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So in the oasis of 
intelligentsia that is TED,

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I stand here before you this evening

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as an expert in dragging heavy stuff
around cold places.

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I've been leading polar expeditions for 
most of my adult life,

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and last month, my teammate 
Tarka L'Herpiniere and I

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finished the most ambitious expedition
I've ever attempted.

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In fact, it feels like I've been
transported straight here

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from four months in the middle of nowhere,

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mostly grunting and swearing, 
straight to the TED stage.

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So you can imagine that's a transition
that hasn't been entirely seamless.

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One of the interesting side effects

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seems to be that my short-term
memory is entirely shot.

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So I've had to write some notes

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to avoid too much grunting and swearing
in the next 17 minutes.

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This is the first talk I've given
about this expedition,

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and while we weren't sequencing genomes
or building space telescopes,

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this is a story about giving everything we
had to achieve something

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that hadn't been done before.

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So I hope in that you might 
find some food for thought.

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It was a journey, an 
expeditionin Antarctica

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the coldest, windiest, driest and
highest altitude continent on Earth.

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It's a fascinating place.
It's a huge place.

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It's twice the size of Australia,

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a continent that is the same size
as China and India put together.

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As an aside, I have experienced 


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an interesting phenomenon
in the last few days,

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something that I expect Chris Hadfield
may get at TED in a few years' time,

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conversations that go something like this:

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"Oh, Antarctica. Awesome.

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My husband and I did Antarctica
with Lindblad for our anniversary."

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Or, "Oh cool, did you go there
for the marathon?"

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(Laughter)

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Our journey was, in fact,
69 marathons back to back

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in 105 days, an 1,800 mile round trip
on foot from the coast of Antarctica

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to the South Pole and back again.

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In the process, we broke the record


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for the longest human-powered polar
journey in history by more than 400 miles.

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(Applause)

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For those of you from the Bay area,

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it was the same as walking from 
here to San Francisco,

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then turning around
and walking back again.

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So as camping trips go, it was a long one,

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and one I've seen summarized

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most succinctly here on the hallowed
pages of Business Insider Malaysia.

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[Two Explorers Just Completed
A Polar Expedition That Killed

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Everyone The Last Time It was Attempted]

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Chris Hadfield talked so eloquently

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about fear and about the odds of success

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and indeed the odds of survival.

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Of the nine people in history that had
attempted this journey before us,

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none had made it to the pole and back,

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and five had died in the process.

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This is Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

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He led the last team
to attempt this expedition.

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Scott and his rival Sir Ernest Shackleton,

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over the space of a decade,

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both led expeditions battling to become
the first to reach the South Pole

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to chart and map
the interior of Antarctica,

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a place we knew less about, at the time,

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than the surface of the moon,

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because we could see
the moon through telescopes.

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Antarctica was, for the most part,
a century ago, uncharted.

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Some of you may know the story.

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Scott's last expedition, the 
Terra Nova Expedition in 1910,

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started as a giant
siege-style approach.

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He had a big team using ponies,

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using dogs, using petrol-driven tractors,

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dropping pre-positioned
depots of food and fuel

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through which Scott's final team of five
would travel to the pole,

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where they would turn around and ski 
back to the coast again on foot.

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Scott and his final team of five

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arrived at the South Pole 
in January 1912

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to find they had been beaten to it

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by a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen,

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who rode on dogsled.

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Scott's team ended up on foot,

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and for more than a century

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this journey has remained unfinished.

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Scott's team of five died on
the return journey.

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And for the last decade,

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I've been asking myself why that is.

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How come this has remained 
the high water mark?

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Scott's team covered 1,600 miles on foot.

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No one's come close to that ever since.

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So this is the high water mark of 
human endurance,


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human endeavor, 
human athletic achievement

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in arguably the harshest climate on Earth.

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It was as if the marathon record

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has remained unbroken since 1912.

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And of course some strange and 
predictable combination of curiosity,

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stubbornness, and probably hubris,

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led me to thinking I might be the man
to try to finish the job.

