1
00:00:00,833 --> 00:00:03,411
So in the oasis

2
00:00:03,411 --> 00:00:06,917
of intelligentsia that is TED,

3
00:00:06,917 --> 00:00:09,285
I stand here before you this evening

4
00:00:09,285 --> 00:00:12,629
as an expert in dragging heavy stuff

5
00:00:12,629 --> 00:00:15,159
around cold places.

6
00:00:15,159 --> 00:00:16,715
I've been leading polar expeditions

7
00:00:16,715 --> 00:00:18,317
for most of my adult life, and last month,

8
00:00:18,317 --> 00:00:21,847
my teammate Tarka L’Herpiniere and I

9
00:00:21,847 --> 00:00:24,795
finished the most ambitious expedition

10
00:00:24,795 --> 00:00:27,141
I've ever attempted.

11
00:00:27,141 --> 00:00:28,789
In fact, it feels like I've been

12
00:00:28,789 --> 00:00:30,484
transported straight here

13
00:00:30,484 --> 00:00:32,806
from four months in the middle of nowhere,

14
00:00:32,806 --> 00:00:35,494
mostly grunting and swearing,

15
00:00:35,494 --> 00:00:37,935
straight to the TED stage,
so you can imagine

16
00:00:37,935 --> 00:00:40,375
that's a transition that hasn't been

17
00:00:40,375 --> 00:00:41,905
entirely seamless.

18
00:00:41,905 --> 00:00:43,815
One of the interesting side effects

19
00:00:43,815 --> 00:00:46,463
seems to be that my short-term
memory is entirely shot,

20
00:00:46,463 --> 00:00:48,665
so I've had to write some notes

21
00:00:48,665 --> 00:00:50,383
to avoid too much grunting

22
00:00:50,383 --> 00:00:53,353
and swearing in the next 17 minutes.

23
00:00:53,353 --> 00:00:56,211
This is the first talk I've given
about this expedition,

24
00:00:56,211 --> 00:00:59,323
and while we weren't sequencing genomes

25
00:00:59,323 --> 00:01:01,690
or building space telescopes,

26
00:01:01,690 --> 00:01:03,734
this is a story about giving

27
00:01:03,734 --> 00:01:06,447
everything we had to achieve something

28
00:01:06,447 --> 00:01:08,310
that hadn't been done before,

29
00:01:08,310 --> 00:01:10,352
so I hope in that you might find some food

30
00:01:10,352 --> 00:01:12,535
for thought.

31
00:01:12,535 --> 00:01:14,276
It was a journey,

32
00:01:14,276 --> 00:01:16,041
an expedition in Antarctica,

33
00:01:16,041 --> 00:01:18,823
the coldest, windiest, driest,

34
00:01:18,823 --> 00:01:20,757
and highest altitude continent on Earth.

35
00:01:20,757 --> 00:01:22,904
It's a fascinating place.
It's a huge place.

36
00:01:22,904 --> 00:01:25,119
It's twice the size of Australia,

37
00:01:25,119 --> 00:01:26,791
a continent that is the same size

38
00:01:26,791 --> 00:01:30,220
as China and India put together.

39
00:01:30,220 --> 00:01:31,978
As an aside, I have experienced

40
00:01:31,978 --> 00:01:34,312
an interesting phenomenon
in the last few days,

41
00:01:34,312 --> 00:01:36,357
something that I expect Chris Hadfield

42
00:01:36,357 --> 00:01:38,089
may get at TED in a few years' time,

43
00:01:38,089 --> 00:01:40,144
conversations that go something like this:

44
00:01:40,144 --> 00:01:41,767
"Oh, Antarctica. Awesome.

45
00:01:41,767 --> 00:01:44,484
My husband and I did Antarctica

46
00:01:44,484 --> 00:01:47,595
with Lindblad for our anniversary."

47
00:01:47,595 --> 00:01:49,081
Or, "Oh cool, did you go there

48
00:01:49,081 --> 00:01:50,939
for the marathon?"

49
00:01:50,939 --> 00:01:53,060
(Laughter)

50
00:01:54,445 --> 00:01:56,442
Our journey was, in fact,

51
00:01:56,442 --> 00:01:58,485
69 marathons back to back

52
00:01:58,485 --> 00:02:02,386
in 105 days, an 1,800 mile round trip

53
00:02:02,386 --> 00:02:04,476
on foot from the coast of Antarctica

54
00:02:04,476 --> 00:02:07,587
to the South Pole and back again.

