I'm Mark Wood.

I've been doing polar expeditions for over 20 years.

I'm here today to answer your questions.

This is Polar Exploration Support.

[upbeat music]

So Adrianjones28 asked,

What was the most repulsive thing you had

to eat on your expeditions?

It was rancid, a whale blubber,

which is absolutely repulsive

and just was really tough to chew through as well.

And the people who gave it me

who knew me really well were smiling

'cause they knew it tasted bad.

When you chew it, it's like chewing on a car tire,

but it also stinks.

So TroyPSimpson asked,

I've no idea why I'm watching videos

about what to do if I come face to face with a polar bear.

Well, I've come face to face with a polar bear, Troy,

and 300 meters away, right up close to my face.

Actually followed me for about three days.

But the moment that I started

to feel my heart really beat

was when I actually could smell the bear.

And that means the bear's really, really close.

And I could hear him sort of grunting.

So this is the nose of the polar of bear.

I was stood on some ice luckily,

and he jumped up and sniffed my GoPro camera.

To give it perspective,

he was an arms distance away.

So he was this close away from me,

which is too close in my world,

and this is kind of what I was looking at.

The incredible strength within this jaw

to rip an animal open was only at an arm's length away.

It's the first time that I've actually felt real danger.

And you only feel tremendously alone

when you feel you need somebody's help.

And I had nobody else there.

It seemed like hours,

but it was seconds of looking at this bear

and eventually he dropped down and just walked away.

And at that point,

I got this pen with the firework on the end

and I pointed it at his feet

and luckily it exploded in front of him,

not harming the bear,

but enough to scare him away and he ran off.

But for about two or three nights,

I was still sticking my head out the tent

like a mere cat and looking around

and making sure that he'd gone,

and he had definitely gone, which was a massive relief.

So Seorisgf says,

Bro, where is the North Pole?

Actually there's five North Poles, let me show you.

So this is the top of the world and you've got Russia

and you've got Canada and all the countries around.

But the blue bit in the center is the Arctic ocean.

To show you where the five North Poles are,

I'm gonna use my trusty polar bear claw.

You've got the geographic North Pole,

which is the very top of the planet where all of the lines

of longitude pass through.

That's a fixed pole.

Then you've got the pole of inaccessibility,

which is on the Arctic Ocean itself.

Again, a fixed point,

but it's equidistance from any landmass around it,

from Greenland to Canada to Russia, et cetera.

Then you've got three other poles.

One of them is the Geomagnetic North Pole,

which all geophysicists like,

very difficult word to say.

And that's a moving pole.

And currently it's going across the Canadian

Island of Ellesmere.

Then you've got the magnetic North Pole,

which I'm sure you've heard of.

And that's going across the Canadian ocean side

and it's crossing over to Russia.

So it's moving and moving over to Russian side.

And that's really in the news at the moment

because of its shift.

And the final pole that you've got

is actually in the air itself.

It's the point from Polaris to the North Pole,

and it's a celestial pole.

So that's five North Poles.

So a great question

or statement from Snakesl1,

The dudes that were involved in the heroic age

of Arctic exploration were out of their freaking minds.

So the pioneer age of polar exploration

were really from the late 1800s onwards,

right up to the point we reached the geographic north

and geographic south poles,

which were earlier on in the last century.

At that time, it was about discovery

and mapping these areas.

In the days of Sir Ernest Shackleton

and his men doing epic journeys across Antarctica,

as some would say that they risked

their lives for discovery,

but really it was pure survival.

So they weren't given a choice.

They went out there to do something

that no other humans had done before, which was so heroic.

Nowadays that wouldn't really happen

because the communications we have,

the global communications, the satellite, et cetera,

would allow us to show the peril in real time

so we could be rescued.

R_mccallsburg has written,

Read today that the Arctic Explorer has brought lard

with them since it's so calorific dense.

Did they just eat it or what?

That's what the explorers used to do.

Nowadays we're a little bit more advanced

in understanding nutrition,

and this picture shows little packets of food

that I've decanted from the original packet.

There's actually about 100 packets of food

and you've got main meals and also puddings,

and that allows me also to put salami and butter and cheese

and salt and everything else in there.