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Unlike Scott's expedition,
there were just two of us,

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and we set off from the coast
of Antarctica in October last year,

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dragging everything ourselves,

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a process Scott called "man-hauling."

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When I say it was like walking from
here to San Francisco and back,

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I actually mean it was like dragging
something that weights a shade more

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than the heaviest ever NFL player.

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Our sledges weighed 200 kilos,

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or 440 pounds each at the start,

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the same weights that the weakest

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of Scott's ponies pulled.

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Early on, we averaged 0.5 miles per hour.

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Perhaps the reason no one had 
attempted this journey until now,

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for more than a century,

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was that no one had been quite
stupid enough to try.

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And while I can't claim we were exploring

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in the genuine Edwardian
sense of the word

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— we weren't naming any mountains
or mapping any uncharted valleys —

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I think we were stepping into uncharted
territory in a human sense.

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Certainly, if in the future we learn
there is an area of the human brain

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that lights up when one curses oneself,

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I wouldn't be at all surprised.

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You've heard that the average American


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spends 90 percent of their time indoors.

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We didn't go indoors
for nearly four months.

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We didn't see a sunset either.

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It was 24-hour daylight.

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Living conditions were quite spartan.

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I changed my underwear 
three times in 105 days

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and Tarka and I shared 
30 square feet on the canvas.

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Though we did have some technology


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that Scott could never have imagined.

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And we blogged live every evening
from the tent via laptop

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and a custom-made satellite transmitter,

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all of which were solar-powered:

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we had a flexible photovoltaic
panel over the tent.

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And the writing was important to me.

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As a kid, I was inspired by the 
literature of adventure and exploration,

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and I think we've all seen
here this week

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the importance and 
the power of storytelling.

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So we had some 21st-century gear,

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but the reality is that the 
challenges that Scott faced

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were the same that way faced:

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those of the weather and of 
what Scott called glide,

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the amount of friction between
the sledges and the snow.

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The lowest wind chill we experienced
was in the minus 70s,

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and we had zero visibility,
what's called white-out,

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for much of our journey.

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We traveled up and down one of the largest

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and most dangerous glaciers
in the world, the Beardmore glacier.

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It's 110 miles long: most of its surface
is what's called blue ice.

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You can see it's a beautiful,
steel-hard blue surface

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covered with thousands and thousands

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of crevasses, these deep cracks

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in the glacial ice, up to 200 feet deep.

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Planes can't land here,

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so we were at the most risk,

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technically when we had the slimmest
chance of being rescued.

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We got to the South Pole
after 61 days on foot,

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with one day off for bad weather,

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and I'm sad to say, it was
something of an anticlimax.

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There's a permanent American base,

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the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
at the South Pole.

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They have an airstrip,
they have a canteen,

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they have hot showers,

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they have a post office, a tourist shop,


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a basketball court that doubles
as a movie theater.

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So it's a bit different these days,

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and there are also acres of junk.

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I think it's a marvelous thing


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that humans can exist
365 days of the year

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with hamburgers and hot showers
and movie theaters,

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but it does seem to produce
a lot of empty cardboard boxes.

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You can see on the left of 
this photograph,

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several square acres of junk

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waiting to be flown out
from the South Pole.

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But there is also a pole at the South Pole,

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and we got there on foot, unassisted,

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unsupported, by the hardest route,

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900 miles in record time,

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dragging more weight
than anyone in history.

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And if we'd stopped there 
and flown home,

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which would have been
the eminently sensible thing to do,

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then my talk would end here

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and it would end something like this.

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If you have the right team around you,

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the right tools, the right technology,

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and if you have enough self-belief

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and enough determination,

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than anything is possible.

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But then we turned around,

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and this is where things get interesting.

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High on the Antarctic plateau,

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over 10,000 feet, it's very windy,
very cold, very dry, we were exhausted.

