Chattanooga Pulse

Written by Mary Duffy
Wednesday, 25 February 2009 19:35

Sometimes as I’m cycling slowly up a steep hill I feel a pang of envy seeing the cars, motorcycles, and little scooters that whiz by. Not because I mind the exercise this kind of locomotion requires, but because I’d like to reach my destination just a little faster. But I feel proud that nothing but my own caloric exertion powers my daily commute, something that can’t be said by 98 percent of the population.

James Hooper, a 21-year-old Briton, has a much more impressive boast: He is the only man on the planet who has traveled from the North to the South Pole entirely under his own power. This feat won him National Geographic’s 2008 Adventurer of the Year award. And this week he’ll be in Chattanooga to tell you all about it.

Hooper actually completed the trek with a partner and friend, Rob Gauntlett. The two were the youngest Britons to summit Everest in 2006. Tragically, Gauntlett was killed in January while climbing in the French Alps. Hooper and Gauntlett began their 22,000-mile, 409-day-long trip at the geomagnetic North Pole. They were to call the trip “180: Pole to Pole, Manpowered”. They would only ski, walk, cycle, and sail to reach their destination, the South Pole.

The skiing began above Greenland, where the North Pole lies on a patch of ice. The pair found the pole, and then began their trip on skis, pulling their own dogsleds behind them for 250 miles before they reached a point where the going on the thin ice was too difficult. They were to make camp and await pick up by a sailboat, which would take them to New York. While encamped, waiting for the boat, Gauntlett nearly died when he suffered an accidental fall through thin ice and into the freezing water. Hooper kept his head, pulled his friend out and called for help. Gauntlett had spent about four minutes in the water, and was unconscious for the four hours it took the helicopter to reach them.