For some reason, I had never heard this amazing story until today. I read about 2 guys, James Hooper and Rob Gauntlett, in the latest National Geographic Adventure Magazine. These 2 British teens, were the youngest from England to summit Mt. Everest. They did so at the age of 19.
Soon after they finished their Everest expedition, they started a 26,000 mile journey from the North Pole to the South Pole using only bikes, their own 2 legs, and sailboats. Everything was man-powered…no cars and no fancy boats. Here are just a couple of the highlights from their trip.
- they started in a blizzard behind dogsleds in Greenland just trying to find the official “north pole”
- once they found the official starting point, they dropped the dogs because that would be too easy and put on skis for the next 250 miles pulling sleds behind them
- then they climed over glaciers without good maps or the right equipment – they had planned on going over the coastal sea ice, but the ice was too thin
- after 21 days of this, they called back the dog teams
- Gauntlett fell in through the ice and spent 4 minutes in the 28* water and was unconscious for 4 hours. He was taken out by a helicopter, but they picked right back up where they left off a few days later.
- They sailed through “Iceberg Alley” to New York
- They rode bikes 11,000 miels from New York to the tip of South America
- They were broke when they hit Panama, so they gave inspirational speeches and made T-shirts to raise the money needed to finish the journey.
- Once in Chile, they needed a boat to sail 9,000 miles to the south pole off the coast of Antarctica. So they borrowed $90,000 from family and people they met along their trip who were inspired by their journey. They ended up with a 67 foot aluminum schooner.
- They battled 70 to 80 foot waves and stared death in the eye numerous times. The boat went all the way over at one point, but eventually righted itself back up.
- They sailed through the south pole into Australia 409 days after starting.
- Now they are inspirational speakers at schools around the country.
This story really just amazes me, so I had to share. They’ve got a website, but I can’t seem to get it to work on my end – probably because of the amount of traffic that they have had since this article came out. They’ve had over 10 million hits since their journey began according to the article, but see if you can check it out.
