What if your life revolved around leading groundbreaking polar expeditions? In 1986, polar explorer Ann Bancroft became the first woman to ski to the North Pole after a chance encounter with Will Steger.
What if your life revolved around leading groundbreaking polar expeditions? In 1986, polar explorer Ann Bancroft became the first woman to ski to the North Pole after a chance encounter with Will Steger.
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Shelby Stanger:
It is winter and getting outside might require a little more bundling up and planning than usual. But for those who can learn to embrace the cold like polar explorer Ann Bancroft, winter can be a magical time of year to go adventuring.
Ann Bancroft:
I feel my energy rise when it snows, when it's cold and crisp. I don't exactly know why, but there's something about those cold places that is utterly exhilarating.
Shelby Stanger:
Ann has never shied away from the cold. In 1986, she was the first woman to ski to the North Pole. Ann went on to lead many more groundbreaking expeditions, and in 1995 she was inducted into the National Woman's Hall of Fame. I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI co-op Studios production brought to you by Capital One.
Ann wanted to be an explorer ever since she was a kid. By the time she was in her twenties, she had made voyages to Denali and the northern most parts of Canada. At home in Minnesota, Ann worked as a teacher and she had a side job at a local outdoor store. One evening while Ann was working the register at the store, a polar explorer named Will Steger walked in. Will was pretty well known in the outdoor community in the 1980s. He'd completed the longest recorded Arctic crossing and he was about to set out on another expedition to the North Pole. So you're working at mountaineering store and Will Steger walks in.
Ann Bancroft:
He walks in, he wants to trade a slideshow for some carabiners, and I knew who he was. I knew the trip was percolating because it would make the papers every once in a while, but it wasn't national or anything, and it was just word of mouth that I heard that they had decided to go from six people to eight people because the ice was so rough and that meant that they needed more food and fuel, which meant oddly that they were going to have to add one more sled. And that started getting them thinking and the co-leader of the expedition said, "Well, this is the '80s. Maybe we should take a woman and that might help our fundraising."
I always tease these guys because it's like, well, that wasn't a very elegant door opening for the first woman, but I went diving through that window like nobody's business. I knew it was an opportunity, but the thing that was amazing about that time in my life is, I'm pretty young and I've done a lot of expeditions, but nothing on any sort of public scale. And I was sure that I wouldn't qualify for the team, and there were probably a dozen women that interviewed. But it was like something inside of me said, if you don't try, you'll never forgive yourself because this is your childhood dream. So I interviewed and then of course I get on and my world changes.
But I don't know what that thing, that inner voice that made me acknowledge because I never thought I was that sort of aware, but that acknowledging that there would be no forgiveness of myself for not trying, because I was petrified. I was petrified to fail and just get in there and try and muck it up. It changed everything.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you know why he picked you?
Ann Bancroft:
I think I got on the trip in part... I was just with Will. I should have asked him point-blank. My climbing partner on Denali in '83, we had a couple of mishaps and he got hypothermia at the summit and it was kind of an epic descent, and I think I interviewed with Will for three days in Ely, Minnesota up at his cabin, very remote. I remember we had this guy in common and he had dog sledded with my climbing partner when he was a young guy. I think Will called him and sort of said, "What is she like when the chips is down and humor is really important?" And Tim said, she's a goofball. I don't know what he said, but he somehow expressed even during the hardships, we had fun.
Shelby Stanger:
When Ann was chosen to be part of the team, she was pretty surprised. She had experience in extreme situations, but she had never mushed or used sled dogs before. As soon as she got word that she was going to the North Pole, Ann started training, it took the team over two years to prepare. The group was set to start in Northwest Canada and travel a thousand miles to the North Pole. They would ski through frigid temperatures like minus 70 degrees, completely unsupported. What was the goal of the expedition?
Ann Bancroft:
The goal was really just to see if we could travel strictly without any outside assistance by dog team. We were wearing a mix of the old world. We had seal skin pants with our Gore-Tex jacket, so it was just really an interesting merging of the old and the new, but we were traveling traditionally and that really intrigued people. I think that the human spirit was being demonstrated in that way and in 1986 you didn't hear about anybody going to the North Pole since the early explorers. There were just one and a few and there was very little way to get that out into the rest of the world. Because we're so used to social media and all of these other ways of talking, talking on a satellite phone and directly going into a classroom or something. We could barely get a radio message out. So it was an adventure that really grabbed people and we all were just curious if we could do it, if we had the muster and the grit to do it. And so off we went.
Shelby Stanger:
What a great time. What were some of the highlights, the stories that you love telling from this trip?
