Polar Explorer Will Steger Empowers Emerging Leaders

Imagine devoting your life to the exploration of a region of the world so formidable, so intimidating that few people ever visit it. Imagine months of travel in frigid, incapacitating temperatures capable of taking your limbs. Imagine seeing only vast expanses of ice for miles. Now imagine parts of this region no longer exist.

This isn’t your imagination. This is the reality of world-renowned polar explorer Will Steger.

While we debate the validity of global warming, Steger has carved out an uncommon perspective about this phenomenon – one that is more than 40 years in the making. A legend at age 63, Steger’s achievements place him among the best in exploration – alongside Jacques Cousteau, Charles Lindberg, Amelia Earhart and Robert Peary – as he has completed some of the most significant polar expeditions in history:
• the first person to reach the North Pole via dogsled without resupply
• a traverse of Greenland that remains the longest unsupported dogsled expedition in history
• the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica
• the first dogsled traverse of the Arctic Ocean in one season

Steger has received countless awards and distinctions throughout the years but he knows his Arctic achievements are null unless he can rally the next generation of leaders to embrace environmental activism and preserve one of the world’s most fragile ecosystems.

Enter Sam Branson, son of Virgin Group mogul Sir Richard Branson.

Steger is galvanizing the next generation of leaders to advocate for the environment and has compiled an international team of 20-something adventurers to give us an Arctic close-up of global warming. The younger Branson – an adventurer, musician and author who joined Steger’s 2007 expedition to Baffin Island – is one member of an impressive team that includes two National Geographic Young Explorer grantees, an Iditarod competitor, a Polar historian and two international record-holders in kite-skiing who hail from Norway, Great Britain, Canada and the United States.

In the midst of their 60-day, 1,400-mile expedition, the team is at the front lines of global warming. Together they are traveling by dogsled across Ellesmere Island, a place so remote, yet so precarious it contains five of the last remaining ice shelves in North America. They are following in the footsteps of legendary polar explorers and using historical maps to document ice shelves that have collapsed or are on the brink of collapse. By sharing videos, photos and diary entries from their travels (found at http://www.globalwarming101.com ), these emerging leaders hope to inspire international cooperation and mobilize their peers to action to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming.

Regardless of your position, the Ellesmere Island Expedition is worthy of your attention. From the adventures of dog sledding in threatening terrain, to the unexpected challenges of a refashioned geography, to surprising encounters with polar bears, Steger and company bear witness to a tremendous, inimitable experience.

This is the first in a series of articles that will chronicle the Ellesmere Island Expedition, for which audio, video, images and written journal entries will also be posted.