And you wrap it up into a little ball.

Instead of having a big carrier bag full of food each day,

there's actually two handfuls of food that you have.

And inside there is apple and custard powder

and that's what I eat as a pudding.

You've also got the main meals on this side,

which can be a mixture of curries, stews,

pastas as well for different packets.

So you're not eating the same food all the time.

I go and collect the snow or the ice

and I melt it down, then boil it up,

and then I pour this powder into a container

and pour the boiling hot water into the container,

mix it up, and then it expands.

And that's what I eat.

Full of protein, full of carbs,

full of everything you need to perform really well.

Anderson Lemke asks a good question,

What kind of cell phoness do Arctic explorers use?

With cell phoness, we can't use them

in these extreme cold areas.

We use satellite phoness

and you can't use them as well like normal cell phoness

to look at the internet and to connect with friends

or, say, call emergency services.

We use these to connect directly with the rescue services

that we've already connected with prior to the expedition.

I can also connect with friends and family,

but I don't when I'm on extreme expeditions,

and the reason being is it's too emotional for me.

To bring myself back into their world will drain

my sort of buildup of non-emotion

that I've got for the expedition.

It loses my focus for what I'm doing each day,

which is pretty tough mentally.

So I don't need somebody that I love on the other end

of the phones weakening that spirit, if you like.

So this is a question from Al Lowe.

What's the difference between a North Pole

and the South Pole?

All of the difference in the world, he says.

So from an explorer's perspective,

the Arctic Ocean or the North Pole

is the toughest expedition

that you can do hands down.

Antarctica itself being a continent,

all you have to deal with is oncoming winds,

tremendous cold, the loneliness of being out there,

and sometimes crevasses,

but you generally know where the crevasses are.

In the North, it's like a zoo up there.

There's a varied amount of animals there.

If you move to Antarctica in the center

around the South Pole,

there's no birds or anything like that.

It's just silence.

So Sara Bushway asks, Watching season seven of Alone.

They have to survive 100 days in the Arctic by themselves

to win a million dollars.

Could you do it?

I'd love to win a million dollars with what I do.

For me personally, I work alone a lot.

So I'm known for solo work, working Antarctica,

the Arctic Circle, also on training expeditions as well.

So I've spent 50 days in Antarctica alone,

30 days around the North Pole,

another 30 days in Norwegian High Arctic.

Generally I'm okay being alone.

And the biggest is issue there is the mental status

and strength that you require to do that.

And I think experience gives you

the abilities to carry that out.

And as you're going through a blank landscape,

it gives you tremendous creativity in your mind

to think about yourself as a human being,

but what direction you want to go in, in life as well.

So Be_the_spark has asked a serious question.

Other than reindeer and the occasional polar bear,

what kind of animals would live in Santa's North Pole?

You've got Arctic fox, Arctic hares,

which are small animals.

Obviously you've also got caribou, which is a reindeer.

And you've got mascot

which are quite big animals, pack animals.

And also you've got lemmings, very, very small.

And the only real bird I can think of

would be the Arctic tern,

which is in fact the longest migrating bird on the planet

and can also be found in Antarctica as well.

So it goes all the way around the planet.

It's very rare,

but sometimes you do get interaction with these animals.

So AndyC_1 asks,

Which polar explorer do you have

the most admiration for and why?

So two big explorers,

Sir Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott

did epic expeditions in Antarctica,

but there was one person who has actually worked with them

as like shadow of these two men.

And it's an Irishman called Tom Crean

and he was the workforce behind them

and is known as the Unsung Hero of that age.

So it was in Tom Crean's nature to survive,

but also to look after the people he was with.

So he put his life in danger

by actually rescuing his men, looking after Shackleton,

being the forefront or the energy

behind making that expedition

to the South Pole a success as in all the men survived.

Rudi Schuller asks,

What do negative degree temperatures feel like?

To stand alone in minus 40, minus 50

is a real tenseness on your body, almost claustrophobic,

that you can't get out of the situation.

It's a real horrible feeling

that you are engulfed in the cold.

But to survive in that moment, you need to do three things.