55
00:02:07,587 --> 00:02:09,491
In the process, we broke the record

56
00:02:09,491 --> 00:02:11,464
for the longest human-powered

57
00:02:11,464 --> 00:02:15,087
polar journey in history
by more than 400 miles.

58
00:02:15,087 --> 00:02:19,498
(Applause)

59
00:02:19,498 --> 00:02:21,913
For those of you from the Bay area,

60
00:02:21,913 --> 00:02:23,980
it was the same as walking from here

61
00:02:23,980 --> 00:02:26,023
to San Francisco,

62
00:02:26,023 --> 00:02:29,018
then turning around
and walking back again.

63
00:02:29,018 --> 00:02:30,527
So as camping trips go,

64
00:02:30,527 --> 00:02:33,778
it was a long one,

65
00:02:33,778 --> 00:02:35,914
and one I've seen summarized

66
00:02:35,914 --> 00:02:38,190
most succinctly here
on the hallowed pages

67
00:02:38,190 --> 00:02:40,686
of Business Insider Malaysia.

68
00:02:40,686 --> 00:02:43,556
[Two Explorers Just Completed
A Polar Expedition That Killed

69
00:02:43,556 --> 00:02:46,247
Everyone The Last Time It was Attempted]

70
00:02:46,247 --> 00:02:48,917
Chris Hadfield talked so eloquently

71
00:02:48,917 --> 00:02:52,448
about fear and about the odds of success

72
00:02:52,448 --> 00:02:54,219
and indeed the odds of survival.

73
00:02:54,219 --> 00:02:56,254
Of the nine people in history that had

74
00:02:56,254 --> 00:02:58,019
attempted this journey before us,

75
00:02:58,019 --> 00:03:00,712
none had made it to the pole and back,

76
00:03:00,712 --> 00:03:04,590
and five had died in the process.

77
00:03:04,590 --> 00:03:07,237
This is Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

78
00:03:07,237 --> 00:03:10,000
He led the last team
to attempt this expedition.

79
00:03:10,000 --> 00:03:12,438
Scott and his rival Sir Ernest Shackleton

80
00:03:12,438 --> 00:03:15,154
over the space of a decade

81
00:03:15,154 --> 00:03:17,174
both led expeditions battling to become

82
00:03:17,174 --> 00:03:19,427
the first to reach the South Pole,

83
00:03:19,427 --> 00:03:22,446
to chart and map
the interior of Antarctica,

84
00:03:22,446 --> 00:03:24,581
a place we knew less about at the time

85
00:03:24,581 --> 00:03:26,485
than the surface of the moon,

86
00:03:26,485 --> 00:03:28,830
because we could see
the moon through telescopes.

87
00:03:28,830 --> 00:03:30,734
Antarctica was, for the most part,

88
00:03:30,734 --> 00:03:32,963
a century ago, uncharted.

89
00:03:32,963 --> 00:03:34,565
Some of you may know the story.

90
00:03:34,565 --> 00:03:37,518
Scott's last expedition,
the Terra Nova Expedition,

91
00:03:37,518 --> 00:03:40,022
in 1910, started as a giant
siege-style approach.

92
00:03:40,022 --> 00:03:42,251
He had a big team using ponies,

93
00:03:42,251 --> 00:03:44,778
using dogs, using petrol-driven tractors,

94
00:03:44,778 --> 00:03:47,725
dropping pre-positioned
depots of food and fuel

95
00:03:47,725 --> 00:03:50,216
through which Scott's final team of five

96
00:03:50,216 --> 00:03:52,193
would travel to the five
would travel to the pole,

97
00:03:52,193 --> 00:03:53,837
where they would turn around and ski back

98
00:03:53,837 --> 00:03:55,416
to the coast again on foot.

99
00:03:55,416 --> 00:03:57,599
Scott and his final team of five

100
00:03:57,599 --> 00:03:59,804
arrived at the South Pole

101
00:03:59,804 --> 00:04:01,337
in January 1912

102
00:04:01,337 --> 00:04:03,984
to find they had been beaten to it

103
00:04:03,984 --> 00:04:06,259
by a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen,

104
00:04:06,259 --> 00:04:07,908
who rode on dogsled.

105
00:04:07,908 --> 00:04:09,997
Scott's team ended up on foot,

106
00:04:09,997 --> 00:04:11,925
and for more than a century

107
00:04:11,925 --> 00:04:14,665
this journey has remained unfinished.

