The Problem With Colin O'Brady

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Colin O'Brady prepares to fly back north after his Antarctic expedition, Jan. 3, 2019. The media
embraced his accomplishment as "historic," but questions about the legitimacy of his claims
from the adventure community soon arose.
TA M A R A M E R I N O, T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S , R E D U X
A DV E N T U R E NEWS
His tale of crossing Antarctica was

riveting. But how much was
fiction?
Colin O’Brady says he crossed Antarctica alone and “unassisted.” Polar
experts say he’s embellishing his accomplishments in pursuit of fame.
BY A A RO N T E A S DA L E
P U B L I S H E D F E B RUA RY 3, 2 0 2 0 • 4 5 M I N R E A D
While skiing across Antarctica, American Colin O’Brady, the self-

proclaimed first person to ski alone and unassisted across the frozen
continent, came to what he describes in his new book, The Impossible
First, as “a hellish stretch...one of the hardest places on the continent to
get across.” A polar wind he estimates at “fifty or even sixty miles an hour”
lashed him as he entered a precarious area that was “off the map—
unreachable and inaccessible.” Potential rescue aircraft cannot land here,
he explains, because the terrain’s jagged, wind-whipped ice formations
“made landing impossible.”
Before he began his journey, O’Brady writes, safety managers for the
company that would rescue him in an emergency, Antarctica Logistics and
Expeditions (ALE), ominously told him of this area, “If you call for help in
here, youfirst
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reasons no one had achieved this crossing before, he writes.
“With my next steps,” O’Brady states, “I’d be on my own in a way I’d never Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
been before.”
It’s a riveting description, but like other critical elements in his book and
promotion of his Antarctica expedition, key details do not withstand
scrutiny. Safety managers for ALE, which has helped organize and plan
expeditions to many remote areas of the continent for 35 years, deny
saying he couldn’t be rescued. None of the polar experts O’Brady mentions
consulting before his trip considered his journey impossible. And in the
“off the map” location he describes above, O’Brady was in fact on a graded
and flagged vehicle route used frequently by wealthy tourists where a call
from his satellite phone could summon rescue by ski-equipped Twin Otter
airplanes within hours.
A Controversy Is Born
In the final months of 2018, people around the world were captivated as
the 33-year-old O’Brady raced the 49-year-old Briton Louis Rudd to
complete what they both called the “first-ever solo, unsupported,
unassisted” crossing of Antarctica. Through 54 days and 932 marrow-
freezing miles, the men pulled 300-pound sleds alone and with no outside
assistance—even accepting a cup of coffee at the South Pole research
station would disqualify them from claiming the feat. A newcomer to polar
expeditions, O’Brady finished two days ahead of the more experienced
Rudd. Global media coverage was rapturous, with the young adventurer
gracing magazine covers, speaking at the Smithsonian Institution, and
seeing his hometown of Portland, Oregon declare Colin O’Brady Day. His
appearance on CNN was typical, where he declared “No human has ever
done this before....[accomplishing it] was extraordinary after so many
people had failed trying.”
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Colin O'Brady, right, and Louis Rudd share a flight back to Punta Arenas, Chile, after completing
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their solo journeys in Antarctica. The two men spent almost two months pulling heavy sleds in a
race across more than 900 miles of Antarctica.
TA M A R A M E R I N O, T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S , R E D U X
National Geographic also reported on O’Brady and Rudd during their treks
in 2018, and when O’Brady completed his journey, described it as
“historic” and “unsupported.” After reviewing those stories and gathering
more information, we've amended them with an editor's note.
Prominent leaders of the adventure and polar communities were less

enthusiastic about O’Brady’s claims. Conrad Anker, Alex Honnold, Mike
Horn, Borge Ousland, and others spoke out against him, accusing O’Brady
of exaggerating his accomplishment or worse.
Over the last several months, National Geographic has investigated

O’Brady’s claims. He agreed to three phone interviews but recently
stopped responding to requests for comment. We also spoke with an array
of leading polar explorers, including some of O’Brady’s mentors, many of
whom believe he has distorted the truth in pursuit of fame.
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Protect your
O’Brady “didn’t do what [he] advertised,” says Australian polar explorer

Eric Philips, cofounder and president of the International Polar Guides
Association. “This wasn’t some Last Great Polar Journey. Rather, it was a
truncated route that was a first in only a very limited way.”
“O’Brady needs to be called out for his false claims,” says writer Jon
Krakauer.
What’s undeniably true is that O’Brady arrived in Antarctica with relatively

little experience and skied alone into the teeth of the world’s coldest
continent for nearly two months straight. It’s a true sporting feat that
deserves respect. So why the controversy?
I don’t think anyone looked at the route

[O'Brady] was skiing and thought it was even
remotely impossible. The reason no one had
done it is because no one thought it was
worthwhile, in the sense of being anything
record-breaking.
ERIC LARSEN, POLAR EXPLORER
The Rules of Adventure

O’Brady claims to be the first person to ski alone and unsupported across
Antarctica, but in the opinion of many of the world’s leading polar guides
and historians, that distinction belongs to Norwegian Borge Ousland,
considered by many to be the modern era’s most accomplished polar
explorer.
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Shortly after O’Brady completed his trek, prominent American climber