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We'd covered 35 marathons,

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we were only halfway,

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and we had a safety net, of course,

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of ski planes and satellite phones

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and live, 24-hour tracking beacons
that didn't exist for Scott,

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but in hindsight,

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rather than making our lives easier,

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the safety net actually allowed us

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to cut things very fine indeed,

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to sail very close to our absolute limits

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as human beings,

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and it is an exquisite form of torture

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to exhaust yourself to the point
of starvation day after day

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while dragging a sledge

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full of food.

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For years, I'd been writing glib lines
in sponsorship proposals

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about pushing the limits
of human endurance,

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but in reality, that was
a very frightening place

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to be indeed.

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We had, before we'd got to the Pole,

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two weeks of almost permanent
headwind, which slowed us down.

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As a result, we'd had several days
of eating half rations.

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We had a finite amount of food
in the sledges to make this journey,

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so we were trying to string that out

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by reducing our intake to half

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the calories we should be eating.

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As a result, we both became
increasingly hypoglycemic:

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we had low blood
sugar levels day after day

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and increasingly susceptible

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to the extreme cold.

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Tarka took this photo of me one evening

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after I'd nearly passed out
with hypothermia.

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We both had repeated bouts of hypothermia,

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something I hadn't experienced before,

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and it was very humbling indeed.

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As much as you might
like to think, as I do,

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that you're the kind
of person who doesn't quit,

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that you'll go down swinging,

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hypothermia doesn't leave you much choice.

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You become utterly incapacitated.

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It's like being a drunk toddler.

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You become pathetic.

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I remember just wanting
to lie down and quit.

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It was a peculiar, peculiar feeling,

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and a real surprise to me

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to be debilitated to that degree.

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And then we ran out of food completely,

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46 miles short of the first of the depots

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that we'd laid on our outward journey.

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We'd laid 10 depots of food,

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literally burying food and fuel,
for our return journey

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— the food was for a cooker so you
could melt snow to get water —

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and I was forced to make the decision

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to call for a resupply flight,

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a ski plane carrying eight days of food

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to tide us over that gap.

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They took 12 hours to reach us

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from the other side of Antarctica.

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Calling for that plane

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was one of the toughest
decisions of my life,

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and I sound like a bit of a fraud
standing here now with a sort of belly.

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00:11:58,174 --> 00:12:01,704
I've put on 30 pounds
in the last three weeks.

249
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Being that hungry has left
an interesting mental scar,

250
00:12:04,629 --> 00:12:06,696
which is that I've been hoovering up

251
00:12:06,696 --> 00:12:11,154
every hotel buffet that I can find.

252
00:12:11,154 --> 00:12:13,940
But we were genuinely quite hungry,

253
00:12:13,940 --> 00:12:16,958
and in quite a bad way.

254
00:12:16,958 --> 00:12:18,909
I don't regret calling
for that plane for a second,

255
00:12:18,909 --> 00:12:21,161
because I'm still standing here

256
00:12:21,161 --> 00:12:23,251
alive with all digits
intact telling this story,

257
00:12:23,251 --> 00:12:27,709
but getting external assistance like that
was never part of the plan,

258
00:12:27,709 --> 00:12:30,913
and it's something my ego
is still struggling with.

259
00:12:30,913 --> 00:12:33,955
This was the biggest dream I've ever had,

260
00:12:33,955 --> 00:12:37,577
and it was so nearly perfect.

261
00:12:37,577 --> 00:12:39,458
On the way back down to the coast,

262
00:12:39,458 --> 00:12:41,269
our crampons — they're the spikes

263
00:12:41,269 --> 00:12:44,125
on our boots that we have for traveling
over this blue ice on the glacier —

264
00:12:44,125 --> 00:12:45,750
broke on the top of the Beardmore.

265
00:12:45,750 --> 00:12:47,445
We still had 100 miles to go downhill

266
00:12:47,445 --> 00:12:49,419
on very slippery rock-hard blue ice.

267
00:12:49,419 --> 00:12:51,810
They needed repairing almost every hour.

