South with the Sun

  ALSO BY LYNNE COX

  Swimming to Antarctica

  Grayson

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2011 by Lynne Cox

  Maps copyright © 2011 by Diana McCandless

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Portions of this work were published in slightly different form in The New Yorker.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cox, Lynne.

  South with the sun : Roald Amundsen, his polar explorations, and the

  quest for discovery / by Lynne Cox.

  p. cm.

  “A Borzoi Book.”

  Includes index.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-70049-0

  1. Amundsen, Roald, 1872–1928. 2. Explorers—Norway—Biography.

  3. South Pole—Discovery and exploration—Norwegian.

  4. Antarctica—Discovery and exploration—Norwegian.

  5. Amundsen, Roald, 1872–1928—Travel—Antarctica. I. Title.

  G585.A6C69 2011

  919.8′9—dc22 2011008637

  v3.1

  You knew of marathon. It could be won,

  after drafts were drunk from milky fountains of

  quest; where star-eyed falcons stun

  those frozen seas—adrift until you would

  wrest them, with sail of snow and sun.

  —Ronnie J. Smith, The Only Road

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Map of the Arctic

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  1. Siberia and U-2

  2. North

  3. Nansen Returns

  4. Amundsen’s Inspiration

  5. Caves of Death

  6. Belgica

  7. Leaving Norway

  8. Greenland Shark

  9. Greenland East and West

  10. Ilulissat

  11. Coolest Crossing

  12. Baffin Island

  13. King William Island

  14. Cambridge Bay

  15. South Pole

  16. The Heroic Dogs

  17. Darkness and Light

  18. Flying Boats

  19. Amundsen and Byrd

  20. Navigating

  21. Antarctic Aviation

  22. Parallel Planes

  23. Discovering Greatness

  24. AGAP

  Afterword

  Sources

  Index

  Map of the Antarctic

  List of Illustrations

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There were many people who contributed to the research for this book, who gave generously of their time and knowledge, and who always gave a little more, to make sure that I had all the information and helped me in any way that I needed. I would like to thank everyone who helped as they come to mind, in no particular order. Thank you to Vicky Wilson, my editor at Knopf, who gave me free rein and the best editorial direction, and thank you to Martha Kaplan, my agent, who was enthusiastic about the book from the start and encouraged me all the way to publication.

  Thank you especially to Nina Korbu, Special Collections Reading Room, and Anne Melgard, Manuscripts Collection, at the National Library of Norway, who opened the world of Amundsen and Nansen to me and allowed me to see their original letters, documents, and journals. Thank you to Guro Tang-vald, Picture Collection, the National Library of Norway, who helped me discover some of the images in the book. Thank you to Oddvar Vasstveit, expert on Amundsen’s sled dogs, now retired from the National Library of Norway; Dr. Harald Dag Jolle, University of Tromsø, expert on Nansen; and Geir Klover, managing director of the Fram Museum, for information on the Fram, Gjøa, Amundsen, and Nansen. Thank you to Helen Olsen in Norway, who provided me with background and insights about her country.

  Thank you to Janike Rod and Mogens Jensenius, M.D., who hosted me in their home in Oslo. Janike spent days with me in the National Library translating Amundsen’s and Nansen’s letters and journals, and Mogens introduced me to the Viking ships and Norwegian culture.

  Thank you to the British Library Manuscript Collection, for research information on Robert Falcon Scott; Cambridge University, Scott Polar Research Institute, Huw Lewis-Jones, art curator; Len Bruno, Library of Congress Manuscripts Collections in Science and Technology; Laura Kissel, polar curator, Byrd Polar Research Center Archival Program, Ohio State University; Dr. Peter Jakab, associate director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, whose Wright Brothers’ exhibition and the exhibitions about flight helped me write this book, and Melissa Keiser, chief photo archivist, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution; Miriam Tuliao, assistant director of the Central Collection Department, New York Public Library; and Jim Delgado, president of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.

