Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1122 - Sea Kayaking the NW Passage with Mark Agnew

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Ep. 1122 - Sea Kayaking the NW Passage with Mark Agnew · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And we try and go through it and as we're weaving through it, the sun touches the horizon for the first moment.
0:12
[SPEAKER_02]: At the first time in the whole trip, it's got that low and it doesn't quite set, it just stays there like a perpetual sunset threatening to set and never disappear.
0:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And it turned the whole world like every inch of ice or inch right up to the edge of our class was glowing like there was a light bulb in each one.
0:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventurers from around the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to get started in the outdoors or to keep you moving if you're already there.
0:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.
0:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Episode 1,122, this is Mark Agnew, and he was on the team, which was the first to see kayak the Northwest Passage in a single season.
0:54
[SPEAKER_04]: He does such a fantastic job of bringing this to life for us, and he also has amazing advice about adventure sports, about setting goals, and achieving goals.
1:08
[SPEAKER_04]: and doing really hard things.
1:10
[SPEAKER_04]: But before we dive in here, I owe you an explanation of this episode is coming out on a Tuesday when it normally would have come out on a Monday.
1:18
[SPEAKER_04]: The reason is, another one of my sons got engaged.
1:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's crazy because the family was in different places.
1:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of us were in Canada, and he was here in Colorado, and he got engaged.
1:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And so this weekend, his fiance's family, and the rest of our family, all converged here in the valley.
1:39
[SPEAKER_04]: The whole bunch of us hiked up through the rain to about 9,500 feet on the edge of the West Elx wilderness area, to the spot, the special location,
1:52
[SPEAKER_04]: where Daniel had proposed to Macy the prior week.
1:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And we all celebrated with him, their upcoming marriage and their engagement season.
2:01
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a picnic lunch in the rain.
2:03
[SPEAKER_04]: The Aspen were golden, beautiful, beautiful, and the clouds were dancing on the peaks and the sun was playing tag with the clouds.
2:15
[SPEAKER_04]: It was such a beautiful day of family celebration.
2:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't get the podcast done, but I think it was worth it.
2:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for your understanding.
2:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And this episode is going to be so great.
2:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Mark Agnew on Sea kayaking the Northwest Passage.
2:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi friends, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast again.
2:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Today I have Mark Agnew with us, and I am really looking forward to this interview.
2:46
[SPEAKER_04]: This is about sea kayaking the Northwest Passage, no small feat, an amazing place on this planet, and I think very, very few people have ever even visited, matter of fact, Mark and his team said world records doing this because it was something that just had not been done this way before.
3:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Mark is a British adventurer and a journalist, and he etched his name in history as a part of the Arctic Cowboys.
3:12
[SPEAKER_04]: This was the team that did the Northwest Passage.
3:15
[SPEAKER_04]: 1700 miles in a single season, and human powered.
3:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Of course, they had all the waves, the weather, the polar bears, the ice, the ice packs, all of these things to contend with, and
3:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And it took him 103 days, it set two world records and Mark was awarded the adventurer of the year award.
3:35
[SPEAKER_04]: That's pretty cool, Mark.
3:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, it's less cool when you find out I use my wife's email to nominate myself.
3:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it was European adventure of the year.
3:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So my American teammates weren't eligible, but you know, they certainly were as important to the, what, more important to the success than I was.
3:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And worthy of that answer was keen to point out that they were very much part of that award, even if they didn't get it.
4:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I was kind of curious how you managed to be the one on the list that got the award.
4:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, you're in.
4:09
[SPEAKER_04]: You got to be British.
4:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
4:12
[SPEAKER_02]: So I had that advantage in my corner.
4:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, yeah, I was, um, the art to Cowboys, too, are from Texas, West and Jeff West was the leader of the expedition.
4:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And they'd already been the first people to kayak the lengthy Amazon, the first people to kayak the length of the Volga.
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I lead and I came in sort of over the last minute and I lead is from Alaska Lips and Upstate New York and there's a serious character having one things like the Yukon 500 and what not and then there was me who had very little parking experience had never met them before I flew to the Arctic.
4:46
[SPEAKER_02]: It all happened very quickly in the last minute.
4:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I owe them a great deal in terms of the risk they took inviting me, and it was risk on my part two, and for me it paid off.
4:55
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to ask them whether or not they were asking me to join me.
5:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, here's a big question.
5:02
[SPEAKER_04]: You met them when you got there to start to trip.
5:05
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what you just said.
5:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that true?
5:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I was trying to be the first person to row it.
5:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, for the Norfolk Passage is through the Canadian archipelago, and it links the Atlantic to the Pacific, and explorers have been looking for it for centuries, the first person to go sort of sent by Henry VIII.
5:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Then Martin Frobischer sent by Elizabeth I, and when he meets the innuette, that's there, Canadian Thanksgiving.
5:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it really supercharges in the 19th century where the British were obsessed with finding a shortcut to Asia.
5:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And then in the last 10, 15 years, as the ice disappeared, people wondered, is it possible by human power, human power could be kayaking, rowing, different things.
5:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And my so far to that point, I'd been trying to roll the Atlantic.
5:48
[SPEAKER_02]: So the natural progression for me was trying to roll the Norfolk space and I joined a team, fellow Scots and Brits, a few people from elsewhere, where the Coral of the Team were from the UK.
5:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And that went south.
6:00
[SPEAKER_02]: in spectacular fashion over money, quite close to the start line, delayed and then delayed, and postponed, and people were wondering, like, why are we postponing again?
6:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Where's the cash?
6:11
[SPEAKER_02]: People sharing the details of how much they've each given, and it's adding up to a hundred of thousands of pounds.
6:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was one of the most vocal in this sort of questioning of the direction.
6:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you're the head of the mutant, you get hung.
6:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So it turned very, you know, they really turned on me.
6:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And I talk about this in the book.
6:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So for the sort of only beginning to get comfortable talking about it now, because it really was probably the worst few days of my life.
6:36
[SPEAKER_02]: When I was just all that money and the time and the energy and the
6:43
[SPEAKER_02]: and the emotion going into years of trying to get that expedition to the start line and then to have it fall apart.
6:51
[SPEAKER_02]: But also to be blamed for it, you know, my questioning was framed as like the reason we can't go as Mark's been here being negative the whole time.
6:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, you know, you know, and so I knew there was a rival team of characters.
7:03
[SPEAKER_02]: and they tried the year before in single clicks and they hadn't got very far and they thought they could solve some of their problems coming back in doubles which meant they needed an extra person and i messaged them hey guys you we've sort of interacted on facebook as like friendly rivals like good luck i hope you come second but uh this thing's good really going to sit up for me and i would appreciate the chance to come so we had a couple of calls
7:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I did a couple of kayaking sessions in, in a place called Cornwall with like a hardcore polar guy to test that I was safe and I flew to the Arctic and yeah, I mean like I, you know, this sounds like I'm too deep around here, I was trying to give an example of how ridiculous it was.
7:40
[SPEAKER_02]: The expedition has been ranked like top 10 greatest kayaking expeditions of the century and I had two too long We can training in core more and then flew to the Arctic so it was really Maybe stupid foolhardy, you know opportunity doesn't come twice you know phrase it if you want as Motivational or in basil, but one way or another and well yeah, this wasn't your first time
8:05
[SPEAKER_04]: doing open water, human-powered boating, right?
8:10
[SPEAKER_04]: You had the experience, you had attempted to cross, excuse me, you had attempted to cross the Atlantic two times before.
8:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I success there was any indication how the North West passage would go then terribly.
8:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I tried to rob even in small feats.
8:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, most people who wrote the mid-Atlantic from
8:31
[SPEAKER_02]: one way or another they get a cross and around about the time that I was rescued for the second time the first time took two days or second time took three days.
8:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody I was floated across in a barrel which was real like salt in the wood.
8:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And like in the first time I sort of bounced back quickly.
8:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I similar sort of, I guess, funding model to my failed North West Passage
9:00
[SPEAKER_02]: and paper, play, say call it, sort of like a guy, yeah, and we're all novices and it's much more comforting and cheaper and easier to organize when you're just outsourcing it all.
9:09
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not quite the same with the Norfolk's Passage because in the Norfolk's Passage we're similar that everybody on board had experienced one way or another.
9:16
[SPEAKER_02]: But that first Atlantic attempt was with a guy who the press had already called Captain Calamity and it went predictably.
9:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And the boat was about to see where there's a paper mash-a-bath.
9:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, night two people are sleeping in like three or four inches of water.
9:31
[SPEAKER_02]: We get helicoptered off.
9:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And I guess because it was, you know, there's a number of reasons why I just like duck off or just a water of a duck's back.
9:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go again.
9:40
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we saw there was no ambiguity.
9:42
[SPEAKER_02]: We got off.
9:43
[SPEAKER_02]: We had to get off.
9:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It was my first failure.
9:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, that happens.
9:47
[SPEAKER_02]: The second one was like, my teammate had to get off very early because she was not adjusting to it well and you know that's her story to tell and then I was faced with the decision of whether to go on solo or not and we're having problems with our battery that weren't charging which meant that we're having to turn off vital safety equipment at night to particularly something called AIS that makes us visible to boats.
10:07
[SPEAKER_02]: If there's two of us there's one person
10:13
[SPEAKER_02]: If we do see a ship, we can turn it on.
10:14
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not part of turn it on for a bit.
10:16
[SPEAKER_02]: But if I was by myself, I'd have to turn it off and then I'd be invisible, a ship and know that hit me.
10:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Or was I grabbing it a face saving excuse because I was getting overwhelmed by the idea of throwing the Atlantic solo?
10:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I got off the ambiguity of the decision, like when I described it the first way with like, oh, I'd be invisible to ship to say obvious that that should get off, it'd be reckless to go on.
10:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But I might have been hamming that up and I probably would have been fine.
10:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reality is, probably, you know, I'm more experienced now, it would have been fine.
10:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And if, like, in a few days further south, it was probably just something to do with the fact that, in the beginning, you're relatively far north from the solar panels aren't as effective as they will be.
10:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So, that, like, ate at me for a long, long time.
10:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And, really, like, sent me into an existential crisis about who I was, why I was doing this, what's the point?
11:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the next 40 years of working in office sounds dreadful.
11:08
[SPEAKER_02]: and the alternative is now been taken from me because it turns out I'm not really resilient as I thought of it.
11:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are my first two failings.
11:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And that second one, eventually after a year or so, started to sort of redefine, well remember perhaps better, but what adventure actually is, and what it meant to me and why I was doing it, and it covered it at the same time, and I was living in Hong Kong where we had basically no restrictions internally, it was just about being unable to travel outside.
11:36
[SPEAKER_02]: and just having a good pressure-free adventures.
11:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there was no record on the line or whatever, just doing it for the joy of it.
11:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of those things sort of coalesced for me to go forward to the North West passage.
11:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So yes, I had some experience.
11:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And by the time I got to the North West passage, I had a lot of experience five day, 10 day, two week adventures, but nothing to hang my hat on.
11:54
[SPEAKER_02]: The irony is now, after the North West passage, I have kids, basically do nothing, eventually, for a couple of two, a couple of years.
12:02
[SPEAKER_02]: But I probably perceived as an adventure
12:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you finally become an adventurer because you've done this big thing.
12:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And before you were not an adventurer because you only lasted two or three days.
12:11
[SPEAKER_02]: But the irony was in the two or three years leading up.
12:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I was adventuring every week, multiple times a week, two or three day, just five day trips.
12:18
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I was having an adventurous life, rather than...
12:22
[SPEAKER_02]: adventure of a lifetime.
12:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So now I'm like, oh, I'm an adventure now and I've done nothing for two years.
12:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not a high-coated season.
12:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's only a season market.
12:32
[SPEAKER_04]: The best part of my adventuring actually came when my, when my kids got old enough to do it with me and I had that wonderful experience of taking my kids out to do things.
12:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Before I'm not complaining, I'm only just pointing out the irony
12:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I used to have an existential crisis about doing stuff, interesting things to feel fulfilled, and then things else, like it was sort of the waste of time.
13:03
[SPEAKER_02]: But now even when I do nothing, if it's with the kids, I feel fulfilled.
13:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So I look forward to then do something with the kids, like hiking when they're 5 or 10, and that's going to be, yeah, hold a whole new world.
13:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I do want to get into the details of the journey through the Northwest Passage because it's just so fascinating to me.
13:20
[SPEAKER_04]: But since we're on the topic, you're who I changed.
13:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
13:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And I talked to a lot of adventurers, obviously.
13:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And I like to ask, well, why do you do this?
13:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Or why did you do this?
13:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think in the beginning, a lot of people are doing it.
13:36
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't want to be in the tell on the donkey, so to speak.
13:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, well that happens after a while that they realize no, it's not about that anymore It's about something much deeper inside, so what about you Mark?
13:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think the second I thought about it was Not to do with feather in the cap because I didn't know that in adventure people try to set world records and so the what Northwest Passages world first Not records.
14:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't care about the difference, but on my teammates are very bothered
14:13
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I thought that World Records are for 100-bit differences in the Olympics, not people trying to really go to Atlantic.
14:18
[SPEAKER_02]: My friends sent me a video saying, people were across Atlantic, let's do it together.
14:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was excited to do something interesting and exciting and different and challenging.
14:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the guy who selling spots on his boat, advertising, world record attempt need a crew.
14:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I was like, well, I'm a part of a world record attempt now.
14:39
[SPEAKER_02]: and like that's when it became binary and world record focused and the second attempt was me and a woman were trying to be the fastest male female pairs.
14:49
[SPEAKER_02]: It was still a record.
14:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I sort of lost sight of what I was originally trying to do but I guess I didn't really know what I wouldn't have been able to say why before that because I didn't have the language.
15:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I would
15:07
[SPEAKER_02]: if you have to ask why you'll never know and so but then on my journey to recovery from my second failure i reached out to my psychologist because i knew i wanted to write a book about the Norfolk's passage and there's an element of it which is about how to become resilient and i wasn't resilient as i thought i was so these psychologists are going to help me
15:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought that it was going to be sort of a box ticking.
15:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I already knew the answer.
15:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to get tougher and these are the ways you get tougher.
15:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But the first person I spoke to didn't say get tougher by doing X, Y, and Z. They said, well, what do you really want?
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: and they've directed me at a framework where sports people do sport for one or three reasons.
15:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Performance, discovery or relationships.
15:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Performance is when or loss, discovery can be a variety of experiences, or relationships can be the relationships that they experience is facilitate.
16:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like a light bulb because I knew that deep down, but I'd never been given the language.
16:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought, I don't care about performance, world record, I'm not like a, why would I?
16:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not a roger, I'm not a specialty fit, even the, you know, I'm obsessed with something which frankly seems unrealistic to even want, but I always wanted to be immersed in nature.
16:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I wouldn't want to do 3,000 miles on a rowing machine, I want to be in the wild and relationships.
16:27
[SPEAKER_02]: He's about camaraderie.
16:29
[SPEAKER_02]: People often say if I trouble your teams when you go by yourself.
16:31
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I want to get to the end, when Los O'Jourrel have a pint of beer and say, we did something special together.
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And the performance at element is still important to me, you know, then I went on to the Norfolk's passage where there was a very binary, trying to be the first people to do.
16:47
[SPEAKER_02]: a specific thing and it was also a race that was a rowing team coming, the same direction as us and the other way.
16:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's still important to me, but if facilitates the other two, that relationships can mean a variety of things and friendships are when good times are shared, but camaraderie is when tough times are shared, where you're pushing that shared goal.
17:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So I still wanted the goal to facilitate the other things, but I guess it was a means to an end rather than the end and itself.
17:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes I get asked what did you train less hard and because you're now, it doesn't matter if you succeed or not.
17:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But like the quickest way to undermine camaraderie is if you're not up to the challenge.
17:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you have to want to even more.
17:25
[SPEAKER_02]: because you wanted for the person next to you, not for like the one extrinsic arbitrary outcome, a thousand miles away, the headline, the European Adventure of the War, like for you, for I-Lean, for West, for Jeff.
17:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, in a way, you find a deeper thing, and that, you know, I'm out like a corporate motivational speaker, and that's what I say.
17:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I say, let go of the outcomes, you all are rewarding.
17:48
[SPEAKER_02]: The person who sells the most, the person who hits the highest target, but like, define what the pursuit is,
17:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And for me it was immersion in nature and camaraderie, and then for love with it, and then the outcome will look after itself.
18:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I went day after day after day, not because it drew me closer to the end, because it drew me closer to my teammates, and then it drew me closer to the end as a byproduct.
18:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, so I like how this sort of like spiritual awakening where of these intrinsic motivations.
18:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, it made the Norfolk's passage enjoyable, because everything became frame through that lens.
18:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the headline of my book is There Will Be Headwinds, because the moment a headwinds come, previously that would be a annoying obstacle between me and what I want.
18:33
[SPEAKER_02]: But now, we're air would be a master nature, and you're literally a master nature and they're the wind blowing in your face.
18:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And be I want camaraderie, which is formed through tough times, not good times.
18:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is an opportunity to dig deep for each other.
18:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Suddenly, the headwinds are facilitating exactly what I want.
18:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And I keep going and pushing myself harder.
18:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I get closer to the end than if I was just like, Buddy, headwinds again.
18:54
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so it's my why became I want to be a master nature and I want camaraderie and the way to facilitate that is to try and do something seriously hard nature.
19:07
[SPEAKER_04]: yeah i used to help coach mountain bike racing and one of the things that i used to say was there's no up hill there's no downhill there's only mountain biking that's good yeah and because we're going to encounter everything if you do anything long enough you're going to encounter the good days the bad days all of those sorts of things but i love what you're focusing on is that you're doing it together
19:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm, yeah, I mean, I summed up people's sale of why, well, how did it come to this?
19:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think of it as a venn diagram between two aspects of my life.
19:41
[SPEAKER_02]: My parents, my dad is a proper explorer, Matt Potter, South America, he led expeditions to Greenland and Himalayas and whatnot, and my mum was an adventurer in her and right, she, in the 70s, went to Australia and then traveled back over land through Southeast Asia and the Middle East, which is a woman in her 20s.
19:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So, is as dangerous as being on a, on a ninth-head ridge in the Himalayas, like my dad.
20:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And and we always very outdoorsy.
20:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Ah, you know, our childhood holidays were camping in the rain in Scotland, not to write some bathing in in Spain.
20:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And then rugby was my great love.
20:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wish I'd had the language that I have now to realize why I liked rugby because I thought it was because I was good and we were good and I liked being good player and a good team.
20:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And I look back now with my new
20:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, you know, a special time in your life with special people or for a communal goal and like the winning sort of facilitated that camaraderie.
20:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So this venn diagram of like rugby, really committing sport, you've got to put your head and throw it at people's knees as they run towards you for your teammates, camaraderie.
20:52
[SPEAKER_02]: outdoors, my parents, like, just mid that second age of two to me, and then there's like that, well, record, well, first chasing aspect where you're like, got camaraderie and outdoors of these two things come together.
21:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So, for me, it replaced Rugby and facilitated like the thing I'd love to do.
21:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, you've done some thinking about this and I appreciate your answer a lot.
21:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I think one of the main things about having adventure in one's life,
21:20
[SPEAKER_04]: whether you're an adventurer or you have an adventurer focused lifestyle or you just have adventurer in your life.
21:25
[SPEAKER_04]: It will enhance your understanding of yourself and the world around you and the way we interact and encounter things.
21:32
[SPEAKER_04]: And I can tell that you've spent some time on that.
21:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I did, well, I was just so devastated after that second failed row for so long and it was just coloring my view in every single way, like just normal drinks of friends and in the morning I'd have a real anxiety, like could it, I speak too much about myself and my friends bought of me and I think like I was just like so much of my worth had become linked up in this idea of becoming a world record holder that I felt worthless.
21:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't even imagine my friend seeing worth in me and yeah, I had to like Do some soul searching about like whoa I said at the time I want to want to do something again But I didn't even want to do it that you know what I mean I was like I just I want like back in my I want that feeling back in my life where I'm like wrong I'm gonna do anything to to get to the start line of the Atlantic
22:23
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's like, I can't face like, even doing it again.
22:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be running and trail running helped a bit in Hong Kong, because it's a massive community there, like one of the biggest in the world.
22:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's really accessible and you can do it.
22:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And being like six for two,
22:39
[SPEAKER_02]: They'd rather be like, I'm not there for our running, so there was actually no hope of me.
22:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, not winning, but not even like setting a good time.
22:50
[SPEAKER_02]: When I did the 100K race that I've done, the winners do it in 10 hours.
22:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I did it in 23 and a half, like you can just see them.
22:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's like, right, I'm here for there's like no way that I could lose much sight of why I'm here.
23:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it's not your win, it all set records.
23:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I might have my own arbitrary target, like, sub-24 hours.
23:09
[SPEAKER_02]: But so that helped me, like, sort of enjoy it.
23:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, in COVID, as I say, it's, like, kayaking with my friend, Rory.
23:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, Hong Kong is beautiful and wild.
23:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And very little of it is actually city.
23:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were just eyelid hopping for these beautiful deserted island, beautiful deserted island, like five days at a time, without reception.
23:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was just completely reminded by like a joy of sort of love adventure for adventure sake.
23:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so I had to do some soul searching to sort of save my soul.
23:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And if I didn't then, you know, I would sort of doomed to eventually be miserable, even if I succeeded at the next thing.
23:49
[SPEAKER_02]: You either would have failed eventually, or that next thing would have been like destination addiction.
23:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I would have crossed the finish line of the North West Passage expecting some kind of lifetime of contentment and enlightenment and to felt like, well.
24:03
[SPEAKER_02]: everything's the same.
24:04
[SPEAKER_02]: What did I expect?
24:05
[SPEAKER_02]: But now I'm like, well, I've got these intrinsic motivations.
24:08
[SPEAKER_02]: The pride will wait and the headlines will be taken up by somebody else who does something else next year.
24:13
[SPEAKER_02]: But I know that I've got that bond with my teammates and I've got those special experiences of coming face to face of bullet bears, which
24:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, aunt, you know, a headline or not.
24:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's like memories are precious, man.
24:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I would rather have a treasure trove full of memories than a treasure trove full of gold.
24:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:34
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just so precious.
24:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And another thing that I feel strongly about, I applaud people that go for the records who work that hard and who accomplish the big thing.
24:44
[SPEAKER_04]: I absolutely say, well, good for you, that's fun.
24:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And that, you know,
24:49
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you get a world record, let's say, in running these days, it's going to stand for what a year or two, maybe until the next Olympics.
24:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, well, first was time forever.
24:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I was just saying that.
25:00
[SPEAKER_04]: No, there's nobody going to be that fast.
25:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's always going to be a faster gun, which is, you know, it's an old West, no gunsling or terminology.
25:09
[SPEAKER_04]: But if your reason is just to be the fastest person in the world at
25:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Someone's going to beat you here in the bucket to stay there long and but i think it becomes more about the climb than the summit they become more about the friends yeah then it does about the trophies and and if we don't learn that then uh yeah i do like out on something i do like the element to challenging yourself which is sort of inherent in having an outcome so it's striving for i guess it's striving for the outcome is about the striving not the outcome
25:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, hey, let's dive into, yeah, let me tell you about the outcome trip.
25:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I really appreciate your perspective on all of that and I think it's very valuable.
25:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I could talk about it for a thousand years, so yes.
25:56
[SPEAKER_02]: That's through by the Nova's message.
25:57
[SPEAKER_04]: But we've got to hear about the Northwest Passage.
26:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I first of all, it's way up there.
26:02
[SPEAKER_04]: This is really far north.
26:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, you're dealing with ice and polar bears and Arctic thunder.
26:08
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, that sort of setting.
26:10
[SPEAKER_04]: The weather window is short.
26:13
[SPEAKER_04]: about how long do you have to make this passage before it gets diced out again?
26:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is the, maybe the reason that we succeeded.
26:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Realistically, you have, let's say, 60 days.
26:24
[SPEAKER_02]: July, we're getting a July to end of August.
26:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, if you're close to the end, you can claw out days of September, but there seem to be sort of a meme there, people would say, winter comes quickly here, winter comes quickly.
26:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And almost everybody who's tried it so far,
26:39
[SPEAKER_02]: would get to about half way whether the town called Cambridge Bay after 60 days and now they're faced with like, well it's the end of August and I get a risk taking another 60 days and being in the middle of nowhere or do I go out now because it's not really another option after that.
26:55
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm still alive right now.
26:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And we arrived in Cambridge Bay and it's been 60 days and we just kept going and took 103 and finished in the middle of October and there was one point in a very shallow curve that had been protected by a spit.
27:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I saw this the sea freezing over again, but in general, it was not threatening to freeze over again.
27:17
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was brutally cold and some of the problems we encountered were like things I wouldn't have necessarily anticipated like all the fresh water freezing So now what are we drinking and I lean and I walked for like hours at one one day just trying to look for water That was as hard as any day kayaking
27:32
[SPEAKER_02]: But that came in the last day, last week.
27:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, it's not like a huge leap to imagine it coming five days earlier, 10 days earlier.
27:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And if it had, then we would have been in real trouble trying to finish it.
27:47
[SPEAKER_02]: The other aspect that made this possible is everybody else starts from the western end which is also wafer the south so there is no ice in the water and you can very reliably start at the end of June beginning a July and then we started in the eastern end which up north so there is was a lot of ice in the water.
28:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It was very front loaded with risk but by
28:16
[SPEAKER_02]: 60 days.
28:17
[SPEAKER_02]: We refer to South.
28:18
[SPEAKER_02]: We've done all of the major crossings by a couple.
28:21
[SPEAKER_02]: There were a couple of towns that we would maybe be 100 mile detail if we were running out of food or whatever.
28:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were doing a bit that at least a number of adventures had done before.
28:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were no longer like in the unknown.
28:34
[SPEAKER_02]: which meant that we could go on into winter.
28:36
[SPEAKER_02]: We were crossing paths at a Cambridge Bay with the guy we were racing in the room but who's going the other way and he's facing the same decision as us going to go but he's heading north and it's just crossing after crossing a particular one of the 50 mile wide crossing.
28:52
[SPEAKER_02]: and going to be like much bigger fetch for a wind and waves and stuff like that so you know that's but we you know we might not have even got to Cambridge Bay because of all the ice that we had doing counter at the beginning.
29:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean we tried to launch.
29:07
[SPEAKER_02]: We got repelled, it took 14 hours to get back to where we started, and now we sat there for 15 days.
29:14
[SPEAKER_02]: That was what the ice conditions were like for us.
29:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So we lost 15 days out of our supposed 60 straight off the bat, and then encountered similar things for at least three weeks.
29:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Three of our ways to have that.
29:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So we front-loaded it, and we first people would try in that direction.
29:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Except for the other round, there were two other roundies, one going the other direction, and one going the same direction as us.
29:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But they started much later than us, because rowing boats of quicker.
29:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And also, they had a somewhat crazed plan to outboard mode to the boat from Scotland, so they'd had to, they'd got their late.
29:47
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the team I fell out of.
29:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that's like the weather window and and how we sort of approached it and It worked but it worked.
30:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean it worked but like the weather was getting worse and worse and worse And we were set up for the last crossing 40 miles across Franklin Bay
30:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And then on the other side, it's just attached to the piece of land where they're north-west passage ends.
30:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just front after front was rolling through.
30:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was like the morale at its lowest point.
30:24
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we've supposed to have a weather window on coming over the day.
30:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's say it's Tuesday.
30:28
[SPEAKER_02]: We wake up at 3am.
30:29
[SPEAKER_02]: It's in the dark.
30:29
[SPEAKER_02]: The wave sound bigger than we expect.
30:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And we know there's another weather window on Thursday.
30:34
[SPEAKER_02]: where you kept on saying to each other, don't screw the pooch, don't screw the pooch, don't like, you know, get some at fever and take a risk.
30:40
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll like, let's just lie in, wake up on Thursday, you know, let's not do any of the rash.
30:45
[SPEAKER_02]: We woke up in the weather window had come, you know, sometimes waves sound worse than they are in the dark or where we camp too close to shore.
30:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So it from inside of our tent, it sounded worse.
30:53
[SPEAKER_02]: We could have should have taken that Tuesday.
30:56
[SPEAKER_02]: whether just changes and they say no other window for 10 days.
31:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And we've got like, we've got very limited food.
31:03
[SPEAKER_02]: We can make it stretch to 10 days.
31:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But then you know what we're stuck in the other side again for another five days or whatever.
31:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was like everybody snapping each other all day.
31:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're contemplating a night crossing which had been brutal and cold and we've done nights before whenever a 40-mile or a night crossing.
31:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Starting looking at like going around,
31:22
[SPEAKER_02]: the long winds of the crossing and how many days that would take, but what if we end up like getting stuck and we're just now we've got 10 days of no weather and we're even further away.
31:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So all of these moments coming together and then it seemed like if a big system came through, it changed the outlook.
31:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Often we'd have like a big storm, you'd say 10 days about whether then a huge storm would come and that would just change, like have some kind of not dominoes affect and they'd say right well now there's actually a weather window on Saturday
31:51
[SPEAKER_02]: and that Wednesday and that Thursday were like, huge ways crashing off cliffs, spring 30 meters in the air, and then work up and Friday was doable.
32:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So we like dashed across and so, but you know, but if that Friday hadn't been doable and it was always just like just desperately praying for weather in those final few weeks.
32:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So yes, we maybe got lucky, maybe, you know, we make her unlock who knows.
32:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So describe the kayaks.
32:18
[SPEAKER_04]: I know that you already said there were two person kayaks,
32:21
[SPEAKER_04]: and there's the kayaks, but what kind of seas could they manage safely do you think?
32:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Probably very, very choppy seas.
32:29
[SPEAKER_02]: The limidifacer was a suspect, not the kayak.
32:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It was probably me.
32:32
[SPEAKER_02]: They were, you know, that teammates, wondering, well, let's not get to the edge of this novice kayak, because
32:40
[SPEAKER_02]: expertise.
32:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So that often we spent days on sure waiting for weather conditions that maybe West Jeff and Ileen would have gone out with a carco more experienced than me.
32:51
[SPEAKER_02]: But yes, so they were super stable 23 foot long wide and had to begin with very heavy and with a lot of stuff on deck.
33:00
[SPEAKER_02]: and they got lighter and lighter and we got faster and as my kayaking improved faster as well.
33:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah big kayaks.
33:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean the hardest thing was landing and launching.
33:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You know if you're landing on it in a in a single kayak you sort of charge the shore skid up onto the onto the thing of a jump out and pull your kayak up for the next kayak at what wave come right.
