Story originally printed in the Coulee News or online at www.couleenews.com

Published - Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Explorer on the lookout for climate change

By ADAM BISSEN | Staff writer

Eric Larsen went to the North Pole last year, but his memories of the expedition aren’t as frigid as one would expect.

On July 1, 2006, Larsen and his partner, Lonnie Dupre, became the first people to reach the North Pole during the summer months. They embarked on their journey to make a statement about global climate change, and the surprising amount of open water they crossed at the top of the world served to reaffirm their mission.

Eric Larsen, foreground, takes a portrait of himself and expedition partner Lonnie Dupre on their 62-day voyage to the North Pole last summer. The duo made it to the North Pole -- the first-ever summertime expedition to do so -- but they encountered more open water than they expected. Contributed photo

“People thought it was impossible. It didn’t seem like a logical way to do it,” Larsen said in a telephone interview last week, calling from Hawaii. “We wanted to go in the summertime because we thought that ... would be a good visual wake-up call to let people know that global warming was real.”

Larsen’s pictures of open water in the Arctic Ocean — as well as ice floes, whiteout conditions, polar bears and other panoramic sights — will be on display next week at UW-La Crosse when he gives a lecture jointly hosted by the Coulee Region Audubon Society and Sierra Club. The talk will be held Tuesday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m. in Room 140 of Cowley Hall.

Larsen will have plenty of material to sift through for his lecture, as he has spent the past 12 years as a sort of full-time adventurer. The Minnesota native has worked as a guide for Alaskan backcountry trips, whitewater rafting voyages and dog mushing excursions.

He later spent four years as an outdoor educator and then quit to mush dogs in long-distance races while he planned his expedition to the North Pole.

Every successful Arctic explorer between Robert Perry in 1909 and Larsen and Dupre in 2006 completed the expedition before the onset of summer. The Arctic Ocean is predominantly ice, but currents and warming temperatures can break it free to create ice floes in open water. Because of this, Larsen said, a summertime rescue by plane or helicopter is impossible in the Arctic.

When winter trekkers encounter open water on the Arctic Ocean, they often wait for nightfall to freeze a path across. Larsen and Dupre didn’t have that luxury, so they made the expedition with specially modified canoes: nine feet long, reinforced, with covers on top and runners on the bottom. The adventurers pulled them by harnesses.

“The amount of open water was really disturbing to us,” Larsen said, “especially as we got closer to the North Pole.”

While there were some sections of open water that took 25 minutes to paddle across, Larsen also battled wintry conditions on the 62-day voyage. He describes whiteouts where he couldn’t see the horizon, likening it to stumbling with a white sheet of paper in front of his face.

Larson and Dupre also had a close encounter with a polar bear, one of the only animals that will hunt and kill a person. They awoke to the sounds of a bear attacking the vestibule of their tent and fired solar flares to scare it away.

Still, Larsen said he makes his voyages to celebrate and preserve the beauty of the Arctic. He noted that polar bears are in danger of become extinct as global warming claims more and more of their territory.

“The Arctic Ocean is one of the last great wildernesses left on the planet. It’s a pristine and beautiful place,” he said.

Now, Larsen is making the rounds as a lecturer and a fundraiser as he prepares to mount his next endeavor: Save the Poles. In what would be another unprecedented feat, Larsen is attempting to reach the North Pole, South Pole and summit of Mount Everest within one year. Only 15 people have ever visited all three “poles” (no Americans), and no one has even attempted doing it in such a short time span.

While Larsen said his summertime One World Expedition to the North Pole was intended to raise awareness on climate change, the Save the Poles voyage is geared around finding solutions to reverse global warming.

“The North Pole, South Pole, Mount Everest — I really consider them the last great frozen places,” Larsen said. “And they might not stay that way unless we act now to reduce carbon emissions.”

AT A GLANCE