More than 100 years ago, Sir Robert Falcon Scott and his team sought to stake their flagpole into Antarctica’s icy sheath. The five men reached the South Pole on January 17, 1912, but died of hunger and exhaustion during their return trip.
Early Monday morning, two modern explorers became the first people in history to complete the nearly 1,800-mile trek in Scott’s stead. Ben Saunders, 36, and former Wasps rugby player Tarka L’Herpiniere, 32, walked 1,795 miles across Antarctica in 105 days, pulling sleds with more than 440 pounds of gear. Temperatures were frigid, with the wind chill as low as -50 degrees Fahrenheit.
The two men were outfitted in modern gear from Intel (Scott was not so lucky) and maintained a blog throughout the journey across the virtually unlivable tundra.
Saunders wrote in his latest post, “Emotionally, Tarka and I are still numb and exhausted…. That he and I are here at all, at the end of this journey, with an unbroken 1,795-mile looping ski track behind us is something I owe to an awful lot of wonderful people and companies that have carried on believing in me and in this dream.”