One is you need to make sure your body core

temperature is warm.

So by eating food is a real survival technique

to warm yourself up from the inside.

The second thing is to wear the correct clothing.

And that's something that will help you keep warm,

but also allow your body to breathe as you're moving

so you don't create sweat on your body,

'cause if you create sweat, then when you stop,

that will turn to ice or clinging onto your heart

and your lungs and can give you hypothermia.

And then the third thing is movement.

So as long as you can move, keep moving,

keep the blood blowing

around the body away from the extremities

so you don't get frostbite,

then your body can function and you can progress.

So inside the tent itself at night,

it's the same temperature as outside the tent.

You've got a little protection from the wind, which is good,

but you can be minus 35 with inside the tent,

which is colder than your freezers at home.

But any explorer, any adventurer that you ever meet

and you say the sound of the cooker is...

As soon as you start hearing that sound,

your brain starts getting happy

because your body starts warming up.

And it's amazing to feel

that initial heat coming off the cooker

where you start stripping your clothes down

and you can actually be in base layers inside your tent

as a tent heats up.

So MaidenSlate asks,

Curious, how would you envision medical care

in remote and rural areas?

And I am self-sufficient, so I need to, first of all,

be trained in medical care myself.

In Antarctica, as I started to move towards

the South Pole over 50 days,

I had a problem with my boot.

It wasn't fitting very well with my skis,

so I had a little bit of movement inside with my foot.

And over a few days, it started to heat up

and one day I took my foot out

and I found that the base of my foot, the skin had come off,

a massive amount of skin had come off

and you just had the rawness of the skin underneath.

And I was in a lot of agony.

So what I did at night was I cut the skin off

and because skin's got protein in it,

I ate the skin.

I didn't eat the skin.

That's a joke by the way.

I took the skin off.

After a few days, it actually dried off

because Antarctica is a dry desert.

If you expose the foot to the dryness,

it dries really, really quickly.

So the environment actually saved the day for me.

So this is from originalHRN.

I think I need a career change.

I wonder how one becomes an Arctic explorer?

I think you just need to find where your passion lies

and what you want to do and just take steps from there.

The word explorer is quite a contentious word

in this modern era.

I've been asked whether I can actually call myself that.

Well, after 35 plus expeditions in the polar regions,

I feel I have a right to say that.

And also it excites children when I come into schools

to give talks that they know

that have got an explorer coming in.

Really the explorers that I recognize,

these guys in the past,

the pioneers who discovered areas on the planet,

and in space, they are the pioneer explorers of the past.

The key point is you've got to have the desire

to go out there because the environment is so claustrophobic

and unpredictable that you've got to have the real need

to go out there and operate.

So you've got to consider that to begin with.

So my suggestion would be to go out

and experience the environment to begin with

and then to decide how you want to operate out there.

Limelacowboy, I love polar exploration

because where else are you going to find

this many people excited to discover a guy

who got cannibalized 180 years ago.

That's a good statement.

And yeah, people are excited about

the mac carb, aren't they?

A 100 or so years ago in the days of Sir John Franklin

and his men who perished along the Northwest Passage

in High Arctic Canada weren't discovered

until recent times as ships were,

but all of the men died on ice.

There was talks of cannibalism as well,

and this is the human nature at its rawest.

And really the only reason we know about this

is because of the diaries left behind

and the historic value of the whole expedition itself.

And that just shows how harsh these guys were living.

If you have to resort to something like that,

it's just hell on earth.

So Orionis has asked, How to travel to the Arctic?

You can pull sledges like I do, carry everything with you.

You can go on snowmobiless with teams,

you can also go on dog teams, which I love doing in Alaska.

I've worked with really good dog teams out there

called Squid Dog Acres.

So these little blue bits of material are actually booties

for dogs to put on their feet.

So these dogs have actually running these.

This was one of the main transports back in the day

for dog teams to transport humans across the ice.

And it's still used today in High Arctic areas,

but not in Antarctica.

They're not allowed dogs in Antarctica anymore

'cause it's unnatural for dogs to be there.

But it is a main source of transport for the polar regions.

So aside from pulling sledges,

we also wear skis and we go back country skiing.

