is believed that coffee finally reached Sápmi’s coastal communities by 1750.

Customarily, coffee was prepared by the man of the household, perhaps because he was also responsible for the cooking of the meat. In the earliest years of its use, preparing coffee was, like the meat, a difficult task to prepare. By 1900, however, women had taken on the task and it became a companion duty to bread making.

Early on, coffee beans were purchased in unroasted form. The roasting process required constant stirring of the beans over the heat so it was a time-consuming task to keep a supply at the rate that coffee was consumed – often three or four cups per person per sitting. Migratory folk roasted a large supply during the winter before leaving for winter pasture, and in summers roasted it as needed in smaller amounts. A large frying pan was the utensil of choice for the roasting process, and apparently from the very beginning, Saamis liked their coffee roasted strong, stirring it until the beans were appropriately coal black.

Coffee was freshly ground for each pot, although herdsmen usually took along preground coffee. The earlier grinding was done with a stone on another flat or concave stone. Some grinding was done in a hollowed-out log using a stick as the pestle. Still a third method was to place the roasted beans in a skin bag and strike the bag with a stick until the grounds were suitably fine.

Early techniques for brewing coffee appear to be common across Sápmi, too, the process beginning by soaking the crudely ground beans in cold water which was then brought to a boil. After boiling, the pot was placed beside the fire to steep. As a result of the crude roasting and grinding methods, the brewed coffee was very murky and needed to be cleared before drinking. Clarifying coffee the Saami way required putting a dried pike skin into the pot. The slime from the fish skin picked up the floating grounds and carried them to the bottom of the pot as it sank.

Although sweetening coffee is gaining popularity these days, Saamis still enjoy a sprinkling of salt in their brew, and in northern Sweden, it has been known for Saamis to float reindeer feta cheese in their cups á la marshmallows in a mug of hot chocolate. (Let’s see Starbucks try that!)

It is no surprise that superstitions around the use of this most-favored beverage would evolve over time, and many of these commonly held beliefs remain to this very day – some of the more peculiar and amusing ones being:

*  When the coffee is ready, one must pour for oneself first or it will spoil the family’s best driving reindeer.

*  When cooking coffee, see to it that the coffee pot does not rock where it hangs, or surely you will rock away your belongings and end up in poverty.

*  When one throws the coffee grounds away, take care not to throw them outward but towards oneself. Coffee grounds, bones and other waste must be thrown towards oneself or there is a risk of throwing away happiness.

*  If there is foam on the coffee, the direction in which it floats will show who the recipient of money or a gift will be. If the drinker is alone and the foam floats away, it is an indication that the drinker will have many debts.

*  If one spills coffee, guests will arrive who are thirsty for coffee. If coffee is spilled twice, count on receiving intoxicated guests.

*  When the coffee pot hanging over the fire turns by itself and there is an unmarried boy or girl present, he or she will marry the first guest of the opposite gender.

*  If an unmarried person receives a refill before the first cup is entirely finished, one risks getting a nasty mother-in-law.

Who knew?

Moki Kokoris – Wilderness Research Foundation Director, is the first woman of Ukrainian descent to reach the geographic North Pole (2003), and the founder of “90-north” — a 2007-2009 International Polar Year sanctioned multidisciplinary outreach educational program offered to students and teachers studying issues and topics relating to Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. She is the Arctic Editor of the Polar Times, the journal of the American Polar Society, and has recently been invited to contribute articles to the World Ecology Report – Promoting Health and Environmental Literacy, published by World Information Transfer.

Ms. Kokoris holds the position of Main Representative for the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations NGO in consultative status with the UN Department of Public Information. In that capacity, she is invited to attend United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples Issues conferences, specifically sessions with group representatives of the Arctic Council, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and the Arctic Council Indigenous Peoples Secretariat (IPS) that includes organizations from Alaska, Canada, Nunavut, Nunavik, Greenland, Scandinavia and Siberia. Ms. Kokoris acted as liaison to facilitate the screening of an Inuit film at the International Conference on Health & Environment: Global Partners for Global Solutions, held at the United Nations. This involvement earned her an invitation to act as UN/ECOSOC representative for the World Information Transfer NGO in general status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

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“We just have to live with it” , my wife said without really understanding. My thoughts. But maybe that is because I have lived in Siberia, where the harshest of the harshest environment exists and of course, I found a story about these flying nuisances from the Siberian Expedition:

Today, we left the mountainous region for awhile. The snow-covered and most spectacular of them, forever, since we have entered a new ecological region today. The flat, sometimes rolling, but alway gigantic Siberian forest, the taiga. When we leave the settlement of Seimchan, we will head for an area which is even more remote, untouched and unknown than the one we´ve just left. The area we´ve entered now is presently dominated by swampland, leaf forests and an enormous amount of gnats (or no-see-ums as they´re called in Canada and Alaska). Mosquitoes are still with us, but they seem have slowed down, finally. But, the gnats have arrived instead, millions in numbers, attacking us fiercely as quick as we get out of the canoe, ready to set camp. We can´t even get away from them inside our cot! Those specially made bug shirts we have are useless in this case and the repellent we´ve brought, well, they seem to like the taste! The only thing we can do, as always, is to accept reality and show patience. Which is not easy. Especially whilst trying to enjoy dinner during a heat wave like the one we´ve been hit with these last two days.

When we do the fire, we always place it so that the wind goes in the direction of the cot, gnats don´t appreciate too much smoke, but then of course, you need a wind. Which we haven´t had these last three days. So, these last two days of dinners, we´ve stood very close to the fire, we two, very close to be able to use the smoke to avoid the gnats. Almost like Siamese twins, sweating tremendously. I have to add, we try to avoid putting up camp in the forest, since that is half suicide, so we choose barren and stony sandbanks. But by doing this, we don´t have a shadow to hide from the blazing sun, therefore we perspire even more.

Still, we stay there next to the fire as long as possible. In general until we feel close to fainting or feel the smell burning our clothes! Or until we have to go into the forest next to us and look for more wet firewood to be able to generate more smoke. This we do try to avoid as far as possible, since one gets eaten alive in there! For this reason, mainly we just stand there, tightly together in front of the fire, in the smoke, coughing with burning eyes, waiting for the dinner to get ready. Which takes time, one only using wet firewood. When, eventually, the dinner is ready, we finish it off far too quickly, and then we dash off down to the river to do the washing up, then quickly back and inside the tent. Sweat continues to pour down. The gnats are there also, see finally, we can´t handle there presence and get forced inside our winter sleeping bags. During a heat wave. The art, folks, is just accept things the way they are.

What kind of dinner have we had these last two days? Well, since we´re forced to pick up speed to reach the settlement of Zyryanka, 540 km:s north of here, before the winter ice settles on the river in the beginning of October, we haven´t had any time to put out our fishing nets overnight and for this reason, our diet consists of tinned Russian pork and cow. All parts of the animals are squeezed in to these tins.

Fur, eyes, intestines, well, the lot. It keeps for 8 years. It tastes fairly good and it gives us plenty of fat and energy. We eat it together with mashed potato or pasta. And bread which gets moldier by the day. We don´t throw anything away, even though we know the civilization arrives tomorrow in Seimchan. We know harder times will eventually arrive, and then it is good to have disciplined oneself to eat everything. In any case, we cut the worst parts off!

See the YouTube film below, even if it is in Swedish, you will get a feel for these flying “friends”….