108
00:04:14,665 --> 00:04:16,290
Scott's team of five died

109
00:04:16,290 --> 00:04:17,822
on the return journey,

110
00:04:17,822 --> 00:04:19,633
and for the last decade,

111
00:04:19,633 --> 00:04:22,954
I've been asking myself why that is.

112
00:04:22,954 --> 00:04:26,576
How come this has
remained the high water mark?

113
00:04:26,576 --> 00:04:28,596
Scott's team covered 1,600 miles on foot.

114
00:04:28,596 --> 00:04:30,337
No one's come close to that ever since.

115
00:04:30,337 --> 00:04:32,172
So this is the high water mark

116
00:04:32,172 --> 00:04:34,586
of human endurance, human endeavor,

117
00:04:34,586 --> 00:04:36,142
human athletic achievement

118
00:04:36,142 --> 00:04:38,510
in arguably the harshest climate on Earth.

119
00:04:38,510 --> 00:04:41,018
It was as if the marathon record

120
00:04:41,018 --> 00:04:44,037
has remained unbroken since 1912.

121
00:04:44,037 --> 00:04:45,941
And of course some strange

122
00:04:45,941 --> 00:04:49,145
and predictable combination of curiosity,

123
00:04:49,145 --> 00:04:51,095
stubbornness, and probably hubris,

124
00:04:51,095 --> 00:04:52,535
led me to thinking I might be the man

125
00:04:52,535 --> 00:04:55,182
to try and finish the job.

126
00:04:55,182 --> 00:04:59,013
Unlike Scott's expedition,
there were just two of us,

127
00:04:59,013 --> 00:05:01,126
and we set off from
the coast of Antarctica

128
00:05:01,126 --> 00:05:02,449
in October last year

129
00:05:02,449 --> 00:05:04,214
dragging everything ourselves,

130
00:05:04,214 --> 00:05:06,814
a process Scott called "man-hauling."

131
00:05:06,814 --> 00:05:08,045
When I say it was like walking

132
00:05:08,045 --> 00:05:10,297
from here to San Francisco and back,

133
00:05:10,297 --> 00:05:11,830
I actually mean it was like dragging

134
00:05:11,830 --> 00:05:13,594
something that ways a shade more

135
00:05:13,594 --> 00:05:15,638
than the heaviest ever NFL player.

136
00:05:15,638 --> 00:05:17,681
Our sledges weighed 200 kilos,

137
00:05:17,681 --> 00:05:20,746
or 440 pounds each at the start,

138
00:05:20,746 --> 00:05:22,510
the same weights that the weakest

139
00:05:22,510 --> 00:05:25,018
of Scott's ponies pulled.

140
00:05:25,018 --> 00:05:29,430
Early on, we averaged 0.5 miles per hour.

141
00:05:29,430 --> 00:05:31,287
Perhaps the reason no one
had attempted this journey

142
00:05:31,287 --> 00:05:33,145
until now, for more than a century,

143
00:05:33,145 --> 00:05:35,118
was that no one had been quite

144
00:05:35,118 --> 00:05:38,415
stupid enough to try.

145
00:05:38,415 --> 00:05:40,087
And while I can't claim we were

146
00:05:40,087 --> 00:05:43,454
exploring in the genuine
Edwardian sense of the word

147
00:05:43,454 --> 00:05:47,192
— we weren't naming any mountains
or mapping any uncharted valleys —

148
00:05:47,192 --> 00:05:49,143
I think we were stepping

149
00:05:49,143 --> 00:05:51,674
into uncharted territory in a human sense.

150
00:05:51,674 --> 00:05:53,252
Certainly, if in the future we learn

151
00:05:53,252 --> 00:05:54,947
there is an area of the human brain

152
00:05:54,947 --> 00:05:58,779
that lights up when one curses oneself,

153
00:05:58,779 --> 00:06:02,215
I wouldn't be at all surprised.

154
00:06:02,215 --> 00:06:03,817
You've heard that the average American

155
00:06:03,817 --> 00:06:05,814
spends 90 percent of their time indoors.

156
00:06:05,814 --> 00:06:09,413
We didn't go indoors
for nearly four months.

157
00:06:09,413 --> 00:06:11,595
We didn't see a sunset either.

158
00:06:11,595 --> 00:06:13,151
It was 24-hour daylight.