Conrad Anker, who has made more than a dozen expeditions to climb the
continent’s frozen mountains, tweeted, “@borgeousland is the first to cross
Antarctica unsupported. Full Stop.”
In 1997, the 34-year-old Norwegian pioneered a new route across the

frozen continent, much of it never traveled by humans, over 64 days and
1,864 miles, to achieve one of the world’s last great geographical feats.
Antarctica had now been crossed solo.
“I was thinking, is it possible to go

all the way from one coast to the
other, almost 3,000 kilometers?”
Ousland says. “At that time nobody
had.”
Staff at the McMurdo Station

scientific base at the time recall the
day he arrived—a bearded, weather-
battered figure in mirrored
sunglasses and a headband,
emerging from the vast ice pan, a
speck that grew into a man, alone,
humble, and of few words. A
throwback to the Heroic Age of
Antarctic Exploration, Ousland had
In 1997, Norwegian Borge Ousland pioneered
a new route across Antarctica. Over 64 days,
just achieved an objectively more
he skied alone, covering 1,864 m... Read More difficult and dangerous journey than
PHOTOGRAPH BY KJELL OVE
STORVIK O’Brady’s—roughly twice as long
and over wild terrain. Yet social
media did not exist at the time, and
the feat attracted only minor media
attention.
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So how can O’Brady claim a first crossing? Ousland pulled his sled with his
own muscle power, a method known as “manhauling,” for a significantly
greater distance than O’Brady’s entire journey, but on a few limited
occasions, he used a small kitelike device to boost his speed when the wind
was just right. At the time, the polar community did not consider
Ousland’s simple sail as assistance, but rather as an elegant innovation.
In recent years, with most of the Earth’s major geographical features

traversed and ascended, professional adventurers have looked for ways to
put new spins on old challenges, creating criteria for ever-more finely
sliced accomplishments and using subtle new qualifiers to claim sponsor-
and media-friendly “firsts.” About 15 years ago, the idea of counting wind
as a form of assistance was introduced.
In 2007, the website Adventure Stats set forth the first codified rules for
polar expeditions, defining qualifiers like “unassisted” and “unsupported”
to describe utilizing nothing but your own muscle-power and accepting no
aid or supplies from any outside source.
Many in the media are unaware of Ousland’s journey, and others of greater
magnitude in intervening years, and trumpet O’Brady as the first person to
cross Antarctica alone. O’Brady then shares these inaccurate honorifics on
his website and social media.
It might seem like hairsplitting, but these classifications create a

framework to build on earlier achievements and claim new firsts (while, in
this case, also inadvertently creating an opportunity to claim new, lesser
firsts that overshadow Ousland’s landmark feat). “The aim of categories is
to understand and communicate what is being done, or still to do,”
explains Antarctic explorer and author Damien Gildea. “They are
guidelines to quality and progress.”
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Ice British Commonwealth
Shelf Trans-Antarctic Expedition
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Ross Ice
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A Shrinking Challenge
Looking at a map of Antarctica, you might wonder how O’Brady’s 932-mile
route can be considered a crossing of “the entire continent,” as he calls it,
since it appears to start and end several hundred miles inland, especially
compared to the much longer journeys of Ousland, Mike Horn (who
completed a daring 3,169-mile solo kite-ski crossing of Antarctica in 2017),
and others.
The surface of Antarctica is in fact an ice cap up to 15,000-feet thick that

conceals a relatively small, rocky continent deep below. This shield of ice
includes two ancient ice shelves, the Ronne and the Ross, each
approximately the size of France, that extend across unseen ocean bays,
creating the quasi-circular shape we associate with the continent.
Ousland skied from water’s edge on the Ronne to water’s edge on the Ross.
When he undertook his expedition two decades ago, this was considered
the only way to claim a crossing of Antarctica.
“To me, Antarctica is what you see on a satellite map,” says Ousland,
noting the ice shelves have been a part of Antarctica for at least 100,000
years.
But there is a continent somewhere under there, detectable with remote

sensing equipment. In recent years, adventurers have begun claiming a
crossing by citing this unseen “coast.” Some, in order to please sponsors
and media, did this only after failing in their attempt at a full crossing.
Suddenly an Antarctic “crossing” had shrunk in half.
“If you have a picture in your mind [of an Antarctic crossing],” says
Philips, who believes a true crossing of the frozen continent must be from
water to water, “you just assume it's going to be from the outer edge of the
white blob to the other edge.”
Gildea, who has a glacier named after him in the continent’s Ellsworth
Mountains, insists anyone claiming a crossing must include the entire ice
cap and, “accept Antarctica for what it is.”
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However, adventurers eager to shorten the feat quickly seized on the new
abbreviated definition. An unsupported couple crossed in 2010, skiing
1,118 miles. A solo woman crossed (with two food drops) in 2012, skiing
1,084 miles. But O’Brady took the invisible coastline strategy to its extreme
—his journey was nearly 200 miles shorter than these earlier trips, and the
shortest route yet that anyone had claimed as a “crossing of the continent.”
Left: A member of the United States Antarctic

Program rides a snowmobile on the South Pole
Traverse (SPoT) or McMurdo-South Pole Highway.
O'Brady used the route for the final 366 miles of his
trek.
P H OTO G R A P H BY E L A I N E H O O D, N AT I O N A L
S C I E N C E F O U N DAT I O N
Right: Created in 2006 by the National Science

