As our most popular Polar trip, we regularly hear from people that this expedition is an adventure in every sense of the word. Your journey begins in the remote, yet modern village of Longyearbyen, Norway, well above the Arctic circle at 78 degrees North. Because we include our Polar Shakedown training in our most popular North Pole packages, team members arrive feeling as prepared, excited, and ready for a great expedition. We plan for one day in town to review your equipment, ready our kits and take care of last minute details. On this day we'll issue your team anorak embroidered with an expedition patch and your last name (yours to keep) as well as all group equipment and gear. We'll review safety procedures and all aspects of the expedition.

From Longyearbyen we'll make our way to approximately 89 degrees north latitude. Depending on conditions and the time of our arrival we'll either set up camp and catch some sleep or strap on our skis and sleds and head off toward our goal - the geographic North Pole. Skiing up to eight hours a day over the dynamic pack ice, we'll encounter new challenges and breathtaking scenery. If conditions are good, our route will take us across large pans of flat ice that present few obstacles. When conditions are less than ideal, we'll have to maneuver around open water "leads" and over pressure ridges that can range from 1-5 meters in height.

As with all of our expeditions this is a "hands-on" experience. You'll be participating in all aspects of the expedition, including setting up camp, cooking, tracking our progress, etc. Give us a call and let us tell you more about what skills you should have prior to the expedition, and what skills we will be teaching you prior to our departure. Our shakedown trip is an ideal way to learn all the skills that are necessary for an expedition of this magnitude.

To ensure that you have the best possible experience, we'll help you with all aspects of your pre-expedition preparations, from choosing the right clothing to learning how to pack your sled.

When we finally reach 90 degrees north - the North Pole, we'll celebrate with champagne, dozens of photos to document your arrival, and calls home from the top of the world using our satellite phone (batteries permitting). Depending on when we arrive, we will either camp at the North Pole or very close to the North Pole. A helicopter pick-up and charter flight take us back to Longyearbyen where a hot shower, celebratory dinner, and comfortable night in a lodge complete this one-of-a-kind adventure.

This itinerary is highly dependent on a number of factors and is subject to change!

Contact us for a more detailed itinerary!

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What's Included:

• 5 day Polar Shakedown training trip
• Pick up at Longyearbyen airport and transfer to hotel
• Welcome reception
• All charter air transportation from Longyearbyen and return
• Guides
• Up to three nights lodging in Longyearbyen (with dinners and breakfasts)*
• Expedition anorak
• Expedition patch
• All food while on the ice
• Online Expedition Tracker for friends and family back home
• North Pole celebration
• Official framed certificate
• One "call home" (battery permitting)
• All group Arctic gear
• Communication and safety gear
• Baggage allowance up to 77lbs (35 kg)

What's Not Included:

• Round trip airfare to Longyearbyen
• Personal clothing and accessories
• Full medical, baggage, trip cancellation and evacuation insurance (required)
• Excess baggage costs
• Additional phone calls from North Pole (battery permitting)
• Extended stay fees associated with weather delays
• Food and lodging in Longyearbyen if booked on the "standard" package
• Taxes and gratuity
• Travel to Polar Shakedown location

Upon registration, you will receive a comprehensive gear guide that explains the importance of each item as well as gear recommendations from our past participants.

• 1 pair skis and ski poles (supplied by NWP)
• 1 pair skins covering the full length of your skis (supplied by NWP)
• 1 pair snow pack ski boots (bring your own or let NWP supply this item)
• 1 pair extra boot liners (bring your own or let NWP supply this item)
• Sleeping bag (rated to at least -35° Celsius)*
• Bivy sack*
• 2 sleeping pads (thermarest or ridgerest style)*
• 1 wind jacket with hood (supplied by NWP)
• 1 wind pants (breathable!)
• 1 insulated parka with hood
• 1 warm fleece jacket and pants
• 2 sets synthetic underwear, medium weight top and bottom- 2nd set optional
• 3 sets mitts: 1 regular, 1 overmitts, 1 spare regular mitts or gloves
• 2 pair liner gloves
• 2 hats: 1 lightweight balaclava, 1 ski type
• 2 neck gaiters
• 3 pair socks and sock liners
• 1 face mask
• Sun glasses and/ or mountain ski glasses
• 2 pr. anti-fog goggles
• 1 sturdy small backpack with waist belt and sternum strap
• 2 Thermos bottles or insulated water bottles
• 1 set eating utensils with bowl
• Pocket knife / multi-tool
• Personal toiletries
• 1 pee bottle (small plastic bottle)
• Face cream
• Lip protection
• 4 carabiners & 5 meters of 6 mm rope

*items available for rent

This expedition is for people who are in good shape, and who are eager to push themselves physically and mentally. Though the skiing is quite demanding, it does not require significant skill (it is very much like walking with skis on).You will need to have very good cardiovascular endurance and the ability to pull a heavy sled (between 30-40 kilos) for several hours at a time. Towards the end of the day when we stop skiing, it is critical that you have the energy reserves to set up camp, melt snow for hot tea or cocoa, and make dinner. Most importantly you need to be able to regulate your body temperature so that you do not get too cold, or too hot while you are on the move. This expedition will encounter extremely cold conditions, and living in such cold conditions 24 hours a day can be very challenging. You do not have to be a world class athlete to participate in and enjoy this expedition, but every ounce of training and preparation will help to make the expedition more enjoyable and safer. Please contact us with further questions!

