The First Rule of Adventure: Failures are Never Failures
Polar adventurer Eric Larsen speaks honestly about his speed attempt to the South Pole.
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How to Get Kids Excited About Snowshoeing
Polar explorer Eric Larsen shares his key strategies for building fun into every adventure.
Eric Larsen’s Last North Expedition (Day 47): Bears, Mental Struggle, and the Fierce Beauty of the Arctic
“I couldn’t decide if the Arctic Ocean was trying to swallow us whole or create the worst road block in history. It’s frustrating, scary and overwhelming all wrapped up into one big polar mess of emotions… Still there are few moments when I am not completely in awe of the beauty and power of this place.” –Eric (Day 32) Eric Larsen and expedition partner Ryan Waters have reached day 47 of their Last North expedition, an attempt to break the unsupported ground speed record to the North Pole. Last week they crossed the 87th parallel, marking a distance milestone that sends them into the final stretch of the 500-mile journey. They have 102 miles to go. The duo is finally making decent distance each day, sometimes reaching 17 miles via skis…
Behind The Photo: How To Get that Glowing Tent Shot
Learn what it takes to master the art of a great tent-glow shot.
Eric Larsen Reaches the North Pole!
MSR ambassador Eric Larsen and expedition teammate, Ryan Waters, reached the geographic North Pole last night, successfully completing their Last North Expedition! The pair has spent the last 53 grueling days traversing 480 miles of frozen Arctic Ocean via snowshoes and skis, becoming only the second American team in history to complete the crossing. The team reports that while they’re exhausted, they’re overjoyed to have achieved the end. At MSR, we’re proud of Eric’s and Ryan’s accomplishment and congratulate them on the extraordinary feat. The last 19 miles of their journey posed the greatest challenges, as fractured ice required them to put on dry suits to swim from one small frozen peninsula to the next, all through near-whiteout conditions. Today, they’ll be picked up and flown back to Resolute, Canada,…
Eric Larsen Heads for North Pole on ‘Last North’ Expedition
On Saturday, polar explorer Eric Larsen departed Northern Ellesmere Island and began skiing across Arctic ice on what could be the world’s last unsupported ground expedition to the geographic North Pole. Eric and expedition partner, Ryan Waters, are attempting to break the 2006 expedition speed record. To do so, they’ll need to cover 500 miles of ice in less than 49 days, traversing by skis, snowshoes, and at times swimming through semi-frozen slush. Because they’re not receiving outside help, the pair is pulling all of their food and equipment—nearly 350 lbs—in sleds, which also serve as rafts. They’ll have to eat an incredible amount of calories per day, avoid polar bears and navigate dangerous shifting ice. Eric is a veteran to extreme expeditions. In 2010, he became the first person in history to…
Meet the MSR Athletes: Our Roster of Unruly Dreamers
We’re honored to have an incredible team of world-class athletes and adventurers who embody the spirit of modern day exploration. Some of them are legendary pioneers in their disciplines; others are pushing the limits of what’s possible while balancing efforts for positive impact. Together, they represent a field-testing crew that helps our team engineer the most reliable, high-performance gear possible, solid equipment that they—and you—can trust. Eric Larsen, Polar Explorer Polar explorer, expedition guide and dog musher Eric Larsen is a pioneer of both the arctic and Antarctic. To date, he has completed more polar expeditions than any other American in history. Among those were the first-ever summer expedition to the North Pole, and a record-setting expedition for reaching the South Pole, the North Pole and the top of…
Eric Larsen: Thoughts on Staying Warm in the Most Extreme Cold
By Eric Larsen People assume that because I spend much of my time in polar regions that I must enjoy being cold. The truth couldn’t be any further from the fact. I like being warm, just like everyone else. The only difference: I like being warm in really cold places. But there’s also a catch, I don’t like being hot in cold places either. I’m kind of like the polar version of Goldilocks: not too hot, not too cold, but just right. To achieve the perfect arctic equilibrium while traveling is no easy task and it requires careful diligence and following a few simple rules. 1. Be the onion. Back in the day, we would throw on a huge down jacket, go outside and call it good. Sure we were…
The MSR Gear that Got Eric Larsen to the North Pole
By Eric Larsen On May 6th, my expedition partner Ryan Waters and I reached the geographic North Pole after 53 grueling days. To reach the North Pole from land is a journey of 480 miles in a straight line, but the route is anything but direct. With sea ice moving and shifting due to winds, tides and ocean currents, the surface is constantly in flux. Huge pans of ice collide and crack in a screeching chug, chug, chug sound. There is an overall drift to the ice, too. The entire mass moves slowly from the pole toward Canada, the U.S. and Greenland. In fact, waking up each morning, we were usually quite distraught after checking our GPS—losing up to 3 miles of forward progress while we slept.