Ann Bancroft:
Well, I like telling so many stories from this trip because it was transformative for me. But I mean, I started out on Ellsmere Island, the top of Canada. One night my job, we were shuttling to that to get to the ice cap to begin the journey. And I'm all by myself with some dogs. I got about 20 dogs, maybe less, and suddenly these white wolves surround us. So there was just so much about that trip that I could tell stories about. Falling in the ocean was probably one of my epic moments when the ice gave way and I'm sitting there. That's the one thing I told the media when I left that I didn't want to have happen is get wet and I was wet. And I'm hypothermic for three days and I'm sleeping with my tent mates at this point because at that moment you realize, those three days I realized just how isolated we are. That we could maybe get a plane in there at some point, but we're on our own. And that's when I felt like I was an early explorer.
Shelby Stanger:
Out in the Arctic, Ann realized that it is not a gray and blue world. Every color in the rainbow sparkled as the sun hit the ice crystals. Despite the beauty and memorable moments, the trip was also challenging. Ann is relatively small in stature and there was a lot of pressure for her to prove herself and her strength to her male teammates. Sometimes that was difficult and lonely, but Ann used her sense of humor to get through. One of her mottoes is, don't take yourself too seriously. With that positive attitude and her incredible drive, Ann was able to push through to the finish line. After 56 days, the team made history, becoming the first known expedition to trek to the North Pole, totally unsupported. Anne's pioneering record as the first woman to the top of the world put her in the spotlight. What happened after this expedition?
Ann Bancroft:
After the expedition, I came home totally ill-equipped for what I was to meet. What I met on that tarmac at the airport was thousands of people, the governor, all of this hoopla. It was intimidating. I was super shy. I didn't understand just the excitement of this first woman thing to the top of the world. I mean, it was one thing for the eight or the six of us that got to the top of the world by dog team, but then this first woman thing just exploded. And so I was really, I have to be honest, would be to say that for about two years I was unmoored. I felt very undeserving of the attention. Now they call it the imposter syndrome, but I wondered, why me? I felt like you could have done it if you wanted to. There's a lot of amazing women. It just took me a long, long time to get comfortable with all the hoopla and the hoopla just kept coming.
And when we got back in early May of '86, my school was still in session. And so I took a retiring husky and we went off to this little K through eight school and I spent the day there and they read their poetry about the Arctic to me. They talked about their math lessons, they understood the currents of the Arctic Ocean and why we could go 10 miles north by dog team. And then as we slept, we would get 10 miles south and then we would get a zero some day. The eighth graders started to understand that because the teacher incorporated that into math. Geography, math, science, literature, music. They were singing songs about the Arctic.
They were writing Inuit kids in the higher parts of Canada as pen pals. The school was alive with my journey, and I'm getting goosebumps now, but it was, my colleague showed me inadvertently that I could be a teacher outside of the four walls of the classroom. And that changed, that helped me settle over those next two years of being lost and wondering what to do. And I thought, if ever I do another large expedition, I can't just go from my own ambition like I did in '86. I've got to do something bigger. As soon as I started incorporating education into my expeditions, boy, I just calmed down and I became... I found home, I guess is the best way to say it.
Shelby Stanger:
Since returning from the Arctic in the 1980s, Ann has become a world renowned explorer, but she really identifies more as an educator. As her outdoor career continued to grow, Ann wrote grants that allowed her to incorporate education into all of her expeditions. When we come back, she talks about how she's woven these two passions together over the course of her career.
After Ann Bancroft's 1986 expedition to the North Pole, her life completely changed. Ann became a pioneer for women in the outdoor industry and the media loved her. By 1991, Ann started organizing all women's expeditions. In 1993, she led the first all women's team to the South Pole, making history yet again. The expedition was over 600 miles long and lasted 67 days. How'd you come up with idea to lead the first all women's trip to the South Pole?
Ann Bancroft:
After a couple of years, I got pretty frustrated. I'm on the cusp of Title IX, so I fought for that and I love sport, but I got frustrated with just the constant, well, just the remarks. "Did you ever get together with those guys?" And there were catty remarks and some serious, and the doubting. And I thought, well, maybe there's more work I can do here. And so that's when I started to think all woman. And then of course, once I articulated that that's what I was going to do and the crush of naysayers came in, I just dug in my heels.
It's a wonderful thing to have been at this for 30 some years. I feel really privileged. I've seen parts of the world that have changed environmentally. Nobody's going to be able to go to the North Pole by dog team the way we did in '86. I mean, it's horrible. And we've also witnessed positive change. I had no corporate sponsors in '92 for our all women's trip. They're risk averse. They just wouldn't come forward. We went anyway because fathers of daughters and kids believed in us, and we went, the old- fashioned hard grassroots way, and I don't want to repeat it, but it taught me tons of things.
Shelby Stanger:
What was it like to lead a all woman's expedition in 93?
Ann Bancroft:
I think leading that all women's trip was really in so many ways... It's something I had never done before because I'd always traveled with men, but it was like taking a deep breath. There was a different kind of proving that was going on and it wasn't the same and everybody was relaxed there. I don't know. It was a really different atmosphere right out of the gates. I can't say that it was better. It was just so different, and that was exciting. It was also scary because all eyes were on us because it hadn't been done. And there were so many naysayers back in the early '90s, late '80s. I mean, when you said you were going to pull a 250 pound sled from sea level up to 14,000 feet, people just shake their head. They don't have any experience in the out of doors, but they want to tell you you can't do it.
