Ben Saunders saunters into the local Richmond Hill Bakery with his labradoodle Molly at his side. The Polar explorer goes unnoticed, but the other customers are soon petting the winsome dog enthusiastically. Unlike some of his fellow adventurers, Ben bears few outward signs of his exploits, no stumps from gangrenous fingers or frost-bitten ears. But he is instantly recognisable by his shaved head and an appealing air of determination – his second of three TED talk simply entitled “Why bother leaving the house” drew nearly two million views.
When we meet up at the cafe, back in the spring of 2018, Ben, 40, has been training for a marathon in Richmond Park. He is recently back from his attempt to make the first solo crossing on foot of the Antarctic from one side to the other via the South Pole – unsupported and unassisted, meaning just him harnessed to a sledge packed with stores. Many others have tried to make this journey traversing the Ross Ice Shelf and have not fared well – legendary figures like Scott and Shackleton from the Edwardian era, and more recently, Ben’s friend, Henry Worsley. Three years ago Worsley had nearly completed his solo expedition but fell ill just a few days from his destination. Calling on his satellite phone perhaps a little late, he was successfully evacuated by helicopter but died in hospital in Chile a few days later leaving a grieving family.
“For someone like Henry, there was an enormous amount riding on a trip like this. The link with Shackleton, the commitment to the charity who were sponsoring him and so on. It’s self-imposed pressure. But I think deciding to call for rescue was incredibly brave of him”.
When in December 2017, Ben first began his own solo journey in Henry’s footsteps he passed through staggeringly beautiful scenery knowing that no one had travelled there since his friend on his fateful trip. It was an idyllic phase not destined to last. This was summer in the Antarctic. But the blues skies soon vanished and as visibility worsened navigating in white-outs became nightmarish. And underfoot the going got tougher. “There was far less flat snow and far more smashed up terrain that had been reported. It wasn’t the crevasses that were the problem but sastrugi, sharp ridges of ice that lay across my path. This made pulling the sledge exhausting.” Sastrugi are formed by wind erosion and are about the height of a man.
Even so Ben arrived at the South Pole in reasonable shape – he had fattened himself by ten kilos before the trip. But he had made poor time. Originally planning to be ‘fast and light’, he had in fact tramped across the arduous terrain so slowly that his 62-days of supplies were seriously depleted. “I think I must have realised that I wouldn’t able to complete the second leg of the trip from the South Pole across the continent for several days before arriving at the Pole.”
Ben opted not to risk dying in isolation, a heroic failure. Rather than driving himself on in the rutted ice until he collapsed, he got himself aboard one of the tiny chartered planes that fly out from the South Pole’s rudimentary landing slip. “People ask me if thoughts of Henry drove me on. Actually, it was the reverse. When it came to it, thinking of Henry made me determined that I must be cautious and that the goal was to get home in one piece.”
Amid the macchiato drinkers back in leafy Richmond, Ben looks fit and animated. It would have the gruelling second leg of the journey from the Pole, the one he did not complete, that would have made him eaten into his reserves of body fat. From some previous trips, notably his first when he everything seemed to go wrong and he had to face down an angry polar bear, he returned “totally beaten and burnt out”. It can take him the best part of a year to build himself back physically and psychologically.
But this time he is in good shape and sees himself as having a pretty good consolation prize. He is the third person in history to ski solo to the North Pole, holds the record for the longest solo Arctic journey by a Briton, and is the first Briton to have made it solo to both Poles.
An explorer like Sir Ranulph Fiennes, now in his seventies, is determined to go on with his acts of derring-do despite self-amputated fingers, a heart attack and diabetes. But Ben isn’t so sure he wants to go on taking risks regardless: on his agenda now are getting married to his fiancée Pip (his media liaison person), penning a book on his adventures and beating his personal best in that forthcoming marathon.
Like Fiennes, Ben has a love of writing. Rather than parcel out a book to a ghostwriter, he is embarking on it himself. His ambition would be to create something with a bit of a moral to it and something with a touch of the brilliance of legendary travel writer Bruce Chatwin about it.
And, of course, he needs to hone his career as a speaker. With a number of TED talks under his belt he is a hot property on the speaking circuit, especially in America (hence proximity to Heathrow). I tell him that sitting through a motivational speaker slot during a corporate awayday is my idea of hell. Amused, Ben seems to agree. “My toes curl whenever I am introduced as someone who’s there to motivate people”, he jokes. Even this side of his life holds its terrors though; he admits to being shell-shocked in front of the studio audience for his first TED talk.
But connecting with people, school kids, in particular, is high on his agenda. He gives talks to the Royal Geographic Society (he lacks any further education, describing himself as being a ‘bright but idle’ pupil). And he wants to reach out to kids, especially from unprivileged backgrounds. “To some children, valleys and mountains are just things they been told about but have never seen.”
For the moment it looks as though settling into married life, his speaking engagements and writing will occupy the British explorer. But Ben has said that after returning from pretty much all of his previous expeditions only to find himself a year or so later once again harnessing himself up to his sledge and heading back into the blizzards.
As winter digs in and it’s 12 months since Ben’s return, I’d say it’s definitely a case of ‘watch this space’.