  Thank you to Tom Pickering, former undersecretary of state for political affairs, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Russia, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and Jordan, and former assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs, for his wise counsel and unwavering support, and for opening diplomatic doors.

  Thank you to Michael Donley, secretary of the U.S. Air Force, and Captain Angela Web, USAF, and Technical Sergeant Rebecca Danet, USAF, for granting me approval and unit support for the book project. Thank you to the chief of staff of the air force, General Norton Schwartz, and Lieutenant General Lloyd Utterback for their inspiration, and to Major Samuel Highley, USAF, for supporting the book project.

  A very special thank you to Brigadier General Anthony German and the men and women of the 109th Airlift Wing of the New York Air National Guard at Scotia, New York, who helped me understand the very special mission they do for the United States. Thanks for the added instruction to Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Bedore, navigator, triathlete; Lieutenant Colonel Johnson, pilot, triathlete; Major Paul Berconni, pilot; Lieutenant Colonel Mark Armstrong; Lieutenant Colonel Joe Hathaway, pilot; (retired) Lieutenant Colonel Lloyd East, pilot; Master Sergeant Roy Powers, loadmaster, triathlete; Captain Wayne Brown, pilot; Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Jones, maintenance officer, pilot; Major Frank Medicino, pilot; Lieutenant Colonel John Panoski; Major Chris Sander; Chief Master Sergeant Rodney Begin; Lieutenant Colonel Fabio Ritmo; and Technical Sergeant Candace Lundin. Thank you to New York Air National Guard public affairs for coordinating the Greenland trip and thanks to Colonel Kimberly Terpening, Technical Sergeant Brian Terry, Master Sergeant William Gizara, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bullock; and thanks to Captain Gregory K. Richaert, M.D., Operation Deep Freeze, for his help with hypoxia information.

  There were people in the United States Air Force and the Air National Guard who inspired and informed my writing. Thank you very much to Major General Susan Y. Desjardins, currently Director of Strategic Plans and Programs, HQ US. Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, New England; Colonel David Fountain, HQ New York Air National Guard, Albany, New York; Scott McMullen, deputy director, Strategic Plans, Programs, and Requirements, HQ Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois; Brigadier General Michael Stough, deputy director, Strategic Plans, Programs, and Requirements, HQ Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois; Colonel Thomas (T.J.) Kennett, Air National Guard Advisor to Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois; Brigadier General (Dr.) John Owen, Air National Guard Advisor to the S
urgeon General, Air Mobility Command, Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.

  Thanks to Lieutenant Tim Casares, dive officer, dog team supervisor, flight mechanic, USCG; Jenn Casares, HS2 second-class (retired), USCG; Christopher Shane Walker, ASTC, rescue swimmer, USCG; Paul Terry, rock climber; Kyle Smith, rock climber, who helped me develop the safety swim harness for my Arctic project; and June McKernan who designed the rescue harness.

  Thank you to Brownie Schoene, M.D., pulmonary and wilderness medicine specialist, who helped me prepare to swim in 28.8-degree-Fahrenheit water; Laura King, M.D., dermatologist, for advice on preventing skin and nerve damage; and to Charles Nagurka, M.D., internist, for general advice. Thanks to William Poe, DDS, for protecting my teeth and ear canals from the cold. Thank you to Barry Binder, who has supported my projects. Thank you to J. J. Marie, Zodiac boats, and to Antoine Bourel and Andrea Fleischer Bourel for test swim support off Long Island.

  For giving me great insights into the C-17 mission in Antarctica, thank you to Lieutenant Colonel Bill Eberhardt, pilot; Chief Master Sergeant Jim Masura, at Tacoma/McChord; and Staff Sergeant Paul Garcia, with the 446th Airlift Wing.

  Thank you to Jean Chamberlin, vice president, Boeing; Lee Whittington, project analysis director; Colonel Jim Schaeffer (retired), director of Mobility Requirements, Boeing; Major James T. Schueler Jr. (retired), C-17 production test pilot, Boeing; Joe Brown, FOD program office and world-class tour guide, Boeing; Margee Ralston; Ted Ralston, director, Advanced Maritime Awareness, Boeing (retired); and Suzanne Weekley, director of program management and operations, C-17, Boeing.