159
00:06:13,151 --> 00:06:15,566
Living conditions were quite spartan.

160
00:06:15,566 --> 00:06:17,888
I changed my underwear three times

161
00:06:17,888 --> 00:06:20,465
in 105 days,

162
00:06:20,465 --> 00:06:22,810
and Tarka and I shared 30 square feet

163
00:06:22,810 --> 00:06:24,552
on the canvas,

164
00:06:24,552 --> 00:06:25,713
though we did have some technology

165
00:06:25,713 --> 00:06:28,847
that Scott could never have imagined,

166
00:06:28,847 --> 00:06:30,960
and we blogged live
every evening from the tent

167
00:06:30,960 --> 00:06:32,655
via a laptop

168
00:06:32,655 --> 00:06:34,605
and a custom-made satellite transmitter,

169
00:06:34,605 --> 00:06:36,115
all of which were solar-powered:

170
00:06:36,115 --> 00:06:37,252
we had a flexible

171
00:06:37,252 --> 00:06:39,040
photovoltaic panel over the tent.

172
00:06:39,040 --> 00:06:42,430
And the writing was important to me.

173
00:06:42,430 --> 00:06:43,823
As a kid, I was inspired

174
00:06:43,823 --> 00:06:47,260
by the literature of adventure

175
00:06:47,260 --> 00:06:49,164
and exploration, and I think

176
00:06:49,164 --> 00:06:51,021
we've all seen here this week

177
00:06:51,021 --> 00:06:53,204
the importance and the power

178
00:06:53,204 --> 00:06:55,595
of storytelling.

179
00:06:55,595 --> 00:06:57,081
So we had some 21st-century gear,

180
00:06:57,081 --> 00:06:59,868
but the reality is that
the challenges that Scott faced

181
00:06:59,868 --> 00:07:01,865
were the same that way faced:

182
00:07:01,865 --> 00:07:03,652
those of the weather

183
00:07:03,652 --> 00:07:05,603
and of what Scott called glide,

184
00:07:05,603 --> 00:07:06,671
the amount of friction

185
00:07:06,671 --> 00:07:08,946
between the sledges and the snow.

186
00:07:08,946 --> 00:07:11,199
The lowest wind chill we experienced

187
00:07:11,199 --> 00:07:12,801
was in the minus-70s,

188
00:07:12,801 --> 00:07:15,378
and we had zero visibility,
what's called white-out,

189
00:07:15,378 --> 00:07:18,391
for much of our journey.

190
00:07:18,391 --> 00:07:20,742
We traveled up and down one of the largest

191
00:07:20,742 --> 00:07:23,955
and most dangerous glaciers
in the world, the Beardmore glacier.

192
00:07:23,955 --> 00:07:26,314
It's 110 miles long: most of its surface

193
00:07:26,314 --> 00:07:27,731
is what's called blue ice.

194
00:07:27,731 --> 00:07:29,379
You can see it's a beautiful,

195
00:07:29,379 --> 00:07:31,074
shimmering, steel-hard blue surface

196
00:07:31,074 --> 00:07:33,497
covered with thousands and thousands

197
00:07:33,497 --> 00:07:36,623
of crevasses, these deep cracks

198
00:07:36,623 --> 00:07:39,038
in the glacial ice, up to 200 feet deep.

199
00:07:39,038 --> 00:07:40,315
Planes can't land here,

200
00:07:40,315 --> 00:07:43,775
so we were at the most risk,

201
00:07:43,775 --> 00:07:46,399
technically when we had
the slimmest chance

202
00:07:46,399 --> 00:07:48,395
of being rescued.

203
00:07:48,395 --> 00:07:49,974
We got to the South Pole

204
00:07:49,974 --> 00:07:52,505
after 61 days on foot,

205
00:07:52,505 --> 00:07:54,804
with one day off for bad weather,

206
00:07:54,804 --> 00:07:57,521
and I'm sad to say, it was
something of an anticlimax.

207
00:07:57,521 --> 00:07:59,726
There's a permanent American base,

208
00:07:59,726 --> 00:08:02,304
the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station,

209
00:08:02,304 --> 00:08:03,488
at the South Pole.

210
00:08:03,488 --> 00:08:05,125
They have an airstrip,
they have a canteen,

211
00:08:05,125 --> 00:08:06,658
they have hot showers,

212
00:08:06,658 --> 00:08:08,353
they have a post office, a tourist shop,

213
00:08:08,353 --> 00:08:10,071
a basketball court

214
00:08:10,071 --> 00:08:12,695
that doubles as a movie theater.