Foundation, the route is maintained to bring supplies
from the coast to the Amundsen-Scott Station at the
South Pole.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MIKE LUCIBELLA ,
U S A P/ N S F
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Put another way, it’s not so much that no one had been able to cross
Antarctica this way before, it’s that no one had defined a crossing in such
achievable terms.
The first person to attempt a solo, unsupported ski of this new version of
abbreviated crossing was Englishman Henry Worsley in 2016. Within 125
miles of completing the journey, he called for rescue due to a bout of
bacterial peritonitis, a disastrous infection, and later died in a hospital in
Chile. O’Brady frequently cites this tragedy in his promotion and media
appearances, writing in his book, “Worsley had died attempting the very
goal that Rudd and I were aiming for.”
What he fails to mention is the Brit was actually attempting a longer,
significantly more dangerous route and had already gone farther at the
time of his emergency extraction—solo, unsupported, and unassisted— Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
than O’Brady did in his entire journey.
O’Brady has built his personal brand around achieving the “impossible.”
Yet the veteran polar explorers National Geographic consulted for this
story used different descriptors for his trip, labeling it “achievable,”
“contrived,” “disappointing,” and “disingenuous.”
“I don’t think anyone looked at the route he was skiing and thought it was
even remotely impossible,” says American explorer Eric Larsen, one of the
guides O’Brady consulted to learn the skills of polar travel. “The reason no
one had done it is because no one thought it was worthwhile, in the sense
of being anything record-breaking."
“Enough people have done the route, or sections of the route, that you
have a satellite map, a GPS map, that ALE has provided,” Larsen says.
“Similar to what happened on Everest, Antarctica is being tamed. Which is
part of the reason why there are less experienced people doing it—it’s an
adventure tourism thing.”
In his book, O'Brady describes the completion of his expedition as a

“decades-long, never completed dream.” As he told The New York Times,
“people have been trying to do this for 100 years.”
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When asked by National Geographic who before him had attempted his
route, O’Brady demurred, “I don’t want to be the definitive source for
everything that’s ever happened in Antarctica.”
The history of exploration is basically

predicated on taking a man or woman’s word for
what they did. But then people like this come
along and by violating the code they make
everybody subject to skepticism and doubt.
D AV I D R O B E R T S , H I S T O R I A N A N D A D V E N T U R E W R I T E R
Why Does it Matter?

Tobrowse,
some,you
professional
accept the use adventure may
of cookies on our site.seem like
For more the frivolous
information pursuit
(e.g. on how ofcookies) visit our Cookie Policy.
to disable
foolhardy risk-takers. But in centuries past, adventurers were the driving

force in expanding our collective knowledge of the planet’s remote corners.
Even today, with few unknown places left to reveal, adventurers serve as Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
living laboratories of mental and physical endurance (think Alex Honnold

climbing El Capitan without ropes, showing what humans are capable of
when they train to control fear). At their best, they’re guardians of the
innate human desire to physically—not virtually—explore our
environments.
Just as there is a bright line between nonfiction and fiction in the

publishing and film worlds, so it is for professional adventurers. Revenues
from books, films, TV shows, speaking events, and sponsorships are
derived from the notion that what is being sold is real—the meaning can be
debated and the value to society, but the truth about the accomplishments
is the bedrock for this industry.
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“The history of exploration is basically predicated on taking a man or

woman’s word for what they did,” explains David Roberts, a dean of
American adventure writers and one of the first from the adventure
community to publicly criticize O’Brady’s claim. “But then people like this
come along and by violating the code they make everybody subject to
skepticism and doubt.”
An Origin Story
It’s clear O’Brady is a talented athlete who’s no stranger to epic challenges.
A collegiate swimmer at Yale, he set out after graduation on a yearlong
international trip at the age of 22, with money he’d saved painting houses.
While carousing on a beach in Thailand his legs were severely burned by a
flaming jump rope, he says, leaving him hospitalized for a month with
second and third degree burns. In his book, he recounts doctors telling
him he’d never walk the same again. Less than two years later he won the
amateur division of the Chicago Triathlon. Eager to see how far his genetic
gifts could take him, he quit his job as a commodities trader and spent the
next six years as a professional triathlete.
In 2016, red hot with ambition, he launched a new career as a professional

adventurer by setting a world speed record that still stands on the
Explorer’s Grand Slam (Last Degree). A convoluted crown concocted by
wealthy peak-baggers in 1998 that requires summiting the highest
mountain on every continent and skiing the last degree of latitude (69
miles) to each pole, it’s an exemplar of the postmodern age of adventure in
which feats are more logistical challenge than exploration.
It was chasing this globe-skipping record where O’Brady was introduced to

theWe
frozen
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and third polar travel.
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service, ski your
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and remember your website preferences. If you continue to
Pole, his first visit to Antarctica, he learned of Worsley, who was then in
the midst of his fateful journey. “I was fascinated that there was still this,
in my mind, iconic first that had been attempted but no one had done yet,” Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
O’Brady told National Geographic.
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For his ski to the North Pole he hired legendary Belgian polar guide Dixie
Dansercoer, who has two record-breaking Antarctic journeys of over 2,500
miles in his lengthy resume. Also in their group was a British father and
his two young adult sons, who Dansercoer says “wanted to fully enjoy the
experience.” The record in his sights, O’Brady had a different agenda.
“There was a discussion and Colin was very overpowering,” says