  Thank you to Trish Roberts; Lieutenant Commander John Shalis USN (retired); Lieutenant Colonel Steve Murray (retired), who flew LC-130s and flew with the Blue Angels.

  “HOOYAH Navy SEALs!”

  And thank you to all the following: Glenn Helm and James A. Knechtmann from the Department of the Navy Library, Naval Historical Foundation Archives, for all their research recommendations about the Jeannette expedition.

  Friis Arne Petersen, Danish ambassador to the United States, who took my Greenland project seriously and introduced me to the embassy’s Greenland expert, Jakob Alvi, who supported my research and swim.

  David Remnick, Dorothy Wickenden, and Cressida Leyshon, my editors at The New Yorker, who encouraged Amundsen’s story.

  Billy Ace-Baker and Gus Shinn, Old Antarctica Explorers Association, Pensacola, Florida.

  The National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida, and specials thanks to Billy Suckow, naval aviator, for taking Gus Shinn and me to see the Que Sera Sera.

  Carmela Veneroso and John Odling-Snee for their hospitality in Washington, D.C.

  Emmy Griffin, Amanda Mittleman, Kathleen Fessenden, Raylene Movius, and Barry Binder for idea discussions, and Kathy Kent for photo editing. And to Estelle Cox, my first reader.

  For computer and tech support, Davey Cox, David Cox, Christine Cox, Laura Cox, Kenny Hawkins, and Vicky Guilloz.

  Ed Salazar, U.S. State Department (retired), for advice and help with embassy contacts.

  Craig and Cissy Pfeiffer and J. J. Marie for boat support and training support in Long Island Sound, and to Jack Deshales and Albin Power for their support on the Pond Inlet swim.

  Special thanks to Diana McCandless for creating the maps of the Arctic and Antarctic.

  And finally, thank you to the Knopf team: Kathy Hourigan, Andy Hughes, Michelle Somers, Sue Betz, Gabriele Wilson, Carmen Johnson, Chris Gillespie, Kathleen Fridella, Roméo Enriquez, Virginia Tan, Pat Johnson, and Sonny Mehta.

  Preface

  I gazed into the black sky at the canopy of stars, watching constellations climb across the heavens as the earth spun through space at a tilt, pulled by the moon and tugged by the sun. I felt a connection to the earth, and to the depths of the universe.

  There are waypoints in life—people, places, things from the past that are guides, as true and dependable as the stars, the planets, and the sun that guide great navigators across the earth, seas, and heavens. These markers emerge from the past and guide us on our life’s journey, giving us hope, inspiration, and warning, and show us we are on our way. They are not always evident; sometimes it takes time to see them, sometimes it takes reflection to understand, and then these signs become as clear as the stars and planets illuminating a dark velvet sky, or as bright as the southern sun on a summer’s day.

  This wasn’t the path I thought I was supposed to take; it was one that I was pulled toward. Something compelled me to follow his path. His name was Roald Amundsen. He was one of the greatest polar explorers, the first man to reach the South Pole. I had heard about him one evening many years before, during a workout. Helen Olsen, a friend who grew up in Norway, told me about Amundsen when I was fifteen years old. I imagined what it must be like to reach the South Pole. Then I began to wonder: How did he get there? How did he start out? How did he train? Where did his greatness, his inspiration, come from? How could I learn from him? He stayed with me in the back of my mind, but something inside kept telling me to look at him, to examine his life; he was one of those waypoints, a star closer than the sun.

  And so I looked back to see ahead, just as the navigators look into the heavens at stars that are light-years away, at light that has taken millions of years to reach the earth.