215
00:08:12,695 --> 00:08:14,506
So it's a bit different these days,

216
00:08:14,506 --> 00:08:15,922
and there are also acres of junk.

217
00:08:15,922 --> 00:08:17,292
I think it's a marvelous thing

218
00:08:17,292 --> 00:08:19,266
that humans can exist

219
00:08:19,266 --> 00:08:22,586
365 days of the year

220
00:08:22,586 --> 00:08:24,583
with hamburgers and hot showers

221
00:08:24,583 --> 00:08:26,231
and movie theaters,

222
00:08:26,231 --> 00:08:29,087
but it does seem to produce
a lot of empty cardboard boxes.

223
00:08:29,087 --> 00:08:30,829
You can see on the left this photograph,

224
00:08:30,829 --> 00:08:32,384
several square acres of junk

225
00:08:32,384 --> 00:08:35,287
waiting to be flown out
from the South Pole.

226
00:08:35,287 --> 00:08:38,909
But there is also a pole at the South Pole

227
00:08:38,909 --> 00:08:42,485
and we got there on foot, unassisted,

228
00:08:42,485 --> 00:08:43,971
unsupported, by the hardest route,

229
00:08:43,971 --> 00:08:46,316
900 miles in record time,

230
00:08:46,316 --> 00:08:48,684
dragging more weight
than anyone in history.

231
00:08:48,684 --> 00:08:50,333
And if we'd stopped there and flown home,

232
00:08:50,333 --> 00:08:53,467
which would have been
the eminently sensible thing to do,

233
00:08:53,467 --> 00:08:55,348
then my talk would end here

234
00:08:55,348 --> 00:08:59,318
and it would end something like this.

235
00:08:59,318 --> 00:09:01,153
If you have the right team around you,

236
00:09:01,153 --> 00:09:02,592
the right tools, the right technology,

237
00:09:02,592 --> 00:09:06,261
and if you have enough self-belief

238
00:09:06,261 --> 00:09:08,072
and enough determination,

239
00:09:08,072 --> 00:09:13,226
than anything is possible.

240
00:09:13,226 --> 00:09:15,409
But then we turned around,

241
00:09:15,409 --> 00:09:18,288
and this is where things get interesting.

242
00:09:18,288 --> 00:09:20,842
High on the Antarctic plateau,

243
00:09:20,842 --> 00:09:25,161
over 10,000 feet, it's very windy,
very cold, very dry, we were exhausted.

244
00:09:25,161 --> 00:09:27,111
We'd covered 35 marathons,

245
00:09:27,111 --> 00:09:28,737
we were only halfway,

246
00:09:28,737 --> 00:09:30,478
and we had a safety net, of course,

247
00:09:30,478 --> 00:09:32,452
of ski planes and satellite phones

248
00:09:32,452 --> 00:09:34,425
and live, 24-hour tracking beacons

249
00:09:34,425 --> 00:09:36,515
that didn't exist for Scott,

250
00:09:36,515 --> 00:09:38,257
but in hindsight,

251
00:09:38,257 --> 00:09:40,323
rather than making our lives easier,

252
00:09:40,323 --> 00:09:42,482
the safety net actually allowed us

253
00:09:42,482 --> 00:09:46,337
to cut things very fine indeed,

254
00:09:46,337 --> 00:09:48,914
to sail very close to our absolute limits

255
00:09:48,914 --> 00:09:50,284
as human beings,

256
00:09:50,284 --> 00:09:53,697
and it is an exquisite form of torture

257
00:09:53,697 --> 00:09:56,414
to exhaust yourself to the point
of starvation day after day

258
00:09:56,414 --> 00:09:57,946
while dragging a sledge

259
00:09:57,946 --> 00:10:00,686
full of food.

260
00:10:00,686 --> 00:10:04,773
For years, I'd been writing glib lines
in sponsorship proposals

261
00:10:04,773 --> 00:10:07,954
about pushing the limits
of human endurance,

262
00:10:07,954 --> 00:10:10,763
but in reality, that was
a very frightening place

263
00:10:10,763 --> 00:10:12,806
to be indeed.

264
00:10:12,806 --> 00:10:14,525
We had, before we'd got to the Pole,

265
00:10:14,525 --> 00:10:17,509
two weeks of almost permanent
headwind, which slowed us down.

