It’s 7am in Antarctica and the sun is already high in the sky – it never set.
In fact, there won’t be night again here until after February, when the continent plunges into constant darkness for the long winter season.
In this icy desert, man-made fixtures such as date and time matter very little as the barren landscape sits resolute, stretching endlessly onward toward the coast.
Look closer. Just over 100 miles from the geographic South Pole, two red specks sit stark against the colourless ground. They are tents, but this is no ordinary camping trip.
Inside, four men are celebrating Christmas. One makes a call home from a satellite phone, while another enjoys a chocolate Santa Claus.
Today is a day of rest, but it will be short lived; they still have a long way to go.
There is approximately a week and a half left in their journey to the pole, 12 nautical miles on skis each day, with 120-pounds each of gear trailing behind.
One of the men, Elora resident Ian Evans, nurses two foot injuries that have been debilitating his journey from the first week – at 58, he has lost nearly 25 pounds and his muscle depletion has reached a critical state.
Still, the group intends to press on. Here, there is no easy escape, no creature comforts or alternate route. Antarctica is an unwilling host and the men are all at Mother Nature’s mercy.
Fast forward. It’s Jan. 22 and Evans has been back in Elora for about a week after reaching the South Pole with his expedition team on Jan. 6.
It’s obvious the trip is still fresh in his mind as he sits down for an interview, the action itself bringing an immediate sense of satiety to his features.
“I’ve gained 17 pounds in two weeks!” he says with a chuckle. “Not many people would think that’s good.”
During the 44 days Evan and his companions spent skiing from the Antarctic coast to the pole, they burned around 9,000 calories per day – equal to spending nine hours running on a treadmill. It was a deficit no amount of dehydrated food could assuage.
“I’m really tired of power bars,” he says. “I hated oatmeal before I went, but I really hate it now because I had it 45 days in a row.”
When asked what it was he missed most while he was away, Evans pauses for only a moment.
“Just sitting around here is pretty nice, just sitting in a chair. The thing I missed most apart from my wife and daughter was sitting in a chair, at a table, having something to eat,” he says seriously.
“It felt so good to eat proper food at a table and not have to struggle to prepare it.”
During the expedition, Evans and his team cooked on a small gas-powered camp stove, boiling melted snow to cook dehydrated meals. During the day they snacked on power bars and chunks of meat or cheese, all of which were frozen solid.
“It felt like we were living like cavemen,” he says. “You weren’t washing, you weren’t eating proper food and you were enduring physical exercise in these unbelievably cold temperatures. I can’t think of any other way to describe it because it’s so far removed from sitting around here in a heated house.”
Though covered in snow and ice year-round, Antarctica is a desert with an arid climate incapable of holding water vapour in the air, meaning there is very little precipitation.
In the winter, temperatures can fall to -89 C with an average daily temperature in the summer of -25. This means sun blindness, frostbite, dry skin and cracked lips are just the beginning of a multitude of ailments that could befall explorers of the continent.
Evans says aside from all the factors already working against the team, his challenges were unique.
Due to the extensive training he was undertaking prior to the trip, he started the excursion with a heel spur in his left foot. By the end of the first week, the ball joint in his right toe had also swollen to twice its normal size. Even after icing and treating the injuries each night, Evans was in a great deal of pain for most of the journey.
“After a night’s sleep they were not too bad for about two hours, then by the third hour they got worse, then I started taking pain killers, and by the end of the day I was just hanging on,” he explains.
“There were times when I just didn’t know what to do. There was 400 miles to go and I was injured and struggling. So I just got through each hour, then the next hour and the next day.”
Three weeks into the expedition, Evans says his body began to give out. As the oldest member on the team, he began to fall behind the others, reaching rest stops just in time to get going again.
Yet, he attests it was his age and previous experience in extreme situations that enabled him to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
“My body started shrinking and the muscles were going and I didn’t have the strength … so I had to find other ways of coping with that too,” he says. “It truly became a mind game. It wasn’t physical because the body was done, but somehow you survive. You’re capable of so much more. You’re capable of things that are unbelievable.”
Though he says he never once considered throwing in the towel or regretted his commitment to the trip, there was a moment where all his senses seemed to fail – both mind and body – and he wasn’t sure he could go on.
“With two days to go, we were only 20 miles from the pole and we were ready to start skiing and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t ski,” he says. “I couldn’t move my legs. They had simply stopped working.”
Instigating that motion may have been one of the most testing moments for Evans, but it was soon rewarded.
“On the last day of the trip, it was a crappy day, we were falling all over the place and it was almost a white out … about 10 miles from the South Pole suddenly the sun came out and shone on the white roof of the navigation dome at the airport,” he says. “That was really powerful when you hadn’t seen a man-made object for 1,000 kilometres.”
Despite the incredible stress and difficulty of the trip, Evans says he expects to remain life-long friends with the other men who accompanied him on the journey.
“There was so much stress in the situation that if there were any problems they would be worse than normal. It’s not like having a problem at the pub where you can go home. You were stuck in a very difficult situation for a long time.”
Nevertheless, “Everyone had bad days and we helped that person … at the end of the day we worked as a team.”
Evans says it is still too soon for him to fully grasp the magnitude of what he has just accomplished. Reaching the South Pole is an incredible feat – never mind the fact he may be the oldest Canadian to do it.
Currently he is still recovering from the physical tolls of the trip and even talking about it can be overwhelming, but he is firm when he says he has no regrets.
“It was worth it – absolutely. I’ve been somewhere I never imagined I would ever get to go and I’ve stood in the footsteps of some of those great explorers,” he says.
“I’ve challenged myself more than ever before and discovered I had resources I didn’t know I had.”
It’s only been two weeks since Evans was standing at the South Pole, but already he is thinking of the next adventure (“somewhere warm this time”).
Until then, he will be working alongside a film producer compiling footage for an upcoming documentary on the expedition (to be released by the end of the year) and visiting numerous schools and businesses to share his story.
Ultimately Evans hopes to inspire others to challenge themselves and push the boundaries of their comfort zone – with whatever that may entail.
“Pain and suffering are temporary but quitting is forever,” he says, noting the famous quote was something he often thought about on the trip. “So suck it up, you’re not going to die, you’ll get through it.”
For more information or to book Evans for a speaking engagement visit ianevans.ca or email info@ianevans.ca.