33:21
[SPEAKER_02]: But also so long we'd skid up on shore I was in the front my jump out and I leaned still like two meters into the water
33:27
[SPEAKER_02]: can't jump out, and the waves are beginning to pick it up and swing its sideways, and they're really heavy with food and water.
33:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was the most challenging part of the day, I suppose.
33:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
33:41
[SPEAKER_04]: What an incredible trip, so what was the scenery like?
33:44
[SPEAKER_04]: What was the, you said you wanted to be immersed in nature?
33:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's good to be there.
33:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first island byla island, huge grand cliffs, like straight out of the sea, black cliffs that would just go vertically into the air with these.
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: with huge amount of ice in the water and the ice would just create an entire ecosystem, you know, when the ice is there, the fish feed on the plankton, the seals feed on the fish, there's the whales, so it bow head whales, which are enormous, just like blowing their holes in the area, just you can hear them up.
34:18
[SPEAKER_02]: and seals bounding through the water in groups of 20.
34:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I've seen lots of seals before, and it's got them but never, so like acting like a pot animal.
34:26
[SPEAKER_02]: A pole there's gandering across the ice, sort of framed by these cliffs behind, looking like, you know, like a cliche painting.
34:34
[SPEAKER_02]: and birds, he's bird tank trees with hundreds of thousands of birds that we could hear before we could see there's so many beating their winged it was like you could hear the wind without any but you're like what what why can I hear the wind and there's nothing's blowing on my skin right it's like sort of like a disconnected sense isn't it you get closer you realize it was a million birds
34:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we do a 13 mile crossing and it's just different, well, different because you just suddenly on a different island and it sort of looks like It's a monument national park in Utah with the big cliffs for the sediment piles of the bottom and then you cross again and we're on I forget it was boogie up in Insular and something above it and that seemed more, though it's still clear, but it seemed like rolling hills reminded me of Scotland.
35:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Then we get into the middle and it grim, this is where Franklin who and the Arabists and the Terror who are the most famous people who went up there in the 1840s, they all disappeared and ate each other.
35:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just grim grim.
35:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Like everything, there's shoreline so low that you can't even see it like when you're into it you're like within a mile of it.
35:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So navigation was hard and collecting water was at a puddles rather than like fresh place the water and I did think to myself
35:46
[SPEAKER_02]: this is such a grim place to die and then about a year after we finished they found the skull of the Arabes captain maybe a mile away from one of our campsite, so really was where they died.
35:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
35:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the Tori Island is like he's beaches with covered in antlers and with like a low rise turning into a bluff behind and then
36:08
[SPEAKER_02]: final section was like these these sort of like Japanese stone gardens these like perfectly layered like rice-terry, a terrace layers of of stones up a very steep cliff and then the final peninsula with this incredibly intricate rock like arches and beaches and little coves and then the final final bit was
36:30
[SPEAKER_02]: these big bluffs that come straight out the sea and they're like billowing with this surface smelling smoke.
36:34
[SPEAKER_02]: They call the smokey hills because there's something to share or it's been reacting under the air for centuries and that was the final, the final 20 miles and it's a huge evary.
36:44
[SPEAKER_02]: After we crossed our way you know the day before we got to Cambridge Bay we saw our last polar bear and then that sort of denoted the end of the wildlife and then the second half.
36:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I suspect it wasn't geography as opposed to time that it changed, and then now wasn't ice in the water, and I don't know everything had gone, but there was nothing.
37:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we saw the head of a warrous twice in the next 45 days.
37:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Hmm.
37:10
[SPEAKER_04]: That's wild.
37:11
[SPEAKER_04]: So how many days did it take before you fell into that kind of expedition rhythm where you feel like you understand nature and you're one with it and everyone knows their job and you know what the next day is going to be like, you know what I'm talking about?
37:23
[SPEAKER_02]: A long, long time.
37:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So the first half was so stop-start with ice, you know, try 15 days nothing and then the next few days are like action action action and three days of nothing and then one day if something.
37:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was difficult to find a rhythm and
37:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, it was at three or four weeks in, we got a run of good weather, 10 days in a row, which is like seven days more than we managed at any other point, and we ran out of food and time at that point, so we'd like chew up a mile.
37:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's where we began to settle into it.
37:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I wanted from very early on was more like structure, getting up and going on the
38:04
[SPEAKER_02]: that didn't really happen until a second half when we started having night and then it imposed a structure on us.
38:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And we knew we could only carry between these two times and we did carry at night a couple of times when we were trying to get to a specific point before a storm came like a cabin, a crew team would say there's a cabin 50 miles ahead of you if you could go overnight tomorrow then you might be able to make it.
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So um and but generally it would be like up before on the water like 8 or 9 and then like
38:31
[SPEAKER_02]: nine hours of kayking in off the water at five, which was supposed to be ten hours of kayking, but such as the little phagic get ready times never really worked out like that.
38:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, yeah, it always takes longer than we think.
38:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so yeah, that's where the structure came in.
38:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, without compromising any trust, will you describe your teammates?
38:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Who is the natural leader?
38:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Who kept people cheered up?
38:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Who was the one who, you know, everyone finds a role.
38:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, West was the leader.
39:01
[SPEAKER_02]: West was the leader, so like, and we don't have input and he drew on different expertise.
39:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But if he balanced every opinion and made a decision, that's decision we're going with, he was good listening to everybody.
39:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And over time, you know, we're realizing what we all have.
39:17
[SPEAKER_02]: As I think my thing that I brought to the team was navigation in particular, like these guys as Sam is in vulgar, amazing characters, but there's a rivers and I'm an ocean guy, and I think I could have saved a lot more time.
39:31
[SPEAKER_02]: by using effective GPS use and that sort of ended up being deferred to me eventually.
39:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So West would make the decisions listened to everybody.
39:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Jeff was like the comic relief, he's just one of the funniest chilled out guys you'll ever meet and you know have one of those.
39:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're in their 60s, 61 or 63, they were Jeff and West and they and Jeff has all these like there's a lifetime of stories and you know.
39:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of them with his Texan Axis accent sound like you're like an old-time-y dog dog prospect You know like ain't no jobs around here, but everybody worked for the railroad and you're like what?
40:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Like he's just so relaxed.
40:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You know he popped his head out the tent and he's like oh, hey guys There's a pool bear here.
40:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Go and get yeah
40:16
[SPEAKER_02]: We're back in and we're like, and he's like, oh it's gone, he's just so chill.
40:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And Ivy is just like an energizer bunny.
40:26
[SPEAKER_02]: She's like that battery with the bunny that never stops.
40:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And she's just always looking for something to do.
40:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And just like, thankfully, doing like, mean your chores, which are never going to get a headline, but are crucial.
40:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was in a boat with Ivy.
40:45
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, which means you just share hours and hours of winding conversations about everything and nothing.
40:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And for me, that's, I mean, is, I'm very close to Island and, uh, I love her and I'm just so grateful to have shared that experience with her.
40:58
[SPEAKER_02]: So, uh, yeah, I don't know if there were, how specific the roles were and, um, we were all agony ants to each other at various points.
41:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course there are tensions, higher tensions between specific people, rather than others, and as is always with the group.
41:11
[SPEAKER_02]: But Jeff and Wes liked best friends for 30 years.
41:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't deny a new to each other and new to everybody else.
41:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's always going to be different dynamics.
41:18
[SPEAKER_02]: But these are inevitable.
41:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I love them all.
41:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you tell us a moment that stands out as that magic moment that you had somewhere?
41:27
[SPEAKER_04]: It may be maybe there's several of them, but sure and experience where you're like, wow, I didn't know that this would happen.
41:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we all agree on what moment that was, because at the end we're here in over having a ball of ice cream, you know, like a well-lit lobby, and listening to music, we're just hoping about another listen to of the journey, you know, I was like lumped to my first at this point, and we all agree on what one of the best.
41:53
[SPEAKER_02]: best days of our lives, maybe.
41:54
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a 50 mile wide crossing called Prince Regent in that which was sort of a crux of the expedition.
42:00
[SPEAKER_02]: We knew there was a bit of ice in the water, so we went further south to try and avoid it, which turned the 40 mile crossing into a 50 mile crossing, but hopefully without ice.
42:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And we launched and this first we come across an hour wall, it's swim all around us.
42:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh wow.
42:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Unbelievable.
42:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And then to our horror, we come across an ice pack in the middle of the crossing as far from shore as we will be at any point in the expedition.
42:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And we try and go through it and as we're weaving through it, the sun touches the horizon for the first moment.
42:28
[SPEAKER_02]: The first time in the whole trip, it's got that low and it doesn't quite set, but it just stays there, like a perpetual sunset threatening to set and never disappear.
42:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And it turned the whole world like every inch of ice orange right up to the edge of our carcasses glowing like there was a light bulb in each one and on the other side the moon came up for the first time and it was just sitting on the horizon threatening to rise and ever quite doing so mirroring his son on the horizon and it just turned its side of the world purple and the ice with the water between the ice that we were weaving through began to freeze very gently little film across the surface of the water so we have into crunch
43:06
[SPEAKER_02]: but that began to sparkle too so everything was colorful and then we extended the pack the ice, the sun went up, the moon disappeared and like even at the time I just wear just like say to each other like holy shh
43:19
[SPEAKER_02]: and we pushed on and we get within a few miles of sure 10 hours we're going to do it we're going to want it one or two hours from now finish crux the expedition it gets easier from here and now and then like all of this ice just swept in from somewhere else like we'd seen dynamic ice before we'd been trapped even by it but not like this it was flowing and crunching and spilling over itself like lava
43:42
[SPEAKER_02]: and we were just so close to shore but it took us another seven hours and we're weaving and dodging and at one point we're sitting in the space between these two big pieces of ice thinking what do we do.
43:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the two bits of ice just spontaneously start to close in or us like the trash compressor and Star Wars.
44:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And Jeff and Wes got out of the way but I lean an eye on quick enough and it just slams into us with this like
44:08
[SPEAKER_02]: violence that just took me back because you know they're just moving gently and benignly and quietly and it's a well wow there's so much force in this and you know I assume we're gonna be crushed death if I had time to think of it at all and instead it like lifted our kayak up and pushes on top of the ice.
44:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And Eileen and I slipped back into the water, but there's more ice coming in.
44:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So I jumped out of the boat, pooled Eileen and my kayak cut with her still in the back.
44:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And Western Jeff and now been hit and they're being rolled over and pushed up onto the ice.
44:38
[SPEAKER_02]: So west is in the front, so he's going to roll over onto the ice.
44:41
[SPEAKER_02]: But Jeff's in the back is still in the water.
44:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I say, Jeff's the most chilled out man you ever meet.
44:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, oh, you're Mark, I'm going to need your her help here real quick.
44:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So I let run over, pool the ice, the kayak forward and we slip out onto the ice.
44:54
[SPEAKER_02]: and then it just sets around us like concrete.
44:56
[SPEAKER_02]: We wouldn't know we were even mooding but a GPS tortoise was still getting about three or four miles an hour.
45:01
[SPEAKER_02]: We were just about to speed with kindness and we just waited there for a long time and I have no idea how long that was, you know, could have been ten minutes or two hours and it's just like, you know,
45:09
[SPEAKER_02]: one of those tricks of memory where I just just feels like eternity, but I honestly have no idea.
45:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And we launched again when there was space in the water and we even dodged a through the ice and eventually got to the front of this like train that was just steaming forward.
45:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Put our kayaks one more time and pull them over and try to land 100 metres away.
45:29
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a bloody polar bear there with these two cups.
45:33
[SPEAKER_02]: So we went for another hour and then found some way to land this beautiful one of our favorite camps spot to this waterfall with these bridges of icicross it And you know that was 18 hours at 10 hours we thought it was going to be 11 hours and it turned out to be another seven or eight
45:48
[SPEAKER_02]: of life and death struggle.
45:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So what have you got there?
45:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the immersion in nature, tick, camaraderie, fighting for our lives, everything, and like we all would agree, like remember that day in front of the region, it looked like what it wore today.
46:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, what a beautiful description of it as well.
46:06
[SPEAKER_04]: That's glorious and I would assume that we can enjoy a lot of similar descriptions in your book.
46:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Name your book for us.
46:14
[SPEAKER_02]: That will be headwinds cocking the Northwest Passage.
46:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that is, not a big chapter in the book, that one.
46:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it does ruin the ending for you.
46:20
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll make it.
46:21
[SPEAKER_04]: But you're alive to tell the story.
46:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
46:25
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think that people that are inexperienced with doing big things,
46:30
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't know first of all what they're capable of.
