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- Colin O'Brady wants to be the first person to cross Antarctica alone and without help.
- All the others who tried the solo trek are dead or abandoned.
- O'Brady brings a 400-pound sled to carry all his food and equipment. He expects to complete the 1,000 mile journey in 70 days.
Somewhere in the back of the world, 33-year-old Colin O'Brady is preparing for a task that no human has accomplished successfully. He is about to travel 1,000 miles across Antarctica without any replenishment support.
Anyone who has ever tried this solo trip has given up or died.
"It's something no one in history has ever done and has been trying for 100 years," the US explorer told Business Insider. He spoke to us from his Airbnb in Punta Arenas, Chile, just 10 hours before heading to Antarctica on a Russian cargo plane.
With the help of his wife, Jenna, O 'Brady finished his last minute preparation: they sewed a piece of warm fleece on his mask, weighed food and packed it all in 400 bags. books in which he will carry everything. he needs to survive the next 70 days.
"Every little gram and ounce that I put in my sleigh must be worth it," he said. "I bring 220 pounds of food, but a pair of underwear. I'll be dirty in the end!
O 'Brady begins his trek at the top of Ross's ice floe. A small plane will drop him there. Then, a little time nowHe will start the climb with his skis to the South Pole. He hopes to find himself on the Ronne ice floe, which borders the Weddell Sea.
By traveling 1,000 miles in 70 days, O'Brady will have to travel an average of 14 miles per day with his sled. But he said that the daily distance would vary from beginning to end. Every night, a sleeping bag and a tent will protect it from the biting cold.
In case of any problem, O'Brady is equipped with a satellite phone.
Just a man and a sled
Most of O'Brady's burden on the sled is food, since he is convinced that this is the element that has driven everyone who tried him to make a miscalculation.
Besides his skis and tent, he also brings a GPS tracker, some cameras, extra phones and a solar charger for these electronic devices. It should not be difficult to come to the sun, as daylight lasts 24 hours in the Antarctic summer. For this reason, he will use a sleep mask when he is resting.
The only "extra" garment that O'Brady has to offer is a pair of socks as a bonus. All other clothing will be layered to keep it warm: Temperatures at the South Pole are averaging -18 degrees Fahrenheit (-28.2 Celsius) at this time of year.
When it's so cold, the body tends to put more protective brown fat. Unlike white fat, brown fat is a survival mechanism: it's a way to turn the food we eat into heat. People who live and work in cold temperatures, such as loggers and farmers in cold weather, tend to have more of this type of fat wrapped around their necks and hearts.
In order to keep the bodies warm, the brown fat speeds up the metabolism, which means that O 'Brady will have to consume about 8,000 calories a day to fuel his sled pull sessions by 10 to 12 hours.
To this end, the O'Brady package contains special energy bars, developed by its sponsor, Standard Process Supplements, of approximately 1,250 calories. They call it Colin Bar.
The bar is rich in oily coconut oil and also contains nuts, seeds, vegetable proteins and cocoa powder. O & # 39; Brady will eat four a day, which will account for most of his calories (nearly 5,000).
The rest of his diet will consist of freeze-dried meals of the astronaut type that he will consume at the beginning and at the end of the day. These can be rehydrated with boiling water, which he will heat with a camping stove and some of the 15 kilos of fuel he has packed.
He is aware that this meal plan seems slightly miserable.
"Unfortunately, the fresh food is a little too heavy," he said.
His route makes an "L" across Antarctica
O 'Brady will begin his journey near Mount Markham, one of the highest peaks on the continent, at over 14,270 feet. From there, he will head to the South Pole, at an altitude of 9,186 feet. At that time, he will have a little less than half of the course.
"It's imperceptibly a climb and a descent with the naked eye," said O'Brady about the ski route he plans to follow. "But you can really feel it when you're dragging so much weight."
After pbading the pole, O 'Brady hopes to pick up speed because he will tow a lightened load from here to here. His path will make a kind of "L" pointing to the ice cap of West Antarctica.
"While I eat my food and burn my fuel, the sled will become lighter," he said.
O & # 39; Brady knows how to go fast. In 2016, he climbed to the summit of the highest peaks of the seven continents, including Everest and Antarctica, in just 132 days. This earned him the world record of the fastest climb of the seven summits.
He has also participated in triathlons, treks to the North and South Poles, and has just completed a 30-day, 400-km training session with his sled in Greenland.
But this trip to the driest and coldest continent in the world is perhaps its slowest venture to date.
"When you have a 400-pound sleigh, you can not run. It's very slow, "he said. "When it's minus 40 degrees outside, it's a big effort to move."
The journey can cool your fingers with your fingertips
While crossing Antarctica unbadisted remains an open challenge, adventurer Mike Horn has completed a 57-day ski tour from north to south on the continent in 2017, using a kite. That same year, 40-year-old Englishman Ben Saunders attempted a solo crossing but was forced to end his quest after 52 days of lack of food.
Before Saunders, Henry Worsley, 55, had traveled more than 800 km, as detailed The New Yorker. He lost 40 pounds and one finger before calling for an emergency rescue. Saunders died of a bacterial infection in a hospital in Punta Arenas, Chile – the same town where O'Brady stayed before leaving for his trip.
Despite these difficulties, O'Brady is not the only one to attempt a solo trek this month. Louis Rudd, 49, of the United Kingdom, leaves the opposite shore of Antarctica, as recently reported the New Yorker. It is possible that the two men cross at the summit of their ascent.
O'Brady's preparation for this quest required a lot of training. His strength and anaerobic power have increased, as has his weight. The 6-foot athlete normally weighs 165 kg, but after months of dead climbing, squatting and weight training, he has accumulated nearly 20 kg of muscle mbad.
As this is the longest years O'Brady has ever had human contact, he has also spent years training his mind. He regularly participates in Vipbadana sessions, like monks, during which he spends 10 days in complete silence. No reading, no writing, no eye contact.
Being in Antarctica will obviously not be the same as a Buddhist retreat, but O'Brady hopes the training will be useful.
"There is not a lot of overtime in the day or extra energy, so I probably will not spend a lot of time sitting in my tent meditating in a traditional sense," he said. "But in many ways, I think it will be a walking meditation."
There will however be some opportunities for human interaction. O'Brady plans to post regularly on Instagram to answer questions about his background. There will also be an occasional conversation with his wife.
"It's really expensive to make these phone calls," he said. "So it's not like I'm sitting there chatting on the phone."
He said jokingly that it would be so bad that it all ends up not knowing if his wife, Jenna, will even want to take him in his arms.
"Tanks with untapped potential"
Joking aside, O'Brady said he considered his hike a "testament" of "the human spirit."
"Everyone has reservoirs of untapped potential inside of themselves and can do some really incredible things," he said.
But he noted that even strength and determination have their limits.
"The risks are very real and I am aware of this and I have prepared myself accordingly. Not to die, but to make the best and safest decisions possible, "O'Brady said.
It tasted for the first time the white and icy expanse of Antarctica. Thursday, O'Brady posted his first dispatch on Twitter. He said he was holding a compbad on his chest to make sure he was heading in the right direction without dropping his ski poles.
If you're curious about O'Brady's current location, you can follow his GPS tracking in real time or view his publications on Instagram.
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