Chicago Tribune Sunday May, 8 2005

Vacation with Icy Reception
The trip to the North Pole has gripped mankind since 1818

Annie Aggens stood at the top of the world marveling at the frozen horizon of white stretching for millions of acres. A step in any direction took her south. For a moment, until the ice of the Arctic Ocean shifted, she was positioned at the North Pole.

The brief visit to the northernmost spot on the planet culminated a frigid two-week April journey from Chicago. Aggens and six fellow travelers crossed open leads that could plunge them into 12,000 feet of icy water, negotiated rubble blocks of ice on skis and courted frostbite from a deadly wind that threatened to freeze exposed flesh.

The effort expended added to the satisfaction of reaching 90 degrees north. "When we got there," says Aggens, 34, of Wilmette, "it was really sweet."

The idea, the mystique, the romance of the North Pole, has gripped mankind's psyche in earnest at least since 1818 when the British sought a Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

During her pause at the Pole, Aggens, a student of Arctic history who trained by dragging tires tied around her waist through city streets, let her mind drift to past explorers who opened the path north. Ships were trapped in cement-like ice and expeditions endured harsh winters while crews perished from scurvy. All the while hardy leaders dreamed of fame, glory and riches, of scientific and geographic revelations and of history writing their names in capital letters.

Aggens thought of Elisha Kent Kane, Charles Francis Hall, Fridtjof Nansen, Frederick Cook, Matthew Henson and Robert Peary, and the controversy of 1909, when the argument over who reached the North Pole first erupted.

Against that dramatic backdrop, it seems somewhat curious that citizen adventurers of the 21st Century, guided by firms such as the aptly named Northwest Passage of Wilmette, now take vacations at the Pole. From the North Shore to the North Pole.

Neither governmentally nor militarily selected as in days gone by, clients willing to spend $15,000-plus and committed to pushing their bodies 78 miles northward in minus-35-degree cold, qualify. This is a holiday for those who would rather recline on the white snow of the far north instead of the white sands of the tropics.

Still, many find it surreal the Pole is visited routinely.

"A lot of people look at you for a while," Aggens says. "`Surely she doesn't mean the North Pole.'"

`What's there?'

The North Pole is a moving target in the Arctic Ocean. Unlike the South Pole, it is not on land. It does not stay still, either, and frequently those who camp near the Pole awake to find they have floated miles backward.

"The average adult question is, `What hotel is there?'" says Rick Sweitzer, the operator of Northwest Passage who has led groups to the North Pole 12 times since 1993.

Also commonly asked: "What's there when you get there?" Except for flags tour operators raise, it's snow and ice as far as the eye can see.

Sweitzer led the first commercial trip to the North Pole when other adventure travel companies thought the notion was outlandish.

"We asked people to write wills," Sweitzer says. "It cost about $20,000 to get them to trust us with their lives."

Aided by expert musher Paul Schurke of Ely, Minn., Sweitzer mapped out a plan recreating Peary's last two degrees of latitude gain, or about 130 miles. Departing from Resolute Bay in Northern Canada by dog team, the leaders guided 11 civilians to the Pole. It fulfilled a dream of Sweitzer's and nobody died. The group partied with vodka and beer.

"We had a remarkable adventure," says Sweitzer, now 50. "It was one of the finer moments of my life, without a doubt. And I knew I was in business."

He was, but the game has changed. Over the last decade, the starting point has moved from Resolute to Siberia to Norway. The price soared to more than $27,000, then dropped to $15,500 as the location changed. "Champagne flights," taking those who merely wish to stand at the Pole without fighting the elements, were added and cost $13,500.

Iridium phones are carried for rescue protection. The method of approach now is skiing. There are many competing guides of many nationalities jumping off from a communal tent site at 89 degrees north called Borneo Base Camp.

This all reflects the age of the adventurer who wants more from a vacation than a tan.

Bill Burd, 61, a Chicago coin dealer, went north in 2003 because the Arctic fascinated him. He spent six days skiing 60 miles in minus-20 weather and was unfazed. "You start acclimating to the weather," Burd says. "You actually start sweating." His reaction upon arrival at the Pole? "Wow, I'm really here," Burd says.