266
00:10:17,509 --> 00:10:20,159
As a result, we'd had several days
of eating half rations.

267
00:10:20,159 --> 00:10:22,878
We had a finite amount of food
in the sledges to make this journey,

268
00:10:22,878 --> 00:10:24,880
so we were trying to string that out

269
00:10:24,880 --> 00:10:27,063
by reducing our intake to half

270
00:10:27,063 --> 00:10:29,176
the calories we should be eating.

271
00:10:29,176 --> 00:10:32,682
As a result, we both became
increasingly hypoglycemic:

272
00:10:32,682 --> 00:10:35,236
we had low blood
sugar levels day after day

273
00:10:35,236 --> 00:10:37,674
and increasingly susceptible

274
00:10:37,674 --> 00:10:40,414
to the extreme cold.

275
00:10:40,414 --> 00:10:42,457
Tarka took this photo of me one evening

276
00:10:42,457 --> 00:10:44,477
after I'd nearly passed out
with hypothermia.

277
00:10:44,477 --> 00:10:47,565
We both had repeated bouts of hypothermia,

278
00:10:47,565 --> 00:10:49,075
something I hadn't experienced before,

279
00:10:49,075 --> 00:10:50,746
and it was very humbling indeed.

280
00:10:50,746 --> 00:10:54,554
As much as you might
like to think, as I do,

281
00:10:54,554 --> 00:10:56,830
that you're the kind
of person who doesn't quit,

282
00:10:56,830 --> 00:10:58,664
that you'll go down swinging,

283
00:10:58,664 --> 00:11:00,916
hypothermia doesn't leave you much choice.

284
00:11:00,916 --> 00:11:03,726
You become utterly incapacitated.

285
00:11:03,726 --> 00:11:06,907
It's like being a drunk toddler.

286
00:11:06,907 --> 00:11:08,880
You become pathetic.

287
00:11:08,880 --> 00:11:13,269
I remember just wanting
to lie down and quit.

288
00:11:13,269 --> 00:11:15,173
It was a peculiar, peculiar feeling,

289
00:11:15,173 --> 00:11:17,170
and a real surprise to me

290
00:11:17,170 --> 00:11:20,722
to be debilitated to that degree.

291
00:11:20,722 --> 00:11:25,064
And then we ran out of food completely,

292
00:11:25,064 --> 00:11:28,802
46 miles short of the first of the depots

293
00:11:28,802 --> 00:11:30,567
that we'd laid on our outward journey.

294
00:11:30,567 --> 00:11:31,960
We'd laid 10 depots of food,

295
00:11:31,960 --> 00:11:34,607
literally burying food and fuel,
for our return journey

296
00:11:34,607 --> 00:11:37,254
— the food was for a cooker so you
could melt snow to get water —

297
00:11:37,254 --> 00:11:40,481
and I was forced to make the decision

298
00:11:40,481 --> 00:11:43,361
to call for a resupply flight,

299
00:11:43,361 --> 00:11:46,286
a ski plane carrying eight days of food

300
00:11:46,286 --> 00:11:48,190
to tide us over that gap.

301
00:11:48,190 --> 00:11:49,699
They took 12 hours to reach us

302
00:11:49,699 --> 00:11:51,812
from the other side of Antarctica.

303
00:11:51,812 --> 00:11:53,716
Calling for that plane

304
00:11:53,716 --> 00:11:55,458
was one of the toughest
decisions of my life,

305
00:11:55,458 --> 00:11:58,174
and I sound like a bit of a fraud
standing here now with a sort of belly.

306
00:11:58,174 --> 00:12:01,704
I've put on 30 pounds
in the last three weeks.

307
00:12:01,704 --> 00:12:04,629
Being that hungry has left
an interesting mental scar,

308
00:12:04,629 --> 00:12:06,696
which is that I've been hoovering up

309
00:12:06,696 --> 00:12:11,154
every hotel buffet that I can find.

310
00:12:11,154 --> 00:12:13,940
But we were genuinely quite hungry,

311
00:12:13,940 --> 00:12:16,958
and in quite a bad way.

312
00:12:16,958 --> 00:12:18,909
I don't regret calling
for that plane for a second,

313
00:12:18,909 --> 00:12:21,161
because I'm still standing here

314
00:12:21,161 --> 00:12:23,251
alive with all digits
intact telling this story,

315
00:12:23,251 --> 00:12:27,709
but getting external assistance like that
was never part of the plan,

316
00:12:27,709 --> 00:12:30,913
and it's something my ego
is still struggling with.