Dansercoer, who describes O’Brady as a “very ambitious young man.”
Dansercoer laments the effect the Explorer’s Grand Slam has on people’s
experience in polar regions. The family group, he says, was there for a
“deeper experience.” Eventually, O’Brady switched guides, joining a group
Eric Larsen happened to be leading that included another person chasing
the Explorer’s Grand Slam. Larsen says he and other guides were surprised
at the aggressive way O’Brady handled the transition, describing it as,
“Excessive—we still talk about it.”
“It was very hard for my clients to hear him denigrate the way they view
things,” Dansercoer explains. “He truly offended people.”
After the trip to the North Pole, Larsen found himself correcting O’Brady’s
exaggerated Instagram posts where he overstated the coldness of
temperatures and heaviness of his sled.
Later, Larsen was further disturbed by the inflated claims on the upstart
adventurer’s website once O’Brady’s Antarctica expedition kicked off. In an
attempt to impart a deeper understanding of traditional explorer’s ethics,
he sent a politely admonishing email to O’Brady’s wife and manager,
Jenna Besaw.
In his book, O’Brady never mentions Larsen, not even in the lengthy
acknowledgements. Nor does he mention that he paid a professional guide
to lead him to the pole. He does describe meeting Dansercoer while, “I was
preparing to cross to the North Pole” while the Belgian was “heading to the
Pole on his own expedition, guiding a family of Brits.”
Despite the polar community’s skepticism,

O’Brady took the concept and ran with it. Soon
his website unveiled his next adventure:
“The Impossible First.”
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A Man in a Hurry
After Worsley’s death, O’Brady saw his opportunity. He contacted Steve
Jones, expeditions manager for ALE, the logistics company that
orchestrates the vast majority of expeditions on the continent, and
announced his intention. But ALE has a strict screening process for
approving solo expeditions and informed O’Brady he lacked the proper
experience.
So O’Brady reached out to Dansercoer, who says he enjoys trying to instill

“strong values in the new generation of adventurers.” Dansercoer
coincidentally summers in O’Brady’s home state of Oregon and agreed to
be his mentor. Over email, FaceTime, and on Pacific beaches with sleds full
of heavy sand, Dansercoer trained the younger man in what he calls the
“fine art” of polar travel.
Finally, ALE and Dansercoer together agreed that if Colin completed a

traverse of Greenland’s ice cap, he could win approval for his Antarctic
expedition. Booked with other clients at the time, Dansercoer
recommended him to one of the polar world’s premier guiding services—
owned by none other than Borge Ousland. Only two months before the
planned start of his Antarctic journey, O’Brady joined a group led by one of
Ousland’s young guides for a 360-mile crossing of the world’s second
largest ice cap.
Problems arose almost immediately. Against the guiding service’s

recommendations, O’Brady had booked an early flight out of Greenland in
order to attend a meeting with one of his sponsors. According to trip
participants who wish to remain unidentified for fear of retribution,
O’Brady promptly started a power struggle with the guide, attempting to
undermine the authority of the man a few years his junior, and put heavy
pressure on the group to increase their speed to suit his schedule,
repeatedly “manipulating,” “denigrating,” and “bullying” its slowest
members and “really insulting people.”
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One group member points out their fellow travelers were working people
who’d saved and taken over a month away from their jobs and families for
the trip of a lifetime. They describe O’Brady’s “demotivating” outbursts,
which were often laced with profanities and particularly focused on the
two women in the group, demanding to know why they were so slow.
“I had dreamt about the trip for a long time and knew it was going to be Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
difficult,” says Anja Gundlfinger, a German neuroscientist and avid

outdoorswoman. “But we really suffered...Colin had his own agenda and
can be very pushy.”
When asked by National Geographic about this, O’Brady replied, “That is

definitely inaccurate.” He then declined to answer further questions.
Under O’Brady’s unrelenting pressure, according to Gundlfinger and other

trip members, the group skied more than 12 hours a day on little sleep and
sometimes covering more than 20 miles at a time while pulling heavy sleds
laden with their supplies. Finally, after both women had broken down in
tears and with Gundlfinger suffering recurring nosebleeds from
exhaustion, she confronted O’Brady, telling him, “I do not want to
continue like this.” Other members agreed with her. National Geographic
reached out to others on the trip, and they confirmed Gundlfinger's
version of events.
colinobrady View profile

Greenland
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colinobrady
Greenland Day 26: Lemonade out of lemons. Today was a major disappointment. As
a group we agreed to push hard for the past three days to try and finish by Sunday
which is my hard stop date. I’ve been pulling four sleds (more than twice my normal
weight) for a few days now to try and get us to move more quickly, but midday
today an Everest summiter / ultra-marathoner and guy who has both kayaked and
canoed across the Atlantic alone, came to me and tapped out unable to continue to
push even if I carried all their weight. In short this complicates our finishing
logistics. Overall not a huge deal. I came here to train for the most ambitious and
difficult project of my life. I’m choosing to look at the positive of today’s outcome. If
guys of that caliber are tapping out after 26 days of suffering when I’m still strong,
smiling and able to push harder and carry more - I’d say my training is successfully
complete. I’M READY! Announcement coming soon on the new project.
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That night, using a satellite connection from his tent, O’Brady posted a
photo on Instagram. It featured him towing four sleds, two more than
usual, and read in part, “Today was a major disappointment. As a group we
agreed to push hard for the past three days to try and finish by Sunday
which is my hard stop date. I’ve been pulling four sleds (more than twice
my normal weight) for a few days now to try and get us to move more
quickly, but midday today an Everest summiter / ultra-marathoner and
guy who has both kayaked and canoed across the Atlantic alone, came to
me and tapped out unable to continue to push even if I carried all their
weight...this complicates our finishing logistics...If guys of that caliber are
tapping out after 26 days of suffering when I’m still strong, smiling and
able to push harder and carry more - I’d say my training is successfully
complete...Announcement coming soon on the new project.”
According to multiple group members, O’Brady was describing the man