Burt Meyer, 79, a retired toy inventor from Downers Grove, lost 15 pounds in 15 days in 1995 despite eating 6,000 calories daily.

In his family, he was "kind of a hero," Meyer says. Acquaintances weren't impressed. "They said, `You're an idiot and you're back and we're glad to see you.' No one else ever went on my recommendation," he says.

Those who go, Sweitzer says of the approximately 80 clients he has guided to the Pole on the ice and about 80 more via champagne flights, are "big adventure type-A's and polar aficionados. There's quite a bug."

April is the safe season. Any stay beyond May 1 risks more spring breakup than is wise.

For those with a polar passion, the ignorance of the many is baffling. Aggens, Sweitzer and Burd all said the average Joe thinks the North Pole is in Alaska. A century ago that geographic blind spot would be less common in the general populace. The nation's biggest news was the quest for the Pole and the competing expeditions of Cook and Peary.

Who's on first?

Nearly 100 years later, no one is positive either Cook or Peary made it.

It is telling that only a few weeks ago a team of adventurers completed a 37-day, 475-mile mush to the Pole five hours faster than Peary to demonstrate it was possible he did it as he said in 1909.

It is telling that only a few weeks ago a new book called "True North" by Bruce Henderson was released, offering a case that Cook might have made it first in 1908. Cook, Henderson wrote, was victimized by a smear campaign.

When Sweitzer heard Henderson's premise he said, "Oh my God." That's because Cook's claim was largely discredited 96 years ago and he has acquired few fresh disciples. Cook's credibility is weakened more because his declaration of climbing 20,320-foot Mt. McKinley first was shredded and years later he was imprisoned for stock fraud.

In his seminal work, "The Arctic Grail," the late Canadian historian Pierre Berton called Cook "a con man" and "the prince of losers" in Arctic exploration. Yet Cook made remarkable forays into the Arctic and Antarctic and is supported by The Frederick A. Cook Society, a non-profit organization aided by descendants. The society believes history has treated Cook unfairly.

Peary's first-to-the-Pole claim initially was applauded as the genuine article, although recent examination of his diaries raised issues.

"I'm a Peary believer," Sweitzer says. "I have always believed it. I believe it on faith."

Bert Peary Stafford, a great-grandson of Peary's, is a 56-year-old history teacher in Portland, Ore. Stafford says he thinks improved scientific sophistication ultimately will prove Peary's assertion.

Stafford says he has been aware of the family fame "since I was conscious. We had relics around the house. We had a polar bear rug. I still have the admiral's sextant."

The Peary name carried weight in Resolute when Stafford and his brother, Gregory Peary Stafford, showed up in 1997 on a Sweitzer-led North Pole dogsled trip. "I was treated like Robert Redford," Stafford says.

Every April 6, the anniversary of Peary's recorded date at the North Pole, Stafford lectures his five classes on his renowned relation. In Stafford's telling, Peary makes it first.

Following in the footsteps

The wind was constantly in their faces, cutting like a too-sharp razor. The temperature plummeted to minus-35 and the windchill to minus-50.

"If you took your mitts off for 30 seconds, your fingers got chilled immediately," says Keith Heger, 29, an outdoor winter recreation instructor from Morton Grove. "It was cold. It was relentless. You're in your tent and it's still cold."

Sweitzer, Aggens, Heger, and four others skied together. Sweitzer, whose fingers annually are frostbitten in the north, called it the coldest North Pole trip he has taken. Even more surprising was the number of leads, or open-water gaps in the ice. Some were 6 to 10 feet wide. They were like fences guarding the Pole, Aggens says. "There was a lot more open water than I thought there would be," says Kevin DeVries, 37, of Pinckney, Mich., who runs a communications firm.

Only 1 1/4 miles from the Pole, the team came upon a lead 100 feet wide. It was 4:30 p.m. and, hoping the water would freeze overnight, the skiers camped. The lead froze by morning. But the ice drifted south and an expected hour sprint turned into five hours of hard slogging.

Heger packed a Santa Claus outfit--hat, red pullover and white beard--to unveil at the Pole, but the cold intimidated him. "It didn't get pulled out of the bag," he says.

DeVries says he could see how Peary or Cook might miss the Pole because a high tech GPS told the Northwest Passage team it was on the right spot only for seconds. "It's elusive," DeVries says.

Aggens knew where she was. Stinging hands and numbness in her face provided a North Pole welcome.

"The [explorers] had it tough," she says. "But we didn't have it so easy either. We had to work for it."

Peary and Cook returned to civilization seeking recognition for eternity. Aggens returned to Chicago with her own Arctic Grail fulfilled and a different reward in mind. "I'm going surfing in Florida," she says.

-Written by Lew Freedman Back to top

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