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ExWeb interview: Tom Avery - Solving the Great Polar Mystery?

Apr 2, 2005 17: 42 EST
Previously published Mar 3, 2005 11: 01 EST

In April, 1909, American Polar explorer, Commander Robert E. Peary, discovered the North Pole...or did he?

Controversy clouds Peary’s alleged 1909 expedition. Using dogsleds, Peary, Matthew Henson, and four Inuit men apparently took only 37 days to arrive at the North Pole. Since then, with the many advancements in technology, the fastest time for a comparable expedition to reach the North Pole has taken 42 days.

Many wonder how Peary did it - at that speed. Debates and rumors have been going on ever since. Many say he lied. Perhaps Frederick Cook was really the first. Perhaps none of them made it. Perhaps both did. And others say they simply don’t make dogs that fast, no matter how great an explorer you are.

Now, almost a hundred years later, British explorer Tom Avery will lead an expedition in an attempt to recreate Peary’s journey and match his reported 37 day record. Using exact replicas of the sleds Peary used, Andrew Gerber, George Wells, Matty McNair, Hugh Dale-Harris, and Tom will leave Cape Columbia mid March.

A few days ago, Tom Avery and Matty McNair went out in Iqualit, Matty's Arctic home town, to test the dog-teams and the brand new, specially designed sledges. They were happy to report that everything is working great: They managed to cover 28 nautical miles in eight hours.

ExplorersWeb checked in with Tom for the latest details on the expedition.

ExWeb: When did your fascination with Peary's trip begin? Why do you want to prove the skeptics wrong?

Tom: Although I have known about this great character Robert Peary for some time, I only became aware of the controversy that lies at the top of the world on my expedition to the South Pole with Paul Landry in 2002. I find it extraordinary that we still don’t know who was the first person to stand at the North Pole. Peary has his skeptics on both sides of the Atlantic who genuinely believe that Peary was a fraud and in fact made the whole thing up. Our aim is to prove the doubters wrong and although we won’t be able to prove once and for all that Peary did make it to the Pole in 1909, my hope is that by matching Peary’s extraordinary travel speeds, we can show that he could have done it.

ExWeb: How did you build exact replicas of Peary's sleds?

Tom: On a visit to New York last year, I popped into the Museum of Natural History near Central Park where one of Peary’s sleds that he took to the Pole is on display. Matty and I got to work on the sleds in January up in Baffin Island and have used photographs of Peary’s sleds to help in their construction. Like Peary’s, they are eleven foot long and just over two feet wide. The front of the runners have been reinforced with extra support and are made completely from Canadian Spruce. Peary didn’t use any screws or nails in the construction of his sleds and neither have we. Instead the sleds are lashed together with rope.

ExWeb: Will you also be using the same technology (clothing, food
containers, tools, etc.) as Peary did?

Tom: As well as building Peary sleds, the dogs are the same breed that Peary used. Our 16 furry friends are all Canadian Eskimo dogs which have a much thicker set than your typical husky dog. They have been used by the indigenous Inuit people of northern Canada for hunting and traveling for over 4,000 years and remain the best expedition dog in the Arctic. As our speed will be governed by the dogs and the sleds, our clothing and equipment is largely irrelevant. We will be wearing modern expedition clothing which has been custom-made by Mountain Hardwear for the expedition. At night the five of us will sleep directly on the snow in one large wigwam tent which is supported by a single ski in the center.

ExWeb: How many dogs and how much weight in food is needed for a trip like this?

Tom: The thing that struck me when I saw Peary’s sled was how small it was. The key to Peary’s success was that his sleds never weighed more than 500 pounds when fully laden which enabled him to maneuver them much more easily over the huge pressure ridges that will be encountered in the early stages of the expedition. We will be taking two sleds on the expedition, which have been christened Alpha and Eagle by our sponsors Barclays Capital! And like Peary, there will be eight dogs on each team. Our biggest weight will be dog food. Peary was able to travel so light because of the support parties he had carrying supplies for him. We are recreating this part of Peary’s epic journey by having food and fuel caches placed by a Twin Otter ski plane at each of the four points that Peary’s support parties dropped their supplies and returned to land.

ExWeb: What are some advantages over Peary that you can't change?

Tom: Peary and his companion Matthew Henson were expert navigators and after spending 23 years in the Arctic, their dead-reckoning skills were better than anyone’s. They were able to estimate within half a mile how far they had traveled every day. Peary specifically chose four Inuit men in his polar party who knew how to navigate through the polar pack better than anyone. Although we will head north in much the same way as the explorers of old by shadow, wind direction and compass, we are nothing like as skilled in the fields of navigation and dead-reckoning as these incredible men, so will use a GPS once a day to double-check our progress.

ExWeb: Did you have to be trained in dog care for this expedition?

Tom: We met the dogs for the first time in February 2004 and spent the rest of the month in Baffin Island with Matty dog sledding every day. For the three London-based team members, it was a steep learning curve, but with similar conditions to those that we can expect in the far North, it was a very productive training exercise. We will spend a further fortnight in Baffin Island at the beginning of March working with the dogs before the expedition gets underway from Cape Columbia on March 15th. I can’t wait!

Robert Edwin Peary was born in Cresson, Pennsylvania in 1856. A civil engineer in the U.S. Navy, Peary participated in the Nicaragua Canal Survey in 1884 and 1885 and explored Greenland in 1886, in his first of seven polar explorations. He discovered and named Independence Bay on the northeastern coast of Greenland on July 4, 1892. In 1895 he reached the northern coast area now known as Peary Land. In 1900 Peary reached Greenland's northernmost point, which he named Cape Morris Jesup in honor of one of the major patrons of his expeditions. Peary proved Greenland was an island rather than a continent and that the Greenland ice cap extended no farther north than latitude 82°N. Peary made advancements in knowledge of how glaciers form as well as Inuit ethnology. He learned Inuit survival skills and established advanced placements of supply depots in developing the “Peary System” of Arctic travel. In 1911, the U.S. Congress gave official legitimacy to his 1909 North Pole discovery, and they gave him the rank of rear admiral before his retirement. But even though he earned government legitimacy of his discovery, the debates have never been settled.

Tom Avery was born in 1975 and grew up in Brazil and France. In 2000, he led a British expedition to a previously unexplored 20-mile mountain range along the Chinese border. His team scaled 9 unclimbed and unnamed summits up to 6,000 metres high in the Eastern Zaalay Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. In December of 2002, at the age of 27, Tom became the youngest Briton to make it to the South Pole (with resupply and parasails). His team traveled the last 47 miles in only 31 hours.

Image: Robert E. Peary, in costume he wore when he discovered the North Pole." United Press between 1909 and 1920. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Courtesy America's Library.

Bottom image: Tom Avery in Peary's footsteps, courtesy of Tom Avery.

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