Tag: Ben Saunders

Why bother leaving the house?

In this inspirational TED Talk, adventurer and explorer Ben Saunders motivates us to get outside more. Not because it’s always comfortable, pleasant, and happy, but because that’s where the meat of life is, “the juice that we can suck out of our hours and days.”

Ben Saunders: What I learned from crossing Antarctica on skis, alone

TED:

On November 8, 2017, a plane dropped Saunders — who was 40 at the time — at Berkner Island, just off the coast of the Weddell Sea (to see a map, click here). Like Ernest Shackleton (although Shackleton was ultimately unsuccessful), Saunders was aiming to reach a point on the southern coast where the Ross Ice Shelf meets the land. For the next seven weeks, his only connections to the outside world were a satellite phone (only for emergencies), a tracker to keep a remote team aware of his position on an hourly basis, and a smartphone he used to write emails and blog posts. He skied an average of 15.5 miles during 9- to 10-hour days while pulling a sledge that held all the food and equipment he’d need for the journey and weighed 300 pounds at the trip’s start.