“One part of me wanted to go and run home, but an even bigger part wanted to go to the pole and deal with whatever challenges lay ahead, even polar bears.” —Helen Thayer
The night before embarking on the first solo ski trek to the magnetic North Pole, Helen Thayer couldn’t stop worrying about being attacked by a polar bear. She had been carefully preparing for this journey for several days after arriving at Resolute Bay in the far north of Canada’s Northwest Territories. She practiced setting her tent up and learned from local Inuit residents how to drive away polar bears. The Inuit were alarmed by the thought of her traveling solo. They urged Helen to consider traveling in a safe fashion, such as snowmobile or dogsled. Sled dogs, for example, could repel bears. Though Helen was set on accomplishing her journey under her own power, she saw the wisdom in their advice to bring along a dog. One of the Inuit men sold her a big, black, 95-pound sled dog. For its whole life this dog had been member of a dogsled team. He had no name and had never, ever been treated as a pet. Helen named him Charlie. Though she liked him right away, he seemed too easygoing to chase away a bear.
On March 29, 1988, Helen flew off on a small plane with Charlie as well as all her gear and food supplies. Her departure point was 67 miles north, at the Polaris mine. While mine employees were unloading their own supplies from the plane, a heavy crate fell on her carefully packed sled. Gear and other supplies that she had strapped onto the sled for easy access scattered all over the ground and then were haphazardly stuffed back on her sled. Helen decided to wait until the next morning, just before her departure, to repack the sled. That night she barely slept because she was so worried about running into polar bears. At breakfast the following morning she learned that a mama bear and two cubs had just been seen nearby her starting point; she instantly lost her appetite. As she attempted to reorganize the gear on her sled, well-meaning tourists insisted on helping her. Rather than telling them to go away, Helen simply zipped up the sled cover and decided to rearrange everything later. This was a big mistake.
Born Helen Nicholson in 1937 near Auckland, New Zealand, she grew up on a vast 10,000-acre sheep and cattle ranch. She was comfortable roaming the hills alone and spent hours exploring. Her father, Ray, who played soccer, and her mother, Margaret, a tennis player, encouraged physical exercise and her adventures. “They told me at a very early age, just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean to say you can’t do what you want. Decide what you want to do, and do it right,” Helen reported in an interview.
Her first ascent of a peak was at the age of nine, when she accompanied her parents up 8,200-foot-high Mount Egmont (now Taranaki). After standing atop the snow-capped volcano, Helen was more than ready to ascend another peak.
In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary, a fellow New Zealander, and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first people to summit Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak. When Hillary visited her school to talk with students, Helen was so captivated that even years later Hillary remembered her. She decided she wanted to be a mountaineer just like he was. When Hillary explored the South Pole in 1958, Helen became determined to visit at least one of the poles. Over the next few years, this goal sat in the back of her mind. Meanwhile, she developed the physical and mental skills needed for such an adventure.
In 1962 Helen married Bill Thayer, a helicopter pilot. They moved to Washington State, where they owned and operated a dairy farm. Helen also became an exceptional athlete, especially in track-and-field sports. She was a champion discus thrower in the 1960s, and in 1975, at the age of 38, she won the US National Championship in luge, an extremely fast type of sledding. After that she went on to summit the highest peaks in New Zealand and North and South America, as well as the Pamirs in Tajikistan. While standing at the summit of the 23,405-foot-high Lenin Peak, Helen realized it was finally the time to attempt a polar journey. Over her years navigating with a compass through wild landscapes, Helen had developed a curiosity about the magnetic North Pole. Unlike the geographic North Pole, which is a point on the map, the magnetic North Pole is a region that shifts its location due to changes in the Earth’s core. As her compass had always pointed north, so did Helen. Both her husband, Bill, and her parents supported her plans for her solo ski trek.
On March 30, 1988, Helen skied off toward the magnetic North Pole, pulling her seven-foot-long fiberglass sled loaded with 160 pounds of food, gear, and fuel. This was everything she would need for her month-long journey. Included in the gear was a rifle and orange flare pistol for protection against bears. At her side Charlie pulled his own sled packed with 85 pounds of dog food.