268
00:12:51,810 --> 00:12:53,761
To give you an idea of scale,

269
00:12:53,761 --> 00:12:55,665
this is looking down towards the mouth

270
00:12:55,665 --> 00:12:57,058
of the Beardmore Glacier.

271
00:12:57,058 --> 00:12:58,753
You could fit the entirety of Manhattan

272
00:12:58,753 --> 00:13:00,378
in the gap on the horizon.

273
00:13:00,378 --> 00:13:03,977
That's 20 miles between
Mt. Hope and Mt. Kiffin.

274
00:13:03,977 --> 00:13:07,065
I've never felt as small

275
00:13:07,065 --> 00:13:10,060
as I did in Antarctica.

276
00:13:10,060 --> 00:13:11,825
When we got down
to the mouth of the glacier,

277
00:13:11,825 --> 00:13:14,240
we found fresh snow had obscured

278
00:13:14,240 --> 00:13:16,631
the dozens of deep crevasses.

279
00:13:16,631 --> 00:13:18,303
One of Shackleton's men described

280
00:13:18,303 --> 00:13:19,952
crossing this sort of terrain as like

281
00:13:19,952 --> 00:13:22,483
walking over the glass roof

282
00:13:22,483 --> 00:13:24,665
of a railway station.

283
00:13:24,665 --> 00:13:27,289
We fell through more times
than I can remember,

284
00:13:27,289 --> 00:13:30,981
usually just putting a ski
or a boot through the snow.

285
00:13:30,981 --> 00:13:32,281
Occasionally we went in

286
00:13:32,281 --> 00:13:33,604
all the way up to our armpits,

287
00:13:33,604 --> 00:13:37,157
but thankfully never deeper than that.

288
00:13:37,157 --> 00:13:39,757
And less than five weeks ago,

289
00:13:39,757 --> 00:13:41,313
after 105 days, we crossed

290
00:13:41,313 --> 00:13:44,912
this oddly inauspicious finish line,

291
00:13:44,912 --> 00:13:47,814
the coast of Ross Island on the
New Zealand coast of Antarctica.

292
00:13:47,814 --> 00:13:49,834
You can see the ice in the foreground

293
00:13:49,834 --> 00:13:52,876
and the sort of rubbly rock behind that.

294
00:13:52,876 --> 00:13:54,757
Behind us lay an unbroken ski trail

295
00:13:54,757 --> 00:13:56,568
of nearly 1,800 miles.

296
00:13:56,568 --> 00:13:59,076
We made the longest ever
polar journey on foot,

297
00:13:59,076 --> 00:14:01,026
something I've been dreaming of doing

298
00:14:01,026 --> 00:14:03,255
for a decade.

299
00:14:03,255 --> 00:14:05,461
And looking back,

300
00:14:05,461 --> 00:14:07,876
I still stand by all the things

301
00:14:07,876 --> 00:14:09,338
I've been saying for years

302
00:14:09,338 --> 00:14:11,637
about the importance of goals

303
00:14:11,637 --> 00:14:15,329
and determination and self-belief,

304
00:14:15,329 --> 00:14:17,117
but I'll also believe that I haven't given

305
00:14:17,117 --> 00:14:19,810
much thought to what happens

306
00:14:19,810 --> 00:14:23,432
when you reach the all-consuming goal

307
00:14:23,432 --> 00:14:27,240
that you've dedicated most
of your adult life too,

308
00:14:27,240 --> 00:14:29,051
and the reality is that I'm still figuring

309
00:14:29,051 --> 00:14:30,630
that bit out.

310
00:14:30,630 --> 00:14:34,461
As I said, there are very few
superficial signs that I've been away.

311
00:14:34,461 --> 00:14:35,762
I've put on 30 pounds.

312
00:14:35,762 --> 00:14:37,155
I've got some very faint

313
00:14:37,155 --> 00:14:39,500
— they're probably covered
in makeup now — frostbite scars.