So we have the bindings which not are attached

to the ski itself with the whole foot,

it's just attached by the toe.

It allows you to pivot and push the ski along.

So we do this as we're pulling the sledges along.

It allows us to propel ourselves a greater distance

using less energy.

So I do extreme expeditions,

but the polar regions are accessible to anybody

to go and venture into.

You just need to travel with the right company.

Devan Flaherty has asked me about the third man factor.

Has anybody ever experienced the third man factor?

When I did the South Pole,

I crossed there for 50 days without any music,

anything to stimulate my brain.

But after a while,

as I started to approach the South Pole itself,

it's on a plateau of 3,000 meters

and I started to push up this plateau

and I was in quite a bit of pain.

My body was folding a little bit.

I was really pushing against the wind

as I was going forward.

So it was an horrendous time for me.

And at that point, I felt an arm around my shoulder.

I was alone.

I felt somebody gripping onto my shoulder

and somebody leaning into me

whispering words of encouragement,

Keep going, keep going, keep going.

And that allowed me to almost be quite zen.

And even though I felt really relaxed

as I was pushing forward, my mind was clearer,

my body was still probably struggling

but I didn't feel it inside and it felt great.

And that happened about six

or seven times on that expedition.

And when I called for it, it never happened.

When I got back to Canada,

I spoke to a great explorer up there

and said this is what happened

'cause I was a little bit embarrassed as well.

And he said that it happened

to him on the way back from the North Pole when they tried

to find this food area which they'd laid out on ice,

they'd lost it.

So they did a pattern search

and something was telling him to go over towards the left.

And as he walked 100 yards,

he found the food in the ice.

I'm sure scientists would say that you are a lowest ebb

and your mind was thinking that you had no other choice

and I needed support.

So it manifested this support that I required.

My mom died 10 years prior to that.

So I could easily relate it to maybe it's the spirit

of my mother coming through.

And a lot of people might do that

and I wouldn't smile at that or joke about it.

It's one of the two,.

I'd like to think it's my mom, but who knows?

So Seetheuniverse has asked,

If you could bring one animal back from the North Pole

to be a pet, what would you choose and why?

And the bad news they're giving me

is penguins don't live in the North.

Thanks for that. I didn't really know that.

If you are asking me what's my favorite animal

and maybe a cuddly toy version of it,

then I would definitely bring back a lemming

'cause it's very small, it's very cute,

and it's very easy to hide away in my house away from people

who think a 58-year-old man shouldn't have a teddy bear.

So Licensedclown asks,

What if I went to work in the Arctic?

I feel like that would be cool.

It would be.

How many people can say they did that?

I can talk about the Canadian High Arctic,

which is probably half the size of Europe

with a human population of about 500 people.

There's two settlements, Greece Fjord and Resolute Bay,

which have about 270 to 300 people in.

And then there's a few research centers

around a vast area which makes the numbers

up to between four and 500 people.

However, there's also polar bears roaming around that area.

So the polar bear population

really outweighs the human population.

So Quora asks, How does one prepare

for an expiration to the Arctic?

And I think that to answer this, it's in preparation.

There's many things you have to pack for a polar expedition.

But the top five things

that I would recommend are these.

A sleeping bag is essential for a good night's sleep.

Sleep is so important to how you perform the next day.

A great tent, you need something which will withstand storms

and keep you protected from the wind.

A great cooker, something which will be reliable

through the 50/100 days.

And then the fourth thing is your navigation.

And the final thing is if I was gonna drop all four of those

and just pick one thing, it would be a locations beacon.

And if we don't take that with us, I think it's four highly.

So to take a navigational system with you to track

where you are going and then to press it in your hour

of need is so important

because the success of an expedition

is coming home safe and sound.

I don't really take books or anything like that

'cause they're too heavy.

I take a little ipods with me with music on it

and some podcasts on there as well.

But also I take a Dictaphones

'cause I'm not great at writing things down

as the pioneers used to do like great diaries.

So I actually sew it into my sleeping bag

and at night when I've had something to eat

and I'm nice and warm, tucked in my sleeping bag,

and it's the winds blown outside

and it's tremendously cold,

I can sit in my sleeping bag and talk about the day

and talk about how I feel, which I think is really important

for people to listen to.

