North Pole Tenderfoot: A Rookie Goes on a North Pole Expedition Following in Admiral Peary's Footsteps

by Doug Hall

Overview

Why would Doug Hall follow in Robert Peary's 1909 sled tracks to the North Pole, despite the grueling terrain and temperatures between 15 and 62 degrees below zero? His goal was to resurrect the spirit of Peary's journey in a world increasingly driven by instant gratification, short term business focus, and lack of sustained dedication to great causes. Peary succeeded where some 578 expeditions before him had failed. North Pole Tenderfoot is Doug's attempt to let the reader experience what is possible when one does what Peary did: think big.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781578603282
Publisher:	Clerisy Press
Publication date:	08/18/2009
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	8.58(w) x 5.68(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

Doug Hall is founder and CEO of Eureka! Ranch International, Merwyn Research, and Planet Eureka! Innovation Marketplace. All three organizations help companies use innovation to accelerate profitable growth. Doug began his entrepreneurial career at the age of twelve producing and marketing a line of magic and juggling kits. After earning a degree in chemical engineering he spent ten years at Procter & Gamble where he rose to the rank of Master Marketing Inventor and shipped a record nine new business initiatives in twelve months. Doug is the author of four business books including Jump Start Your Business Brain, named one of the one hundred best business books of all time by business book expert Jack Covert. Media appearances include: co-host of Brain Brew Radio on Public Radio International, Truth Teller Judge on ABC TV’s American Inventor, plus feature stories on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CBS, NPR, and CBC. 334 North Pole Tenderfoot Doug serves on a number of boards and has been recognized with honorary doctorates from the University of Maine and the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Dateline NBC described Doug as “an eccentric entrepreneur who just might have what we’ve all been looking for...the happy secret to success.” Ellen Guidera, Walt Disney Company Vice President said of Doug, “When Doug meets Disney, creativity ne’er wanes; our team explodes when he ‘Jump Starts Our Brains!’” Doug and his high school sweetheart, Debbie, have three grown children. They split their time between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Springbrook, Prince Edward Island, Canada, enjoying bagpipe music, Scotch whisky, Malpeque oysters, kayaking, and cross-country skiing. In 1999, Doug turned an expedition to the North Pole into a fundraising effort for Great Aspirations!, a nonprofit organization he founded to help parents inspire their children. The story of that adventure became this book, North Pole Tenderfoot.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

Why Are You Going to the North Pole?

“Why are you going to the North Pole?”

It was the most common question from family and friends when I announced my plans to join a dogsled expedition to the North Pole.

It was a fair question, as the North and South poles are some of the most inaccessible and unpleasant places on the planet.

Apsley Cherry-Garrad, in his book The Worst Journey in the World, detailing the Scott expedition to the South Pole, described polar trips this way: Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has yet been devised.

The plan involved traveling about two hundred miles to recreate Admiral Robert E. Peary’s “last dash” to the pole, from 88 degrees to 90 North.

The temperatures, with wind chill, ranged from minus 15 to minus 62 degrees Fahrenheit despite the endless sunlight of spring in the Arctic.

People thought I was crazy. Traveling to the North Pole is not an endeavor a person with complete possession of his marbles would undertake.

To risk understatement: It’s not a popular trip. At the time of our adventure in 1999, only thirty-four people had made the journey by dogsled, as Admiral Peary did. Contrast this with Mount Everest, where more than two thousand people have reached the summit.

If there were a travel brochure for the trip, it would read like this:

On This Trip You’ll Enjoy: Minus 60 Degree Cold, Blinding Whiteouts, Bouts of Diarrhea. Frostbite Is a Certainty, Loss of Fingers and Toes a Real Possibility. Sounds grim. But at least it’s more optimistic than the ad Ernest Shackleton supposedly ran in London to find crew members for his South Pole expedition: Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success

The question of why are you going to the North Pole can be asked in two ways: Why are you going to the North Pole?

In this case the emphasis was placed on why the North Pole. The place itself. However, it was most often asked with emphasis placed on the front of the question, with the emphasis on me: Why are you going to the North Pole?

For some reason, my family and friends didn’t see me as a great explorer. Maybe it was my robust profile. Maybe it was my passion for gourmet cooking. Maybe it was my habit of exercising my mouth more than my body.

When asked why, my first answer was that I was going to use the expedition to raise money and awareness for my Great Aspirations! charity. Great Aspirations! provides ideas to help parents inspire their children. I’d created the charity based on the work of Dr. Russ Quaglia, director of the National Center for Student Aspirations, located at my alma mater, the University of Maine.

My idea was to use the trip as a publicity tool for raising money from corporate sponsors and to provide a media event to connect parents and children to the Web site, where they could get free educational materials. The www.Aspirations.com Web site provides a free one-hour audio workshop as well as eighty newspaper columns filled with ideas for helping parents inspire their children’s aspirations.

Helping the charity was not a very effective answer to the question. Friends would respond, “Aren’t there less extreme ways to raise money and awareness for the charity?”

For a month or so I brushed off the question with the common answer “Because it’s there.”