who’d backed up Gundlfinger. Gundlfinger and other members point out
the man, a highly accomplished adventurer, hadn’t given up any of his own
weight, and in fact was pulling extra, like each of the men were, in order to
help the women keep the pace O’Brady demanded. They also say O’Brady’s
claim of pulling four sleds was exaggerated. He did momentarily, or long
enough for a photograph.
The next day, with 10 percent of the journey still remaining, O’Brady called
for a helicopter and left to catch his flight. A short while later, his website
declared his crossing of Greenland a “success.”
In his book, O’Brady recounts a brief version of his Greenland trip, focused
mainly on his account of falling into a crevasse near his tent on his last
night, a story he tells often in media appearances. “Within an instant, I felt
nothing below my legs but air,” he writes. “The crevasse was blue-walled
deeper than I could see. It went down into the ice’s inky darkness and
would have spelled almost certain death if I hadn’t caught myself.”
According to one group member, O’Brady had ignored the guide’s warning
to pitch his tent close to the group to avoid a nearby crevasse field. Hearing
O’Brady’s shouts, the guide went to check on him and, according to
Gundlfinger and others interviewed, reported back to the group that the
crevasse was shallow and not dangerous.
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At trip’s end, Dansercoer met the group at the airport and apologized for Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
putting O’Brady with them. “I had no clue that this was going to happen,”
he says. Ousland was also upset with the Belgian for his recommendation.
“I felt pretty ashamed when Borge called me out on sending someone that
didn't please him nor his guides,” Dansercoer says. “So suddenly I asked
myself, hey, wait a moment, that's all fine to consult and pass on
knowledge and hoping that the younger ones listen to you. But if they start
to spoil—that's not good for me.”
Regardless of how things turned out in Greenland, O’Brady had

accomplished his goal—he now had ALE’s approval for Antarctica. Steve
Jones presented him with a route labeled as a legitimate unsupported
crossing of the continent—an opinion that puts Jones at odds with every
non-ALE polar authority National Geographic spoke with. Describing the
overall route to National Geographic in an email, Jones calls it, “an
achievable first that hadn’t been done and claimed because many people
didn’t realize it was a record that was there for the taking.” It’s worth
noting that though ALE is highly regarded among the polar community for
their focus on safety, they are also in the business of selling trips, and
easily digestible routes are less dangerous, less expensive, and easier to
support.
Despite the polar community’s skepticism, O’Brady took the concept and
ran with it. Soon his website unveiled his next adventure: “The Impossible
First.”
A Road Runs Through It

Historically, polar adventurers were born of a passion for the austere
beauty of the world’s white places. They spent years in mentorship with
veteran explorers learning skills, ethics, terminology, and history. O’Brady
didn’t take those steps. “It's gone so fast for him that I fear that, yes, he has
missed out on some of the values,” says Dansercoer.
Yet O’Brady still knew enough to be keenly aware, like nearly every
adventurer aiming for a record in the polar regions, of maintaining his
unsupported status.
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When he saw a frozen porta-potty at one of ALE’s refueling stations along

his route, the first structure he’d seen in weeks, he writes, “I would’ve been
afraid to use it for fear of violating the rule of taking support of any kind.”
At the South Pole, with its enticingly heated research station, he describes
being eager to move on quickly without even entering the building,
because, “Under
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accept the rules of anonunsupported,
of cookies unassisted
our site. For more information (e.g.crossing, I could
on how to disable cookies) visit our Cookie Policy.
accept no help.”
Once considered unreachable, the South Pole is now home to a year-round research center. In
winter, roughly 50 scientists and staff live at the station, which includes the IceCube Neutrino
Observatory (above).
P H OTO G R A P H BY C H R I S T I N E D E L L ' A M O R E , N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C
Which helps explain why his use of the South Pole Traverse, or SPoT, also
known as the McMurdo-South Pole Highway, for the final 366 miles of his
trek has generated strong accusations. Created in 2006 by the National
Science Foundation, SPoT is a haul route for supplies from the coast to the
Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole. Offering the navigational
assistance of bamboo poles with orange flags every 400 meters, or closer
when needed, its smooth, bladed surface eliminates a 100-mile stretch of
some of Antarctica’s worst sastrugi—dangerous, wind-formed ridges of
snow up to six feet high that slow skiers to a crawl. There’s a reason people
have traveled the route on recumbent cycles.
ADVERTISEMENT
Many polar veterans ask how O’Brady can diminish Ousland’s trek for his
use of a rudimentary kite on untamed ground, while himself benefitting
from the assistance of a human-made haul route.
As Anker tweeted, “IMHO skiing on a tractor road is a bigger ‘aid’ than a

kite.”
Adventure Stats is unambiguous, “Using tracks created by motorized

vehicle is considered support.”
When asked about this route choice by National Geographic, O’Brady

downplayed the aid of the SPoT route and took a shot at “armchair
criticism” coming from, “people making claims that haven’t been out there
Weseen
and use first
it.”and third party cookies to improve our service, personalize your advertising and remember your website preferences. If you continue to
“It more than doubles someone’s speed and negates the need for Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
navigation,” counters Eric Philips, who has pioneered three new routes to
the South Pole and has crossed over the SPoT numerous times while
guiding, though has never used it as a route. “An expedition cannot be
classed as unassisted if someone is skiing on a road.”
“It makes a massive difference if you

don’t have to navigate,” says Horn,
widely considered one of the world’s
greatest living explorers. “It makes a
massive difference if you’re on a
road where the crevasses are filled
up and the sastrugi is broken.”
“It’s an outright lie saying

