Eric Larsen He was recently packing for a trip he thought he’d never take: a trip to the North Pole.
As one of the world’s leading polar explorers, the 51-year-old has been to the North Pole six times. But he thought he would never be able to travel again after he was told he had stage 4 colon cancer which was terminal.
However, the prediction was wrong. His cancer was curable, though the treatment was exhausting. He underwent six rounds of chemotherapy, plus radiotherapy, and had 14 inches of his colon removed.
He said he woke up in the night, crying in pain, after an operation to remove the precancerous area of his colon. But he had a secret weapon: years of adventure, which taught him how to survive in the harshest conditions.
“I fell through the ice,” he said. “I was chased by polar bears. You know, I’ve been in a lot of precarious situations over the years.” And you get a little gallows humor with that, you know, in the sense of, ‘Oh, that was close. Let’s just continue.”
In 2006, Larsen and his partner became the first people to travel to the North Pole in the summer. Four years later, he became the first person to travel to the North Pole, the South Pole, and Mount Everest in a year.
In 2014, he and his colleagues completed an unsupported overland expedition to the North Pole. It is believed that no one else will be able to make this journey because the Arctic Ocean is melting rapidly, making it very dangerous to cross.
Despite the extreme nature of his adventures, he describes it as one of the most boring sports in history.
“You are traveling through the great, vast, white nothingness,” he said. “Often, I’ve spent days and weeks in conditions where seeing is like being inside a ping-pong ball. You can’t even see the horizon.”
Cancer is what finally forced him to stop. On top of everything else, one chemotherapy drug reduced what he calls his superpower: his ability to withstand a cold. He said he would have to put on a hat and gloves to get the ice out of the freezer.
However, he never lost his passion for exploration.
“What I do is just part of who I am,” he said. “I don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘Oh, why am I going to do this?'” I just do it, and that’s just how it’s built. I gave up asking myself why a long time ago.”
Now he returns to the North Pole as a guide to help clients make their dreams come true. He said breaking records didn’t matter anymore. What matters is the upliftment of others.
But he said he grapples with the idea of returning to exploration rather than returning home.
“I don’t like being away from my family so much anymore,” he said. “But to be able to go back to a place that was such an important part of my life, to see it again when I thought I would never do anything again, for me it feels like the right thing to do.”
Even after all this, he said he’s still searching for himself — and for answers.
“I used to go on these trips, and I thought if I could, if I could do the hardest thing for as long as I could, I’d have a… epiphany, where it was so obvious I’d know everything. And what I realized was that would never happen.”
He added, “I am still looking for the answers that I know I will never find. But the search has value, the effort has value in my mind, and the return has value.”
David Bignaud
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