Helen and Charlie on their way to the magnetic North Pole.
Courtesy of Helen Thayer
The temperature was -32°F. Helen stayed toasty enough while skiing, but she cooled off quickly after stopping. On her face she wore a neoprene mask and goggles to shield her face from the frigid air. Every two hours she made sure to down a cup of a hot, high-carbohydrate drink and munch a handful of high-fat snacks. At the same time she also fed Charlie a handful of dry dog food. Progress was slow due to Helen being on constant lookout for polar bears. Several times they crossed not only the tracks of the mother bear and her cubs but also those of a male bear.
Her route followed the coast of Bathurst Island, an uninhabited landmass larger than the state of Connecticut. The first evening Helen decided to set up camp at 6:00 PM because the temperature had dropped rapidly to -45°F. Her hands were frigid as she searched for items, such as her heavy mittens, which had been repacked haphazardly on the sled. By the time she located the mittens, her fingers were numb and white. To get blood to her now-protected fingers, she swung her arms around and around. As her fingers grew warmer a hot, searing pain replaced the numbness. She realized her fingers weren’t frostbitten, but the pain was still agonizing. With her injured hands it was difficult to set up the tent. After neatly placing her cooking gear, clothing, journal, data book, and sleeping bag and pads in the tent, Helen discovered that she was unable to assemble the stove with her injured fingers. She had to eat her dinner cold and drink the last cup of water she would have until she could get the stove operating and melt some snow. This was not a good start to her 340-plus-mile trek.
As she would do each night, Helen radioed the innkeepers at Resolute Bay and reported her exact location, current weather conditions, and the miles traveled. She informed them that no bears had been sighted but didn’t mention the condition of her hands.
The next morning Helen’s fingers were worse. They were covered with blood blisters that made it excruciating to use them. To make matters worse, just after breakfast she heard Charlie make a deep, low growl. Not far away were a mama bear and two cubs. As the dog snarled viciously, Helen clipped him to a tie-down rope to prevent him from running after the bear. The mama bear slowly began plodding toward Helen. Despite Helen firing a warning shot with the rifle, the bear kept coming. Shooting a flare did nothing to halt the bear’s advance. However, the combination of firing off a series of flares and Charlie’s ferocious snarling finally deterred the bear. Followed by her cubs, she slowly lumbered away. Though Helen felt like a nervous wreck, she and Charlie had successfully scared away their first polar bear.
Later that day as they continued their journey, Helen used more flares to drive away two more bears. By 5:00 PM she was so worn out by these bear encounters that she stopped early to set up camp. They had traveled only three miles. The injuries to her hands made every activity so painful that Helen cried in despair. For the rest of her expedition Helen would have moments like this, and each time she had to turn her mind to thoughts of past accomplishments to help her believe in her ability to succeed. In the end the only thing her crying accomplished was to make her eyelids freeze together. Afterward she sat next to Charlie, who laid his head on her knee before falling asleep on her lap. Helen felt grateful for his devotion and realized she had to trust his ability to detect and drive away the bears.
During the next few days they journeyed through beautiful ice formations and glimpsed arctic foxes. Helen learned to navigate through areas of rough sea ice. The glare and her iced-over goggle lenses resulted in a lack of perspective in the vast white landscape, which made it difficult to judge the terrain that lay ahead. The extremely cold temperatures caused ice crystals to form between the outer shell of her coat; by the end of each day her coat became as constraining as a straightjacket. Each night in the tent she had to thaw out both her mask and jacket so she could use them the following day.
As they traveled through the ominously named Polar Bear Pass, a large male bear charged out from behind a small iceberg locked in the ice pack. As soon as Helen let Charlie loose, he dashed over to the bear, sinking his teeth into its back leg. As Charlie held on tight, he skillfully twisted away from the bear’s snapping jaws. The bear ran off as soon as it dislodged Charlie, but Charlie kept up his attack until the bear was gone from sight.
Helen Thayer peeking out from her frozen ice mask.