unsupported, unassisted when you
get on that road,” asserts Larsen,
who has skied to both the South and
North Poles multiple times. “It’s
contrary to the epic nature of what
the expedition was billed as—skiing
on a literal snow road with markers
South African-born explorer Mike Horn
is hardly an unsupported ‘first.’”
completed a daring 3,169-mile solo kite-ski
crossing of Antarctica in 2017.
BORGE OUSLAND
ADVERTISEMENT
One of the greatest dangers of any solo Antarctic journey are crevasses. On
the SPoT route, they are filled in and mitigated, creating a largely hazard-
free runway through the otherwise perilous terrain of the Leverett Glacier.
This explains why Jones and ALE steered the inexperienced O’Brady to
this safer option, while allowing more seasoned polar travelers to take
wilder, more dangerous routes.
ALE’s expedition approval, Jones explains, is based on, “the viability of the
expedition plan and the experience of the individuals.”
Worsley avoided the vehicle route and was heading for the unmanicured
Shackleton Glacier when he fell ill. Ousland and Horn each pioneered new
routes through areas no human had likely ever seen, navigating complex
crevasse fields alone and devising clever ways to self-rescue when the ice
opened beneath them.
When asked
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you accept Geographic
the use of cookies why
on our site. he chose
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O’Brady explained, “Some of the other glaciers are quite dangerous as a

soloist—it’s a very hard thing to do when you're by yourself.”
During his expedition and for some time afterward, O’Brady didn’t Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
acknowledge his use of the SPoT route, and does so only glancingly in his
book. Instead, he describes the area as the most dangerous section of his
expedition, adding, “on the Leverett Glacier...blue-ice crevasses were
common.” Conversely, Rudd, who was roughly a day behind O’Brady, and
who confirmed to National Geographic that he encountered no crevasses,
was forthright about utilizing the route during his expedition, even
describing his bizarre encounter with a team of Taiwanese ski tourists and
other travelers in large, modified pickup trucks.
Runners from the Antarctic bases cross the sea ice in

Ross Ice Shelf during the Antarctic marathon.
P H OTO G R A P H BY JA S O N E DWA R D S ,
N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C I M AG E
COLLECTION
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National Geographic contacted a member of the United States Antarctic

Program who helps maintain the SPoT route. He agreed to comment but
asked that his name be withheld because he’s not authorized to speak to
the media. He described skate-skiing its smooth surface while traveling in
the vehicle convoy delivering supplies to the South Pole research station.
“Establishing and maintaining the SPoT route has involved 16 years of
tremendous work and heartache that has even cost one life,” he said. “For
O'Brady to not even acknowledge he used our route [for so long] is highly
insulting.”
People from around the world following O’Brady’s daily progress on social
media and other platforms noted the relatively short distances he logged
browse,
during theyoufirst
accept the use
part of ofthe
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trip.onBut
our site.
afterFor passing
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the South how toobservers
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were amazed as his daily mileage skyrocketed, unaware he was on the

SPoT route. When asked afterward by The New York Times how he could
move so quickly through such dangerous terrain in his final days, he Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
simply responded, “I don’t know, something overcame me.”
O’Brady received a flurry of post-trip criticism from polar insiders over his
route, something he attempts to blunt by writing in his book that Jones
told him taking the SPoT route was “non-negotiable.”
“If you’re going to do this, that’s it,” Jones says in O’Brady’s telling, “A.L.E.
will only support soloists on the Leverett.”
Jones, however, told National Geographic he never said this. Labeling

O’Brady’s telling of their conversation “not completely accurate,” he says,
“There are other options through the Transantarctic Mountains we would
have looked at if he had presented a request for us to do so—the Heiberg
Glacier had been descended solo by Borge Ousland, so that is something
we would have entertained. But that is a more difficult route than the
Leverett.”
After National Geographic informed him of Jones’s comments, O’Brady

promptly called his former expedition coordinator and within a few hours
Jones sent a contrite email walking back several of his statements. “I
would like to add an update,” Jones wrote. “To clarify and perhaps correct
an error I made.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The SPoT route was, he now believes, “the only option we were willing to
consider supporting his expedition on.”
Rescue Awaits
In his book and in national television appearances on HBO’s Real Sports
and elsewhere, O’Brady claims to have skied through extended “no-rescue
zones,” where dense formations of sastrugi prevent planes from landing.
“I’m in a place without possible rescue,” O’Brady writes. “Where no plane
can land.”
Dense ice formations called sastrugis, formed by

Antarctica's ferocious winds, make the going
extremely difficult for skiers pulling sleds and can
make it difficult for planes to land.
PHILIPPE BOURSEILLER, THE IMAGE BANK,
GETTY IMAGES
ADVERTISEMENT
Simon Abrahams, travel safety manager for ALE who participated in

briefings with O’Brady before his expedition began, is quoted in O’Brady’s
book pointing at a map and saying, “If you call for help in here, you won’t
get it.” Abrahams denies making such a statement, stating, “I wouldn't
have said that.” And as he points out, the SPoT route runs through the area
and, “We could obviously drive a vehicle out there.”
When queried by National Geographic, Rudd says, “I have never been told
that rescue is impossible on any of the three expeditions I’ve done in
Antarctica despite all being different routes and in total covering 3,000
miles of the continent.”
Before departing on his doomed expedition, Worsley was interviewed by

