Climate has a direct relationship
to the production of food.
The Syrian struggle followed six years of incredible drought.
With less food, people are more likely to pick up a weapon and go fight.
If you want to understand what's going to happen in the rest of the world,
you need to look no further than the polar regions.
Right now, the arctic is warming
at twice the global average
and to not react to that
is, essentially, a suicide mission.
I'm about to do an unsupported mission
from land in Northern Canada
to the North Pole.
Are you guys preparing?
Yeah, we're leaving in a couple of days for the North Pole.
Nice.
We're going to leave from the top of Ellesmere
It'll be about a 50 to 55 day walk.
Is it all of you?
No, just the two of us.
I've done the seven summits
so the top of every peak on each continent.
This is going to be the toughest thing I've ever done.
Being prepared for pain,
of having a huge weight behind us,
trying to get us through this ice rubble.
The arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents.
So you walk on the sea ice.
Nothing is more difficult than a North Pole mission unassisted.
They're trying to ski to the North Pole with,
polar bears and open water
-50 degree temperatures
and no one around for 3,000 miles.
It's insane.
I'm a photographer and it's one of my great passions.
It's also my great mode of expression.
You come back with images
that generate that level of emotional response
and helping people fall in love with their world
as a means to wanting to protect it and care.
He's a big advocate for climate change.
Nothing communicates a warming climate easier than the melting ice.
We're seeing more and more water.
We're seeing a smaller icecap with a thinner ice.
So, again, all these sort of aspects are just a part of
this changing world.
That is the reason I'm doing this
potentially deadly and very dangerous,
certainly challenging mission,
to basically raise awareness on this idea,
this region is endangered.
That means your region is endagered, whether you know that or not.
The sledges will probably be around 350 maybe, 360 pounds each.
Mark and I are doing an unsupported and un-resupplied mission.
Means that we're not getting any outside help
from the moment we set off until the moment we arrive.
Great!
We have the toilet paper.
You have understand, when you operate in very cold temperatures,
You need to be very systematic.
This is bear protection in the event that a gun is out of reach.
If I'm going to go down, I'll go down swinging.
We've got some issues with
some missing cargo that was
left behind in Manitoba.
So now there's the logistics of trying to get that stuff back here
and uh,
I've just been informed that there's a blizzard on its way.
So,
we are going to have some difficulty.
There's definitely a cutoff to being picked up at the North Pole.
So backtracking yourself from there is
what defines whether or not you can go or not.
That's the bad news.
So it's taken me four years to get to this point.
It used to be that it was a simple proposition.
In this instance, it's sort of harks back to the old days of expeditions,
where you have to organize every aspect of it
in order to set foot on the ice.
It took a long time to find a pilot that was
both qualified and crazy enough
to want to take on this mission.
Well, now we know you can fly!
[laughter]
This is probably the most dangerous thing I've ever done
in aviation.
I mean, I'm totally unsupported.
It's a single engine airplane.
There's no help within thousands of miles.
It's minus 40.
If I land, and on the ice,
even if I hit a ball of ice about this big,
I could break the ski.
The airplane will cartwheel.
We'll be injured.
The plane will be wrecked.
There's polar bears coming.
Rescue's probably two to three weeks away.
There's a high probability of freezing to death.
Lots of pilots have died doing this.
So there's a lot of risk involved, a lot of costs.
This has a high likelihood
of being the last time that people actually
walk to the North Pole from land.
My bags were left behind there.
So I've got not jacket, no gloves, no hat.
The days that immediately proceed departure
on an expedition
are riddled with all kinds
of different emotions and anxieties and thoughts,
especially if you have to wait for other weather or equipment.
Gives enough time for your mind your to start spinning and think about a lot of things.
The, uh, possibility of failure,
missing family.
Hello, boo-boo
You saw a guinea pig today?
My two little girls are my greatest discovery, really, and it's ongoing.
So it's a gift that keeps on giving.
There's sadness already,
you're already missing home, missing family,
that's hurting already
and knowing that feeling is going to get greater
every single day we're behind.
The longer you wait the more thoughts creep into that process
and, uh,
it's never the greatest thing for your mind,
but the minute you set foot on the ice, then you're into it and
there's no turning back.
I love you, poppa.
I love you.
The purpose of this is just to go through some
basic protocols in case of mayday emergency or what not.
Obviously, I think the last thing you guys should load is a basic survival bag,
in case the plane does plunk through as we're loading
I don't want to be standing there, watching all our stuff go to the bottom,
and we're going to die.
Sometimes it can be more challenging than one thinks to find a good landing area,
particularly these days where there's very little melting ice.
There's a strong chance that this can go wrong really badly.
I'll do everything I can to prevent that, but like I said to Sebastian,
these guys have to understand,
I'm going to fly over them
and if I don't like what I see to land, I'm going to leave them there,
which I'd hate to do.
I don't know if I could live with myself afterwards.
I really don't let fear govern my actions.
Sure, Dave can't land in some areas that are too messy
and with too much rubble.
My responsibility is to make sure that I find an area that he can land in.
I've thought this through time and again.
You know,
I'm a professional.
You've got to go into this with a mindset that this is going to be
the biggest hell
that we're moving into
that I've ever experienced in my life.
I don't have a death wish.
The risks that I take are very calculated due to also, now, that I have two little baby girls.
Look, I choose to do everything I can because
it's within my ability to do so.
I found a way that is
both exciting and galvanizing in some ways,
bringing the dynamics of the planet
to people who would never be able to visit these places.
So that's what I can do.
Will it change the course of humanity?
You know, I think it's just a little drop in the bucket.
I'm contributing my drop.
It's a call for everyone to contribute their drop and
I know that we can resolve this.
You know, this has been three years of intense preparation
and lots of sacrifices and large amounts of money.
I'm very redundant in preparation
and I have multiples of everything.
I had six fuel pumps
and out of those only one worked.
We ended up having total failure of our stoves
and it leaked fuel directly on my hands
as I was trying to fix it.
I experienced pretty severe frostbite
at the end of my fingers
and pretty instantly, realized that I was going to be in trouble.
It's like pouring liquid nitrogen on your fingers.
It's not pleasant.
We couldn't have been more prepared.
It's just that sometimes you also need a little luck.
and unfortunately, we came short on that this time.
I mean, look, this is my first personal expedition failure
so I've got a lot of reckoning and I will definitely attempt this again.
This is not farewell
and I'll come back and conquer the North Pole.