And so you just, like my whole life, you just have to plow forward somehow and change people's attitudes by doing. And that's what we kind of did. But it was fun. We had good time. I will say though, there was one time on the trip, as a leader, and there were four of us, and nobody is ever, you're not all four shooting from all barrels. There's always somebody who's a little down or injured or something is going on. And so it's a team. And so it's up and down, up and down. And at one point, I don't know what it was, it was just a culmination of so much, but I was so strong on that trip, and maybe it was because I was holding the whole vision, the education, the project, there was something like another force charging me ahead.
And I was so frustrated with my group one day and I just was like, "I just want you to stop processing and be more like the men." And then I felt so embarrassed for thinking that and writing that in my journal. I never said it out loud, but oh, I'm like, that wasn't very feminist.
Shelby Stanger:
Since leading that groundbreaking trip in the early '90s, Ann has dedicated her career to empowering women and girls. She's worked with educators to create curriculum about subjects like water, peace and conflict resolution, team building and going after dreams. For each new expedition, Ann and her team go into the archives to revise and republish relevant lesson plans. They've created an extensive library based on her 30 plus years of groundbreaking expeditions. In the early two 2000s, Ann and her teammate were the first women to cross Antarctica using skis and sails. In 2015, she led a paddling trip down the Ganges River. Even now as this episode goes live, Ann is preparing to journey through the waterways of New Zealand.
I've interviewed so many adventures and a lot of them come home after a big expedition and they're depressed. But I think if you have this reason for being after the expedition, you're teaching, you're sharing it with the world, I think that's it. I think that's the cure to those post adventure blues.
Ann Bancroft:
I think that's part of the cure because I don't think it fits for everybody, so I'll amend that slightly. I think the other cure that I have learned, because it's taken a lot of trips and a lot of coming homes, is I now frame the expedition pre, during and post. So I include the coming home part and all the obligations that one has for coming home. So if you have a sponsor, your job is not done. So the adventure part is done. And I think the thing that often unmoors a lot of us is we come home from this amazing experience. One, it's hard to translate that in words for people, but two, you've got demands on you and that you don't feel like doing those demands. So you have to build them into the overall plan. So then your expectation is managed to when the end is really there and by then you're also processing and you're giving yourself space for that process, and it's less depressing. I'm not as depressed when I come home. In fact, I'm not depressed when I come home. I'm different. I move the expectation guardrail.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm curious. Fear of failure and fear. Those are two things that keep a lot of people from pursuing their wild idea, going on an adventure or making a change that will propel their life positive, but scary. How do you approach failure and fear?
Ann Bancroft:
Well, we've talked about the humor and I'm like, be that kid who hops on the bike and burns her knees. It's like, go for it. Because I think as adults we get more and more cautious and less risky. We try less. So I want to keep that 8-year-old very much alive in me, and I want to keep my humor alive. And then I would say, I tell people all the time, get lost. You're going to get lost. It's not the end of the earth. I get lost on every one of my expeditions, at least for a day or a half a day or a moment.
My turn at the navigation, or I don't do the math right when I'm navigating at night and it's, wrong turn and all this white or something like that. That's when you use the humor and you laugh at yourself and you dust off and you make it right. And I make sure that I always talk about my failures in the mix of my successes. So yes, I've been so lucky to see the top, the bottom of the world and points in between, but things don't go according to plan. And that's part and parcel to expeditions and to adventure and to life.
Shelby Stanger:
Ann also started a nonprofit called the Ann Bancroft Foundation. The organization has done all sorts of incredible work, like helping girls build and launch an app, take driver's ed classes, and even see manatees for the very first time. Their goal is to help girls achieve their dreams and reach their full potential. If you're interested in learning more about Ann and her work, check out the Ann Bancroft Foundation website at www.annbancroftfoundation.com. Before we sign off, we want to leave you with a clip of a song written about Ann before her 1986 polar expedition.
Speaker 3:
Every long journey is made of small steps, is made of the courage, the feeling, we get. You know it is waiting and waiting for you, the journey's the only thing you want to do. We cannot know what you go through or see through your eyes. We will surround you the pride undisguised. In any direction whatever you view, you're taking our love there with you.
Shelby Stanger:
That song was written by an artist named Ann Reed. We'll put a link to her music in the show notes, but it's this song that inspired our producer, Sylvia Thomas, for recommending we interview Ann Bancroft for this show. Ann was Sylvia's childhood hero growing up in Minnesota. She remembers this song. She listened to it, and we're so glad we made it happen. Thank you so much to Sylvia.
If you liked this interview with Ann Bancroft, check out our episode from 2020 with Chris Fagan, who broke a record when she skied across the South Pole with her husband.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hannah Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow this show. Take time to write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.