National Geographic writer Mark Synnott and asked about the possibility
of rescue. He replied “Oh, yeah. It's very strictly controlled. I have to make
a call every 24 hours to ALE, where they have a doctor and light aircraft. If
you miss two of those calls, they'll come and look for you based on your
last GPS location.”
Laval St. Germain, a former bush pilot and Boeing 737 captain, who
attempted a solo ski to the South Pole last year, says, “Rescue or pick-up
on the plateau in good conditions is as benign as requesting an Uber.”
Thanks
browse,to satellite
you accept thephones andonALE’s
use of cookies our site.ability
For moreto fly in with
information (e.g. replacement
on how to disable cookies) visit our Cookie Policy.
tents, food, and other supplies, he says, “You never feel like you are truly
on your own nowadays on the polar plateau.”
Additionally, Iain Rudkin, ALE’s other travel safety manager who Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
personally led O’Brady’s pre-trip safety briefing, stated, “Rescue would

have been possible throughout Colin’s trip.”
He adds, “There are certainly some expeditions which venture into fairly
extreme terrain and rescue would be much more problematic than Colin’s
route, which is well travelled and in Antarctic terms relatively safe.”
Shrewd or Magnanimous?
The ending of O’Brady’s book describes an emotional Today Show
producer praising him for, “How you waited for [Rudd] there at the end.”
O’Brady writes how instead of simply flying home he decided to wait
because, “I wanted to honor a worthy competitor...to congratulate him in
person....So I waited, calling off the plane that was on standby to pick me
up.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Colin O'Brady appeared on NBC's Today Show on January 10, 2019, soon after completing his
Antarctic journey. In numerous media appearances, he touts his achievement as an "impossible
first." But his critics say it was neither impossible nor a true first.
P H OTO G R A P H BY N AT H A N C O N G L E TO N , N B C U P H OTO B A N K ,
NBCUNIVERSAL , GETTY IMAGES
It’s one of many times O’Brady has framed his waiting for Rudd as a
selfless act, drawing heartfelt praise from many observers. “I realized I
didn’t just want a plane to come pick me up and, you know, cheer my
success of being first,” he said in an appearance on National Public Radio’s
Weekend Edition in the days immediately after his expedition, “But rather,
you know, give respect and compliment to someone who had completed
thisWejourney just
use first and a party
third couple days
cookies slowerour
to improve than me.”
service, personalize your advertising and remember your website preferences. If you continue to
The truth is more complicated. The flight from the men’s finish to ALE’s
base costs more than $100,000. “We agreed before they set off,” Jones
explains, “that if one got there within a couple days of the other, and the Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
first person to arrive was safe, with no medical issues, it made huge
financial sense for that person to wait for the second and share the cost of
the pickup flight.”
ADVERTISEMENT
In other words, O’Brady stood to save $50,000 by waiting. “Definitely

worth eating expedition rations for a couple more days,” adds Jones with a
chuckle.
When asked about this by National Geographic, O’Brady responds, “There

was no conversation with Lou and I about colluding so that money would
be saved,” he says. “That is just not true.”
ALE’s Abrahams has a different view. “He wasn’t going to get picked up
individually,” he says, pointing out ALE also kept a cache of food and fuel
at the finish. “He wasn't magnanimous—he waited for Lou because they
were getting picked up together to cut their costs, quite substantially.”
Rudd, who is set to publish an account of his expedition with his own book
due out in June, declined to discuss this.
Grace in Adventure
True nobility does exist in the world of Antarctic adventure. Consider
Norwegian Aleksander Gamme who set out in 2011 to establish the record
for farthest unsupported, unassisted polar journey (he did this by skiing
from ALE’s base at Hercules Inlet to the South Pole and back). Early on he
spent time skiing alongside Australians James Castrission and Justin
Jones, who were attempting the same route and record, as seen in their
movie Crossing the Ice. After skiing for 1,411 miles over 85 days (almost
500 miles farther than O’Brady), he stopped one kilometer short of the
finish, set up his tent, and waited four days for the other two men to arrive,
knowing how much the record meant to them.
“It was a lot more fun celebrating together,” Gamme said about their ski to
the finish and jointly held record, “instead of making winners and losers
out of two great achievements.”
Something similar could have happened with O’Brady and Rudd. In the
first week of their expeditions, as they crossed paths for the final time
before the finish, Rudd proposed to O’Brady the possibility of finishing
together. O’Brady has never publicly acknowledged this, only writing that
he told Rudd at the time, “We both know the stakes out here...We’re doing
this solo, let this be the last time that we speak until this is over.”
ADVERTISEMENT
A Record Straightened
There’s a storied history of adventurers making outsized claims at the ends
of the Earth—from National Geographic-supported Robert Peary’s dubious
claim to have reached the North Pole in 1909 to Martin Szwed claiming a
South Pole speed record in 2015 when he’d come nowhere near the pole.
Henry Worsley cautioned against this type of hype in his interview with
National Geographic before departing on his doomed expedition. “Never
spin,” he said. “You will get found out.”
By contrast, O’Brady distills his narrative to its essence in a recent podcast,

stating, “Adventurers and explorers have been attempting this feat for over
100 years. People have died attempting it. No one had been able to do it
before. I cracked the code.”
Whatever it is that fuels O’Brady, his endeavors have been profitable. After
Antarctica, he landed his lucrative book deal. His speaking fees can exceed
$50,000 per appearance. He is regularly on national television and
popular podcasts, where he cuts an inspirational figure espousing the
power of positivity.
“You can do whatever you want, so long as you're honest about what you
did and you place any claims in context,” explains Damien Gildea, an elder
statesman among Antarctic adventurers and one of the first to call out
O’Brady for exaggerating his claims. “Colin failed on both counts.”
Driven by what he describes as the “embarrassing confusion” over

