1. Icy Adventures

    Posted in: Videos on Saturday, December 10th, 2011

    icy eskimo roll

    Icy adventures.  As we head into winter I was thinking back to one of the coldest days of my life.  It was 1996 and we were in Minnesota to film a series of adventures for National Geographic Explorer.  The day we arrived the temperature was hoovering around zero.  That was as warm as it would get for the next week.  I wanted to lock myself inside with my arms wrapped around a pot belly stove for the duration of our stay.  But we were there to be outside, so I had to distract myself with all kinds of crazy adventures.  We did ice fishing, ice carving, stock car racing on an ice track, dog sledding, and kayaking on Lake Superior where the water had the consistency of a frozen margarita.

    It was so cold you had to put an electric blanket on the hood of the car at night so the engine would start the next morning.  Several times I was sure my fingers had suffered frostbite.  And my lips were so numb I could barely talk on camera without sounding like I was drunk.  By the final day of our trip in Ely, Minnesota, the temperature had dropped to 60 below zero.  We later learned that Ely was the coldest place on the planet on that day.  It was also the day we choose to camp out, sleeping in our dog sleds.

    I thought about that experience this week when interviewing two of our National Geographic Adventurers of the year on my radio show.  Jon Turk and Erik Boomer this year circumnavigated Ellesmere Island by kayak and on skis.  No one had ever done it before.  You can hear about their frozen saga this week on National Geographic Weekend and hear about my own Minnesota winter exploits.  And in this video you can see what it looks like to kayak in a slushy margarita and do an eskimo roll in icy water.

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