Time to Eat the Dogs
A Podcast About Science, History, and ExplorationArchive for Expeditions
The North Pole Controversy
Solving the mystery of the North Pole is like trying to solve a murder. Lacking witnesses, we rely heavily upon circumstantial evidence. We cannot trust Peary or Cook’s accounts since they had strong motives for bending the truth. We cannot trust the accounts of the men who accompanied them because none of them were capable of calculating their geographical position using sextants or other equipment.
Peary’s Party, supposedly at the North Pole
We cannot rely upon the evidence that Cook or Peary brought back (photos of the North Pole and of the sun above the horizon) since these photos could be made from other locations besides the North Pole. Nor can we rely upon them identifying unique features of the North Pole itself, since the pack ice covering the North Pole is constantly drifting, carrying any flags, cairns, or messages with it. The best evidence of reaching the North Pole would have come from ocean soundings (lines used to measure the depth of the
sea floor). But Cook did not carry the equipment to make these soundings (claiming it was too heavy). Peary’s measurements ended at 1500 ft when he claimed that his line ran out, making them useless.
Peary party, making soundings on 7 April and running out of line at 1500 fathoms
Without clear proof, we are left with indirect evidence which leaves doubts about the claims of both explorers. The journals of both men show significant gaps and discrepancies. Cook did not appear to have much knowledge of the sextant which would have been essential in determining the location of the North Pole. His “proof of discovery” given to the University of Copenhagen did not include sextant calculations. When he included sextant information in his book, they were in error. Cook claimed to travel fifteen miles a day over the pack ice, a speed that exceeded previous expeditions over the polar sea (Fridjof Nansen, for example, averaged four miles a day). Peary, who was fifty-two years old and had lost most of his toes to frostbite, claimed to travel twenty-six miles a day for the last five days of his journey.
We will probably never know for sure if either man ever made it to the North Pole. One thing is certain though: their greatest legacy is not geographical discovery, but the controversy that they left behind. That we still talk about this issue, argue over its merits, and still try to figure it out, tells us more about ourselves, than the small spot they claimed to discover at the top of the world.
Storm Over Everest, Part II
Beck Weathers
On mountains and character: near the end of Storm Over Everest, Beck Weathers observes:
“Everybody always says that the definition of character is what you do when nobody is looking. And when we were up there, we didn’t think anybody was looking. And so everybody did pretty much what their inner person, the real them, the exposed them, would do.”
In an interview about the making of Storm Over Everest, David Breashears uses Weathers comment to consider the power of Everest to reveal a climber’s “core” person beneath the social artifices we show to the world (hat tip to Geoff Sheehy):
The idea is that all the artifice that we carry with us in life, the persona that we project—all that’s stripped away at altitude. Thin air, hypoxia—people are tremendously sleep-deprived on Everest, they’re incredibly exhausted, and they’re hungry and dehydrated. They are in a very altered state. And then at a moment of great vulnerability a storm hits. At that moment you become the person you are. You are no longer capable of mustering all this artifice. The way I characterize it, you either offer help or you cry for help.
This idea that the journey brings you closer to the person that you really are has long roots. We can trace it back to the Romantic movement in the late 18th century, when travelers set off into the wilds of nature in hopes of encountering “the sublime.” They sought to experience the beauty (and the terror) of nature, and in the process, learn more about themselves. No surprise that some of the most itinerant Romantic landscape painters of the 19th century headed to the mountains and/or the polar regions.
Frederic Church, Cotopaxi, 1862
We could also trace this idea back even further, to Petrarch’s ascent of Mount Ventoux in 1336. Petrach, an Italian poet who would come to embody the “spirit of the Renaissance,” used his hike up Ventoux (no oxygen required) to bushwack through the thickets of his own conscience. At the summit, he stated “I had seen enough of the mountain; I turned my inward eye upon myself.”
I have written, in The Escape From Civilization, how this idea surfaces in the works of Robert Dunn, who tried to scale Denali in the early 1900s with Frederick Cook. For Dunn, explorers were “men with the masks of civilization torn off.”
No doubt that mountains and other extreme environments create conditions that take us out of ourselves. Who can argue with Breashears that the hunger, cold, hypoxia, and sleep deprivation of Everest can make people act in ways at odds with their social personas? But what do we make of this? Breashears’ view – and that of Dunn and many others – suggests that the human psyche is a giant onion: tough, dirtied, and weathered on the outside, but pure at the core. Putting oneself in extreme enough environments, so this thinking goes, is a way to peel the onion and reach the true person underneath.
I don’t believe this. When you look at a person, when you look at yourself, where do you draw the line between artifice and real? My feeling is that what exists as “self” and “society” are elements we all carry inside of us which cannot be disentangled. We commonly think of “nature” and “nurture” as separate elements that influence the development of human beings – but think about it: can either of these elements exist independently of the other?
In any event, my point is this. Mountains are places to challenge oneself, to reflect, and find insight – certainly this has been their role in my life. But to say that they (or any environment) can burn away what is false from what is real doesn’t ring true to me.
Storm Over Everest
Tonight PBS’s Frontline will air Storm Over Everest David Breashears’ documentary about the tragic 1996 Everest expedition that left five climbers dead. It’s been a while since I read Into Thin Air by Jon Krackauer, but I seem to remember him portraying Breashears as a solid guy, willing to put his film on hold in order to help out the struggling climbers above him on the mountain. That being said, I had problems with Breshears’ IMAX film about the expedition which came out a few years later. It gave stunning footage of the climb, but one thing I didn’t like: the film tells the story of Breashears Ed Viesturs and two other climbers, but gives little mention of the many sherpa guides who were hauling supplies, IMAX cameras, etc to 28,000+ feet (their names flash by quickly in the credits at the end of the flim). Watching Breshears Viesturs climb near the summit, one gets the sense that he is on the mountain by himself (filmed by…God?). This reminded me a lot of the Arctic explorers I’ve written about in my book: though they depended upon the efforts of hundreds of guides, hunters, and sledge drivers, the photographs still usually wipe these away. We are left with an explorer, a mound, and a flag. Still, tonight’s documentary got a good write-up yesterday in the New York Times. For different perspectives on the subject, check out this post at the Adventurist.
Digital Archive: The U.S. Exploring Expedition
Which is the most significant expedition in U.S. history? I would put my money on the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838-42). Today Lewis and Clark get most of the attention for their impressive trek to the Pacific in 1804. Yet they were not very well known in the 19th century and did not leave much of an impact on scientists or the general public. But the U.S. Ex Ex, as it came to be known, helped shape American exploration for the rest of the century. As America’s first international discovery expedition, it was a way to show the world that the United States had come of age as a civilized nation. Where the government had frowned upon all but the most practical goals in exploring the west, it proved more indulgent of scholarly objectives in exploring the world. It was not that the government placed greater significance on the geography outside its borders. Rather, it was that the wider world offered a more prestigious stage for explorers than the American West, a place where their actions would be more keenly noticed. Under such scrutiny, U.S. expeditions put on their best face, sailing with corps of “scientifics” to advance geographical knowledge, and in the process, to persuade other nations that the United States was more than a republic of untutored farmers. In short, pursuit of knowledge gave U.S. expeditions symbolic heft. It ushered the United States into an enlightenment tradition of imperial voyaging and – its organizers hoped – into the ranks of civilized nations. Back home, the collections of the US Ex Ex became the basis of the Smithsonian Institution when it opened under the direction of Joseph Henry. Read the rest of this entry »