O’Brady’s claims, and recognizing how a lack of well-defined criteria
allowed him to “pull the merino wool ” over the public and media’s eyes,
Philips has recently announced the Polar Expeditions Classification
Scheme, a more detailed system than Adventure Stats that sets a new
standard for polar expeditions and records. According to the PECS, which
was created in consultation with leading polar authorities, O’Brady’s trip
would not be classified as a “full crossing,” nor would it be considered
“unsupported.” Philips, who boasts a lifetime’s commitment to polar
exploration and the community surrounding it, says he wants to make sure
something like this doesn’t happen again.
ADVERTISEMENT
“PECS
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trying to party
and third sort cookies
out the mess,”our
to improve heservice,
says,personalize
“and creating a smoother,
your advertising and remember your website preferences. If you continue to
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more clarified path for people in the future.”
Dansercoer wants to get the different generations in the same room to find Newsletters SUBSCRIBE
common ground, but worries, he says, “The young ones couldn’t care less if
they're caught lying. See in [the United States] what’s happening—it’s
becoming the new normal.”
“Your process is just as important as the outcome,” Larsen says, citing

disgraced figures Lance Armstrong and Greg Mortenson, the mountaineer Access a network
and author of the debunked Three Cups of Tea. “These are examples of of possibilities
why integrity is so important.”
“I think Colin is smart enough to correct here and there whatever has gone
wrong,” O’Brady’s mentor Dansercoer says, “He is a true adventurer in the
sense that he likes the outdoors. He gets amazed by the force of nature. He
loves the confrontation with difficulty and beauty. And so all the elements
are there. However, the bigger driver is his own ambition.”
It should be noted that while O’Brady has profited from his exaggerations,
he has also founded a nonprofit organization, Beyond 7/2, to encourage
schoolchildren to be active outdoors. By framing his accomplishments in
the language of self-improvement, he has inspired many. But as David
Roberts, a leading expedition chronicler and author of Great Exploration
Hoaxes, explains, when adventurers don’t tell the truth about what they’ve
done, “They tarnish the whole ethic of adventuring and exploring.”
As Larsen put it in his email to O’Brady and his wife, imploring Colin to be
more honest in his self-promotion, “The story as it is, is compelling
enough.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated for clarity on February 26, 2020.
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The Problem With Colin O'Brady

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His tale of crossing Antarctica was

While skiing across Antarctica, American Colin O’Brady, the self-

Prominent leaders of the adventure and polar communities were less

Over the last several months, National Geographic has investigated

O’Brady “didn’t do what [he] advertised,” says Australian polar explorer

What’s undeniably true is that O’Brady arrived in Antarctica with relatively

I don’t think anyone looked at the route

The Rules of Adventure

Shortly after O’Brady completed his trek, prominent American climber

In 1997, the 34-year-old Norwegian pioneered a new route across the

“I was thinking, is it possible to go

Staff at the McMurdo Station

In recent years, with most of the Earth’s major geographical features

It might seem like hairsplitting, but these classifications create a

The surface of Antarctica is in fact an ice cap up to 15,000-feet thick that

But there is a continent somewhere under there, detectable with remote

Left: A member of the United States Antarctic

Right: Created in 2006 by the National Science

than O’Brady did in his entire journey.

In his book, O'Brady describes the completion of his expedition as a

The history of exploration is basically

Why Does it Matter?

foolhardy risk-takers. But in centuries past, adventurers were the driving

living laboratories of mental and physical endurance (think Alex Honnold

Just as there is a bright line between nonfiction and fiction in the

“The history of exploration is basically predicated on taking a man or

In 2016, red hot with ambition, he launched a new career as a professional

It was chasing this globe-skipping record where O’Brady was introduced to

O’Brady told National Geographic.

“There was a discussion and Colin was very overpowering,” says

Despite the polar community’s skepticism,

So O’Brady reached out to Dansercoer, who says he enjoys trying to instill

Finally, ALE and Dansercoer together agreed that if Colin completed a

Problems arose almost immediately. Against the guiding service’s

difficult,” says Anja Gundlfinger, a German neuroscientist and avid

When asked by National Geographic about this, O’Brady replied, “That is

Under O’Brady’s unrelenting pressure, according to Gundlfinger and other

colinobrady View profile

View more on Instagram

According to multiple group members, O’Brady was describing the man

Regardless of how things turned out in Greenland, O’Brady had

A Road Runs Through It

When he saw a frozen porta-potty at one of ALE’s refueling stations along

As Anker tweeted, “IMHO skiing on a tractor road is a bigger ‘aid’ than a

Adventure Stats is unambiguous, “Using tracks created by motorized

When asked about this route choice by National Geographic, O’Brady

“It makes a massive difference if you

“It’s an outright lie saying

O’Brady explained, “Some of the other glaciers are quite dangerous as a

Runners from the Antarctic bases cross the sea ice in

National Geographic contacted a member of the United States Antarctic

were amazed as his daily mileage skyrocketed, unaware he was on the

simply responded, “I don’t know, something overcame me.”

Jones, however, told National Geographic he never said this. Labeling

After National Geographic informed him of Jones’s comments, O’Brady

Dense ice formations called sastrugis, formed by

Simon Abrahams, travel safety manager for ALE who participated in

Before departing on his doomed expedition, Worsley was interviewed by

personally led O’Brady’s pre-trip safety briefing, stated, “Rescue would

In other words, O’Brady stood to save $50,000 by waiting. “Definitely

When asked about this by National Geographic, O’Brady responds, “There

By contrast, O’Brady distills his narrative to its essence in a recent podcast,