09/10.19 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 57
The explorer’s crossing of Antarctica put him in the spotlight. His
skill in presenting himself to audiences hungry for vulnerable
heroes will keep him there. BY TIM NEVILLE
He touched the post, called his wife, and
cried as the weight of what he’d done settled
in. O’Brady could now claim one of the last
great adventure firsts: a solo crossing of the
Antarctic landmass, under his own power
and with no resupplies. He collected him-
self and shuffled about a mile away to a spot
where a plane could land. He was out of food
but found a cache that had been left there a
year earlier by Antarctic Logistics and Ex-
peditions, or ALE, a Salt Lake City outfitter
that operates flights and guided services into
the interior of the continent. They would
come for him in a few days. Inside the box he
found some chocolate, freeze-dried meals,
and a note: “Congratulations, Ben!”
Ben Saunders, a Briton and star polar ad-
venturer, had attempted his own solo cross-
ing of Antarctica in 2017 but had stopped at
the South Pole after realizing he would starve
before completing the route. The goody box
had been waiting ever since.
O’Brady set up his tent and slept. Some-
where in the white enormity behind him,
British Army captain Louis Rudd, 49, was
steadily grinding toward the same wooden
post. Rudd had been friends with Henry
Worsley, a fellow army officer and distant re-
lation of Frank Worsley, the captain of Ernest
Shackleton’s doomed ship, the Endurance.
In 2016, Worsley was just 30 miles short of
completing an unsupported crossing under
his own power, but he suffered an infection
and had to be airlifted to Chile, where he died
of organ failure at age 55. The following year,
Rudd led a team on a traverse of the conti-
nent. Now he was back to do it again, alone,
to honor his fallen friend. “It’s really impor-
tant it’s a Brit that cracks this journey first,”
he told the Telegraph shortly before leaving.
Now a hippie from Oregon had beat him to it.
O’Brady hadn’t seen Rudd since day six,
when the captain had shuffled up beside him
in a whiteout.
“Morning, mate,” Rudd said. “I’ve got aADY
TELL
ORYCOLIN O’BRADY was fully aware of the
flow. For years he’d felt it on long runs and
grueling rides, but usually it was only after
the trance had passed that he recognized he’d
been in it at all. During those moments of
extreme exertion, the pain disappeared and
time became less of a river, more of an ocean.
How wonderful it was now to be in it and
aware of it, too. He could hold the sensation
and study it like a piece of sea glass plucked
from the sand.
For hours—or had it been days?—scenes
from his life scrolled by to the rhythmic,
scratchy hiss of his skis on ice. He was a kid
at a swim meet, his mom holding an orange
towel on the far side of the blocks. He was
on one knee in Ecuador, asking his girlfriend
to marry him. He was on his back in a grimy
Thai clinic, a cat crawling around his purple,
gooey legs, which he’d just burned to a crisp
in a freak accident.
Kicking and gliding his way forward, mile
after mile, he began repeating a phrase that
gave him strength. Infinite love. Infinite love.
Infinite love.
A wooden post appeared on the hori-
zon and he snapped to. It was the day after
Christmas in 2018, and O’Brady, then 33,
was in Antarctica. Staffers from the Ant-
arctica Program at McMurdo Station, an
American research outpost, had placed the
post here to mark the edge of the continent,
the boundary where the land below the snow
and ice ended and the sea began. For 54 days,
O’Brady had trudged alone, fighting white-
outs and howling wind. He’d hauled a sled of
food and fuel some 566 miles and up 9,000
vertical feet to the South Pole, then veered
hard to the west and made his way another
360 miles to this spot. He’d shed 25 pounds.
Superglue caulked the deep, painful cracks
in his fingers and hands. In Antarctica, skiing
20 miles is a Herculean day. In a deep flow
state for much of the past 32 hours, O’Brady
had covered nearly 80.