Courtesy of Helen Thayer
Three days later a fierce storm blew in from the south. After first repelling another bear, Helen and Charlie climbed into the tent, where they stayed for three days, waiting for calmer weather. By now the blood blisters on Helen’s hands had burst, and using them was more excruciating than ever. Added to this difficulty was the cracking of the sea ice beneath the tent. It was a relief when the wind died down enough for Helen and Charlie to pack up the gear and depart. Navigating through the fractured ice had to be done with the greatest of care. At times they had no choice but to cross over gaps—some of them three feet wide. Helen was well aware that falling into the frigid seawater would mean instant death. When at last they reached solid ground, she felt as if she had awakened from a terrible nightmare.
Travel during the next four days of clear weather was a vast improvement, but there were still more bears to drive away and more sections of thin ice to avoid. With the better conditions, they were able to trek longer and longer distances each day. Helen made up the days she had lost during the storm. After she made it to the northern tip of Bathurst Island, Helen got ready for the 70-mile journey across the sea ice to King Christian Island. She was now so close to the magnetic North Pole that her compass no longer functioned. In its place Helen used a chart that showed the exact time when the sun would be due south. Making use of this chart and a sundial, she was able to calculate the correct angle west of north that she had to follow. It took three long days of travel before they reached land. Helen then confirmed her location on King Christian Island with an experimental GPS instrument that she carried with her. The following day Helen skied to the northwest tip of the island from where she planned to head south to the area of the magnetic North Pole. On the way she and Charlie encountered a zone of thin ice plates, and Charlie resisted going with her. Out on the ice, a plate broke loose, tilted, and almost dumped them into the sea. Later Helen wondered if Charlie had sensed that the sheet of ice might tip. Day by day she was learning to trust the judgment and skill of this dog that had lived his whole life in the Arctic.
They started for the pole at 1:00 AM. By 4:00 PM they were only a couple of miles from the pole when Helen sighted a storm approaching from the south. When she realized just how fast and furiously it was advancing, she quickly anchored both sleds with ice screws. She was just about to pitch the tent when she sensed that it was too late. She pulled the zipper on the sled bag closed and was about to tighten a tie-down rope when the wind knocked her over. Creeping on hands and knees behind her sled, she then watched in horror as her gear and food began flying out of the sled bag. Without the tie-down rope to secure it, the zipper had blasted open. Luckily, Helen managed to shut the zipper before everything was lost.
When the wind paused, Helen realized that when she had been knocked down her face had been cut and her right eye was injured. Unable keep her eye open, she began to despair. From past experience she knew it wouldn’t help at all to lose faith and told herself, “The Arctic has rammed everything down my throat from polar bears, to storms, to weird ice, and now this. I’ll sit this storm out and make it.”
During a lull in the storm, she was finally able stand up enough to erect the tent; she prayed that it would withstand the wind, which was roaring as loud as a jet engine. It wasn’t until after the storm had blown out that Helen discovered all that was left of her food supply was a small bag of walnuts. There was barely enough fuel left to melt enough ice for a bottle of water per day. Several sacks of dog food had also been blown away. On half her normal ration of water and scarcely enough food, Helen would have to continue onward to the pickup point, where a plane would retrieve her. She had already been through a lot, but these next days would take all the emotional, spiritual, and physical strength she possessed.
Despite these troubles Helen was joyous the following day when she arrived at the pole. She had achieved her mission of becoming the first woman to reach the pole on a solo voyage. To document her accomplishment, she snapped photographs of herself and Charlie posing with the flags of the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Helen had reached her goal, but now she had to get to the place where the plane was scheduled to pick her up. It took seven days to get there, during which Helen endured hunger, thirst, and limited sight. Despite the odds, fueled by faith and grit, Helen managed to reach the rendezvous point. From there she and Charlie were evacuated and returned to the Polaris Mine. An explorer with less experience and determination would not have made it home, especially without a partner like Charlie. Helen Thayer went on to walk across the Sahara and Gobi Deserts, kayak more than 2,000 miles on the Amazon River, and return for another Arctic journey with Charlie and her husband, Bill. Charlie became the star at school presentations where Helen talked to students about her adventures. He died in 2007 after a long and happy life. Helen said about her influence on children, “I want them to say, ‘If she can do it, I can do it.’”
Helen and Charlie reach their goal!
Courtesy of Helen Thayer