What are your biggest fears?

The cold, the natural predators, or the isolation?

What draws humans to visit the Arctic

and how can one visit the great north

and leave it untouched?

For me, the biggest fear on exploration isn't polar bears,

isn't the cold, it's the fear of giving in.

It's the fear of that moment

where you find a weakness within your body and your heart

and you say, I can't go on.

And the trigger that keeps you going

is the fact you truly believe in what you're doing,

and also you have the mental knowledge to know

that it will get better.

You will progress

and you will get to your destination in the end.

So when I was in Antarctica,

the plane did disappear and I was left on my own

and I knew I had 50 days in front of me

to reach the Geographic South Pole.

I'd spent three years preparing for this

and telling everybody I was gonna do it.

So I had a the weight of the world, if you like,

upon my shoulders as I moved forward.

But five days into the journey,

I lost a key element to my expedition, which was my music.

Little ipods that I took with me, I lost it in the ice.

And yes, it was a white ipods that I lost.

So I had absolutely nothing to think about,

but my own thoughts and the silence

and looking around 360 of nothing actually played on my mind

to the point where I pitched my tent middle of the day

and I sat in it and I thought, I can't do this anymore.

This was five days into the journey

and I spent 36 hours in that tent just going through my mind

of giving in, giving in, giving in all the time.

I know I'm an older man, but I can be honest to you

and say that I cried and I judge myself

and what I was doing.

And at that point, I got on my satellite phones,

I phonesd my friend back in the UK who knew me really well

and I said, I want to give in.

And he talked me through what was wrong,

how I could process things.

He talked me back on my feet

but he didn't make me move my feet.

So I packed everything away.

Then I stood looking at the path in front of me

and I just put one foot in front of the other,

one foot in front of the other,

kept on doing that for another 1,000 feet.

And that's how I reached the South Pole

by just basically moving myself in the right direction.

Remember_Sarah asks a good question.

How was the golden age of Arctic exploration possible

before Hot Hands, which is what I want to know.

Hot Hands is like a pad that you can have in your hand,

you break it and it warms up your hands.

They're great if you're go skiing

or if you are doing stuff like operating cameras

and things like that.

But for what I do, I try not to use artificial heat.

It's a very short term thing.

It feels great at the time, then that's taken away

and I'm back to being cold again.

It helps in in sense of emergencies,

but I don't generally use them just to warm myself up.

You've got to remember they didn't have these pads,

but what they did bring on their ships

were things like musical instruments,

like pianos and guitars and they have bottles of whiskey

and wine and rum and all these different foods on the ship.

And then they transported that to the ice

and they took a lot of heavy equipment along with them.

So even though they didn't have the comfort of Hot Hands,

they had the comfort of other things that we take

for granted in normal life.

So TamsynVR asks, How cold is it right now?

Do we need to dress like Arctic explorers?

So you don't just put big jackets on.

You have very, very thin layers that you wear

that are breathable, that trap air.

And you can have two or three of those on

depending on how cold you are.

And then you have a mid layer on top.

And then if you are really, really cold,

like if you're static

and not using your body to generate heat,

then you can put a big down jacket on,

zip it right up with your hat and everything

to keep me nice and warm.

But it all depends on what you're doing.

If you are moving, then your body will generate heat.

If you're static, then you will release heat from your body

so you need to contain it.

When you're in a tent at night

and you're about to get into your minus 40 sleeping bags,

so really great sleeping bags you need.

The mistake a lot of people make

is they think, I'm really cold,

so they wear all their jackets and everything

and they get into the sleeping bag and they start to freeze.

And the reason for that

is because the sleeping bag is designed

to contain the heat of the body.

So you heat up the bag, the bag doesn't heat up you.

So to wear less clothing in a sleeping bag

is the important thing to do.

What I do is I get into my sleeping bag

and when it's freezing cold, I do a little jog.

I move around quite a lot and I generate a lot of heat.

Then I put the bag up, zip it up,

and all that heat is then dispersed inside the bag.

And that's how you keep warm.