  Though a hundred years separated us, time didn’t matter; that kind of time was just a wink in the time of the universe. Trusting my impulse confirmed for me the connections within the universe, that there would be signs, people, places, and things from the past that would guide me. I needed to trust this because the things I had done before, the things I was doing, had never been done before, and I knew I needed to look at others to see how they had found their way across uncharted waters, unexplored continents, unknown skies. They would be my guides and my inspiration, ways to trust my own direction in life. We are all explorers, trying things we have never done before, entering into the unknown of our lives and we all need to trust those impulses that stay with us, and to look for hope, inspiration, and direction in others who might be able to help show us the way.

  CHAPTER 1

  Siberia and U-2

  The nose of the Aeroflot TU-154 aircraft parted long feathery white strands of stratus clouds that whorled past the cockpit, the captain continued his descent, and suddenly, the whole world opened below. An ancient Siberian taiga, a forest dark and dense with fir, spruce, larch, and pine, rose on craggy hilltops and descended deep into shadowed valleys.

  Strong shafts of sunlight focused by the clouds lit the groves of Berioska—white birch—and transformed them to yellow flames. The world below suddenly changed, and all the forest was gone; just stumps remained, and death, and naked brown earth, for miles. The earth was eroding quickly into rivers and streams, turning them from clear blue to muddy brown. But on the horizon another evergreen taiga appeared and a sliver of deep lapis blue: Lake Baikal—the deepest lake in the world, four hundred miles long, an average fifty miles wide, one-quarter of the world’s fresh water. This was the blue jewel of Siberia. It was 1988, a year after my Bering Strait swim, which had opened the border between the United States and the Soviet Union. I wanted to swim Lake Baikal. I had no idea how much the Soviets appreciated my Bering Strait crossing or the upcoming Lake Baikal swim until we landed in Moscow and later in Siberia. There were crowds and press everywhere, and people recognized us on the streets. We were told when we reached Irkutsk that the Siberians had been waiting for a group of famous Americans to visit them ever since the time of President Eisenhower. They had constructed new roads for his visit, and a new hotel, but when the U-2 incident occurred, when the U.S. spy plane piloted by Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, President Eisenhower was no longer welcome. The relations between the United States and the Soviet Union disintegrated, and the cold war grew colder and grimmer. But our Soviet hosts told us things had changed. We were the group of Americans that the Siberians had long been waiting for.

  Our S
iberian officials arranged tours of cities, took us to basketball games and other special events, and fêted us at dinners and church celebrations. After flying through thirteen time zones, and two days of constant motion, we were weary, and my focus needed to be on the upcoming swim: planning it out, figuring out the currents, and talking to the local pilot so we could work together. I would be swimming in three days. That wasn’t much time to recover or figure out the course of a swim.

  Early one morning, before anyone was awake, I slipped out a back door, and went for a long walk along Lake Baikal’s shores. I climbed down some boulders, to the Angara River. This was the only river that flowed out of the lake, and here the currents were strong, the water flowed fast, probably three or four knots. I studied the movement of the water as it flowed along the shore. It was like one massive drain out of a swimming pool. If we got caught in that, we’d move out with the river. We would need to keep a distance of a mile or two, or I’d never make it across the lake.

  A Siberian woman with high Slavic cheekbones and tanned skin, probably in her seventies, wearing a bright scarf on her head, a blue jacket, and a skirt well below her knees, scrambled across a quarter mile of river rocks. She stood up excitedly and waved. Holding her hand was a young man who looked like her son. He was taller and leaner, but he had the same blue eyes, the same nose, and the same-shaped smile.

  When they reached me, she was barely out of breath. She immediately said that she had been waiting for me. Her son translated my English for her. He had studied it in school as a child, and he had never used it before to speak to an American. He was thrilled. The elderly woman said she had a dream the night before that we would meet on the Angara River. She was so excited. Her blue eyes were full of light. She told me that I was welcome there. And then she said something I didn’t understand. She said that I was like George Washington De Long, an American hero to all of Siberia.

  I had never heard of George Washington De Long before. I was perplexed. Maybe I misunderstood. Did she maybe mean to say George Washington? I asked.