317
00:12:30,913 --> 00:12:33,955
This was the biggest dream I've ever had,

318
00:12:33,955 --> 00:12:37,577
and it was so nearly perfect.

319
00:12:37,577 --> 00:12:39,458
On the way back down to the coast,

320
00:12:39,458 --> 00:12:41,269
our crampons — they're the spikes

321
00:12:41,269 --> 00:12:44,125
on our boots that we have for traveling
over this blue ice on the glacier —

322
00:12:44,125 --> 00:12:45,750
broke on the top of the Beardmore.

323
00:12:45,750 --> 00:12:47,445
We still had 100 miles to go downhill

324
00:12:47,445 --> 00:12:49,419
on very slippery rock-hard blue ice.

325
00:12:49,419 --> 00:12:51,810
They needed repairing almost every hour.

326
00:12:51,810 --> 00:12:53,761
To give you an idea of scale,

327
00:12:53,761 --> 00:12:55,665
this is looking down towards the mouth

328
00:12:55,665 --> 00:12:57,058
of the Beardmore Glacier.

329
00:12:57,058 --> 00:12:58,753
You could fit the entirety of Manhattan

330
00:12:58,753 --> 00:13:00,378
in the gap on the horizon.

331
00:13:00,378 --> 00:13:03,977
That's 20 miles between
Mt. Hope and Mt. Kiffin.

332
00:13:03,977 --> 00:13:07,065
I've never felt as small

333
00:13:07,065 --> 00:13:10,060
as I did in Antarctica.

334
00:13:10,060 --> 00:13:11,825
When we got down
to the mouth of the glacier,

335
00:13:11,825 --> 00:13:14,240
we found fresh snow had obscured

336
00:13:14,240 --> 00:13:16,631
the dozens of deep crevasses.

337
00:13:16,631 --> 00:13:18,303
One of Shackleton's men described

338
00:13:18,303 --> 00:13:19,952
crossing this sort of terrain as like

339
00:13:19,952 --> 00:13:22,483
walking over the glass roof

340
00:13:22,483 --> 00:13:24,665
of a railway station.

341
00:13:24,665 --> 00:13:27,289
We fell through more times
than I can remember,

342
00:13:27,289 --> 00:13:30,981
usually just putting a ski
or a boot through the snow.

343
00:13:30,981 --> 00:13:32,281
Occasionally we went in

344
00:13:32,281 --> 00:13:33,604
all the way up to our armpits,

345
00:13:33,604 --> 00:13:37,157
but thankfully never deeper than that.

346
00:13:37,157 --> 00:13:39,757
And less than five weeks ago,

347
00:13:39,757 --> 00:13:41,313
after 105 days, we crossed

348
00:13:41,313 --> 00:13:44,912
this oddly inauspicious finish line,

349
00:13:44,912 --> 00:13:47,814
the coast of Ross Island on the
New Zealand coast of Antarctica.

350
00:13:47,814 --> 00:13:49,834
You can see the ice in the foreground

351
00:13:49,834 --> 00:13:52,876
and the sort of rubbly rock behind that.

352
00:13:52,876 --> 00:13:54,757
Behind us lay an unbroken ski trail

353
00:13:54,757 --> 00:13:56,568
of nearly 1,800 miles.

354
00:13:56,568 --> 00:13:59,076
We made the longest ever
polar journey on foot,

355
00:13:59,076 --> 00:14:01,026
something I've been dreaming of doing

356
00:14:01,026 --> 00:14:03,255
for a decade.

357
00:14:03,255 --> 00:14:05,461
And looking back,

358
00:14:05,461 --> 00:14:07,876
I still stand by all the things

359
00:14:07,876 --> 00:14:09,338
I've been saying for years

360
00:14:09,338 --> 00:14:11,637
about the importance of goals

361
00:14:11,637 --> 00:14:15,329
and determination and self-belief,

362
00:14:15,329 --> 00:14:17,117
but I'll also believe that I haven't given

363
00:14:17,117 --> 00:14:19,810
much thought to what happens

364
00:14:19,810 --> 00:14:23,432
when you reach the all-consuming goal

365
00:14:23,432 --> 00:14:27,240
that you've dedicated most
of your adult life too,

366
00:14:27,240 --> 00:14:29,051
and the reality is that I'm still figuring

367
00:14:29,051 --> 00:14:30,630
that bit out.