314
00:14:39,500 --> 00:14:40,893
I've got one on my nose,
one on each cheek,

315
00:14:40,893 --> 00:14:42,333
from where the goggles are,

316
00:14:42,333 --> 00:14:44,608
but inside I am a very

317
00:14:44,608 --> 00:14:47,116
different person indeed.

318
00:14:47,116 --> 00:14:49,925
If I'm honest,

319
00:14:49,925 --> 00:14:52,387
Antarctica challenged me

320
00:14:52,387 --> 00:14:55,010
and humbled me so deeply

321
00:14:55,010 --> 00:14:56,473
that I'm not sure I'll ever be able

322
00:14:56,473 --> 00:14:59,027
to put it into words.

323
00:14:59,027 --> 00:15:02,603
I'm still struggling to piece
together my thoughts.

324
00:15:02,603 --> 00:15:06,248
That I'm standing here telling this story

325
00:15:06,248 --> 00:15:08,640
is proof that we all

326
00:15:08,640 --> 00:15:11,356
can accomplish great things,

327
00:15:11,356 --> 00:15:13,260
through ambition, through passion,

328
00:15:13,260 --> 00:15:15,582
through sheer stubbornness,

329
00:15:15,582 --> 00:15:17,347
by refusing to quit,

330
00:15:17,347 --> 00:15:18,833
that if you dream something hard enough,

331
00:15:18,833 --> 00:15:19,971
as Sting said,

332
00:15:19,971 --> 00:15:23,384
it does indeed come to pass.

333
00:15:23,384 --> 00:15:25,520
But I'm also standing here saying,

334
00:15:25,520 --> 00:15:28,051
you know what, that cliche

335
00:15:28,051 --> 00:15:30,628
about the journey being more important

336
00:15:30,651 --> 00:15:32,671
than the destination?

337
00:15:32,671 --> 00:15:35,992
There's something in that.

338
00:15:35,992 --> 00:15:38,221
The closer I got to my finish line,

339
00:15:38,221 --> 00:15:42,377
that rubbly, rocky coast of Ross Island,

340
00:15:42,377 --> 00:15:43,631
the more I started to realize

341
00:15:43,631 --> 00:15:45,395
that the biggest lesson

342
00:15:45,395 --> 00:15:47,741
that this very long, very hard walk

343
00:15:47,741 --> 00:15:49,761
might be teaching me

344
00:15:49,761 --> 00:15:51,293
is that happiness

345
00:15:51,293 --> 00:15:53,754
is not a finish line,

346
00:15:53,754 --> 00:15:55,194
that for us humans,

347
00:15:55,194 --> 00:15:57,400
the perfection that so many of us

348
00:15:57,400 --> 00:15:58,793
seem to dream of

349
00:15:58,793 --> 00:16:02,740
might not ever be truly attainable,

350
00:16:02,740 --> 00:16:05,666
and that if we can't feel content

351
00:16:05,666 --> 00:16:11,029
here, today, now, on our journeys

352
00:16:11,029 --> 00:16:13,676
amidst the mess and the striving

353
00:16:13,676 --> 00:16:15,534
that we all inhabit, the open loops,

354
00:16:15,534 --> 00:16:18,204
the half-finished to-do lists,

355
00:16:18,204 --> 00:16:21,106
the could-do-better-next-times,

356
00:16:21,106 --> 00:16:24,055
then we might never feel it.

357
00:16:24,055 --> 00:16:27,631
A lot of people have asked me, what next?

358
00:16:27,631 --> 00:16:31,299
Right now, I am very happy just recovering

359
00:16:31,299 --> 00:16:34,597
and in front of hotel buffets,

360
00:16:34,597 --> 00:16:39,612
but as Bob Hope put it,

361
00:16:39,612 --> 00:16:41,678
I feel very humble,

362
00:16:41,678 --> 00:16:45,347
but I think I have the strength
of character to fight it.

363
00:16:45,347 --> 00:16:47,297
Thank you.

364
00:16:47,297 --> 00:16:50,975
(Applause)