So this is from Walter.

How our igloos built and how do they keep you warm?

Igloos are built in igloo shape

because it gives strength to the structure.

If it just had walls, then it'd be difficult

to build a structured roof to it.

Also the ice that is used

has got very little water content.

So if you try to get the ice

and scratch it up like a snowball,

then it would just flake away in your hands

'cause it hasn't got anything to bind it together.

So that's why you cut bricks to build an igloo

because it's more structural,

a bit like polystyrene if you like.

The igloos will keep you sheltered from the wind

and you can actually light a fire inside

or put your cooker on

and that will then contain the heat inside.

The only technical thing you need to know about

is how those fumes are released outside.

If it's sealed, you can actually succumb to the fumes.

So Romanticspiral, Walking to work today in a stormy

winter weather made me realize

I have zero survival instincts.

Drop me alone in the middle of the Arctic

and I will give up within a day.

If the average person was dropped into the same area

that I operate in,

it would be a rapid decrease in the mental

and physical state.

There is a thing called Arctic shock,

and that's the reality of where you are.

The coldness, that engulfed shoe,

the wind that whips around you,

the realization that you're not gonna be able

to go into a building for the next two

to three weeks can be quite intense on you.

So Arctic shock kicks in

and basically that means that your body's telling you

to give in at a very, very early stage.

So failure would be very, very quick for them

unless you have that backing of experience.

So Simplebeauty asks,

So we're not gonna talk about Antarctica melting?

Well, I've actually bought in some ice,

which is over the course of 12 years from Antarctica

and from the Arctic circle as well.

So this is ice from the Geographic North Pole,

and this is ice from the Geographic South Pole.

In Antarctica, the ice is melting so fast

and it's one of the most rapidly

heating places on the planet.

So, so much research is being taken out there

with different teams from around the world.

And when it comes round to the Arctic circle,

because it's an ocean,

obviously there's very, very different patterns there.

But with the Arctic, it's very, very different altogether

because it's an ocean with land masses around it like Russia

and Canada and places like that.

So you've got ice crossing all the way from Russia

all the way to Canada,

but that ice is depleting.

Ad as the ice melts, the sea level rise.

But how does that work?

Because in ice cube in a glass, if the ice melts,

it stays the same level,

but because the ice is so vast,

it's got its own gravitational pull

and it draws in water from all oceans

from around the planet.

And as it gets to the top of the world,

it freezes and that's why you get this beautiful ice

mass on top of the planet.

But because the world is heating up,

this ice is melting

and it's now dispersing the water back around the planet

so sea levels rise,

and that's an explanation of what's happening at both poles.

To the naked eye, this looks very, very clear at both poles,

but in the Antarctic one, you've got ice,

which is sat on top of land mass.

So it's pure ice sat on top of there in a pure area.

And on this one, you've got ice from the ocean,

the Arctic ocean.

So I would imagine it's got salt content

within this one though I haven't tested it,

but they are very, very different in their content.

Hetch Silence says, How do we make fire in the snow?

Well, in my world as an explorer, I don't make fires.

We haven't got any trees, we've got nothing to burn.

It'd be wrong of me to burn anything

out there anyway environmentally.

So what I use to heat up my food is a little cooker

and we use fuel and we light that

and it sets off the heat for the food,

but also heat for the tent as well.

So it warms me up at the same time and I go out

and collect snow and ice and I melt that down, boil it up,

and that's what I add to my food.

So actually the heater is a main source of survival.

Quora writes, What was your most

unexpected Arctic experience?

One of the most memorable was you expect

to see a polar bear in the Arctic,

but one day a little lemming just decided

to walk into the tent and it was a total shock.

A lemming is a little rodent

and he just walked in like it...

Well, it was his home.

I took some photographs and didn't touch him at all.

And then he walked out and as I saw him walk out,

he sort of walked off into the ice

and then just disappeared over a little bit of ice,

and I thought, how does he survive in this wilderness?

So those are all the questions.

Thank you very much for them.

It's made me think about who I'm as an explorer,

it's put me on my back foot.

You've occasionally made me smile as well.

So thanks for watching Polar Explorer Support.