368
00:14:30,630 --> 00:14:34,461
As I said, there are very few
superficial signs that I've been away.

369
00:14:34,461 --> 00:14:35,762
I've put on 30 pounds.

370
00:14:35,762 --> 00:14:37,155
I've got some very faint

371
00:14:37,155 --> 00:14:39,500
— they're probably covered
in makeup now — frostbite scars.

372
00:14:39,500 --> 00:14:40,893
I've got one on my nose,
one on each cheek,

373
00:14:40,893 --> 00:14:42,333
from where the goggles are,

374
00:14:42,333 --> 00:14:44,608
but inside I am a very

375
00:14:44,608 --> 00:14:47,116
different person indeed.

376
00:14:47,116 --> 00:14:49,925
If I'm honest,

377
00:14:49,925 --> 00:14:52,387
Antarctica challenged me

378
00:14:52,387 --> 00:14:55,010
and humbled me so deeply

379
00:14:55,010 --> 00:14:56,473
that I'm not sure I'll ever be able

380
00:14:56,473 --> 00:14:59,027
to put it into words.

381
00:14:59,027 --> 00:15:02,603
I'm still struggling to piece
together my thoughts.

382
00:15:02,603 --> 00:15:06,248
That I'm standing here telling this story

383
00:15:06,248 --> 00:15:08,640
is proof that we all

384
00:15:08,640 --> 00:15:11,356
can accomplish great things,

385
00:15:11,356 --> 00:15:13,260
through ambition, through passion,

386
00:15:13,260 --> 00:15:15,582
through sheer stubbornness,

387
00:15:15,582 --> 00:15:17,347
by refusing to quit,

388
00:15:17,347 --> 00:15:18,833
that if you dream something hard enough,

389
00:15:18,833 --> 00:15:19,971
as Sting said,

390
00:15:19,971 --> 00:15:23,384
it does indeed come to pass.

391
00:15:23,384 --> 00:15:25,520
But I'm also standing here saying,

392
00:15:25,520 --> 00:15:28,051
you know what, that cliche

393
00:15:28,051 --> 00:15:30,628
about the journey being more important

394
00:15:30,651 --> 00:15:32,671
than the destination?

395
00:15:32,671 --> 00:15:35,992
There's something in that.

396
00:15:35,992 --> 00:15:38,221
The closer I got to my finish line,

397
00:15:38,221 --> 00:15:42,377
that rubbly, rocky coast of Ross Island,

398
00:15:42,377 --> 00:15:43,631
the more I started to realize

399
00:15:43,631 --> 00:15:45,395
that the biggest lesson

400
00:15:45,395 --> 00:15:47,741
that this very long, very hard walk

401
00:15:47,741 --> 00:15:49,761
might be teaching me

402
00:15:49,761 --> 00:15:51,293
is that happiness

403
00:15:51,293 --> 00:15:53,754
is not a finish line,

404
00:15:53,754 --> 00:15:55,194
that for us humans,

405
00:15:55,194 --> 00:15:57,400
the perfection that so many of us

406
00:15:57,400 --> 00:15:58,793
seem to dream of

407
00:15:58,793 --> 00:16:02,740
might not ever be truly attainable,

408
00:16:02,740 --> 00:16:05,666
and that if we can't feel content

409
00:16:05,666 --> 00:16:11,029
here, today, now, on our journeys

410
00:16:11,029 --> 00:16:13,676
amidst the mess and the striving

411
00:16:13,676 --> 00:16:15,534
that we all inhabit, the open loops,

412
00:16:15,534 --> 00:16:18,204
the half-finished to-do lists,

413
00:16:18,204 --> 00:16:21,106
the could-do-better-next-times,

414
00:16:21,106 --> 00:16:24,055
then we might never feel it.

415
00:16:24,055 --> 00:16:27,631
A lot of people have asked me, what next?

416
00:16:27,631 --> 00:16:31,299
Right now, I am very happy just recovering

417
00:16:31,299 --> 00:16:34,597
and in front of hotel buffets,

418
00:16:34,597 --> 00:16:39,612
but as Bob Hope put it,

419
00:16:39,612 --> 00:16:41,678
I feel very humble,

420
00:16:41,678 --> 00:16:45,347
but I think I have the strength
of character to fight it.

421
00:16:45,347 --> 00:16:47,297
Thank you.

422
00:16:47,297 --> 00:16:50,975
(Applause)