46:33
[SPEAKER_04]: They haven't discovered that yet.
46:34
[SPEAKER_04]: And I can already tell you, you're capable of far more than you know.
46:38
[SPEAKER_04]: But that said, there comes a point at times like what you just described.
46:44
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to dig deep in it's like, we've just got to keep going.
46:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is learnt.
46:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, or I could never do that.
46:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, yeah, you could also never lift 200 kilograms on the deadlift.
46:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you train, then you will start at 50 and add.
47:00
[SPEAKER_02]: two kilograms next week and two kilograms a week afterwards and in two years you'll be able to do it.
47:04
[SPEAKER_02]: People say how long did it take you to train and I'm like well I only really dedicated like four months out like specifically right I am now training for the Northwest Passage.
47:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But for maybe eight plus years this has just become part of my life I was hiking sometimes after work in Hong Kong there's so many mountains like hiking mountains that are just on the way back from work if you want to if you could commute with her I agree.
47:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And Ultra Marathons, I wrote around Hong Kong Island, I trained for the North West Atlantic, doing 100k on a wrong machine or something, you know, something that usually people would like make a just giving page for and doing 100k.
47:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just like doing that.
47:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's peaks and troughs while I, I don't know, a busy at work or particularly motivated or gearing up for a specific challenge, but over the course of eight years, it just embeds in your body.
47:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody told me once, fitness takes weeks, endurance takes years.
47:53
[SPEAKER_02]: and in particular I'm the wake of that like I need to become more resilient.
47:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I started doing stuff that was specifically stressful to build that response because I got overwhelmed in uncertainty and I couldn't make a clear decision in the Atlantic.
48:09
[SPEAKER_02]: That's never going to happen to me again.
48:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So that could be you know I wasn't nearly as I've never been as fit as I was building up to the first Atlantic attempt.
48:17
[SPEAKER_02]: in a fitness metric sense, but building up to the Norfolk's passage, you're a huge physical element, kayaking for miles or running for miles, but
48:27
[SPEAKER_02]: with this specific intention to get on the wrong side of an island where I buy myself and I needed the seams would be mixed so I'm staying calm and relying on myself and practicing that.
48:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Or even more specific like I took a Roanboat out once and went from 8 to PM to 8 AM.
48:41
[SPEAKER_02]: The backwards and forwards over maybe a three or four K strip.
48:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Dark by myself passing the boat house every half an hour so I could get out if I wanted to
48:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And suddenly, I'm a one mile offshore in the north-west passage, and I have to push myself with no idea whether I'm going to finish in half an hour or seven hours.
49:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I'm like recreating all of those things.
49:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So, people say, I did you, what did you learn about yourself?
49:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You never know what you're like in those situations until you're in that situation.
49:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, I knew exactly what I was like, because it was only incrementally more chaotic than situations I'd put myself in.
49:19
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would have been utterly overwhelmed if I did it in 2018.
49:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Good, and then I did it in 2023 and I didn't just survive.
49:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I loved it.
49:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, this is fun This is why I'm here.
49:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not like untuffin enough to get through this thing I want to give up on I'm like I would rather be nowhere else
49:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I've got there like incrementally so when you say I don't think I'm capable of this it's like well, you know You can get there and if you want to it's just matter of whether or not you want to I mean there's no reason you need to be enjoy all this dying several times a week You know like it's a better thing to do with your time But I thought being tough was about not giving up when you want to do but now I think
50:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Toughness and resilience are different, and for me it's about enjoying times to art tough rather than being tough enough not to give up when it's miserable.
50:15
[SPEAKER_02]: right type two fun.
50:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
50:19
[SPEAKER_02]: If it is fun, some people describe type two fun to me is something that you hate doing and enjoy and retrospect and I'm not, I didn't don't know it for me because I enjoyed doing it.
50:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that transitions actually because I experienced it early on when I started doing mountain nearing.
50:35
[SPEAKER_04]: I experienced times when I thought this is this is not fun anymore.
50:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Why am I here?
50:40
[SPEAKER_04]: But then two weeks later
50:45
[SPEAKER_04]: But then later, I would get to the same place where before I, I may have said, well, this is not funny anymore.
50:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Why am I here?
50:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Something gets shifted.
50:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Hmm.
50:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
50:54
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?
50:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And it turns into no.
50:57
[SPEAKER_04]: This is really fun.
50:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
50:59
[SPEAKER_04]: This is maybe more fun.
51:02
[SPEAKER_02]: For the, I did a 100 mile over two days cycle.
51:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Either last week or two weeks ago.
51:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like the first thing I've done since the Northwest Passager.
51:09
[SPEAKER_02]: at all.
51:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And certainly not like a headline.
51:13
[SPEAKER_02]: You say you've done mountain biking training you're probably half the people, even the worst person you've ever coached probably two at three times as quick as me.
51:20
[SPEAKER_02]: My back break had just been somebody putting new pads in and it was essentially 30% on.
51:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So I couldn't even go up hill, I just had to push and then going downhill felt like I was going up hill.
51:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Like people were gliding past me, like freewheeling and I was like,
51:35
[SPEAKER_02]: grinding and grinding.
51:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
51:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And it, towards the end of the day, we lost three or four hours.
51:39
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the most amount of pain I've ever been in from exercise with the exception of actually being injured.
51:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, like, compared to even compared to an office passenger with days where I was like out of energy and like close to tears, but it wasn't like everything in me was burning.
51:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I probably in five years ago would have been tough enough to say, I could push through this.
52:00
[SPEAKER_02]: But in 2025, I'm like, oh, it's good to be back.
52:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, this is what we're talking about, you know, like, here we go.
52:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's and like, trying to sort of invent stories to like give it even more urgency.
52:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, well, I'm not, I'm not like invent, I didn't have batteries in my life because I had no idea we'd take a lot of beat to darkness.
52:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, I'm, and I have to go on a road now because I actually can't do it on the trails.
52:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're like, I'm now on the road, back country road in England.
52:29
[SPEAKER_02]: They're small and in two hours, it's going to be dark and I have kids.
52:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm trusting the line to reckless risk of just like I was like to so much of it without hands because of my shoulders was so sore So I've got to finish before it's dark because otherwise I'm like being irresponsible So like finding more reasons to like push push push rather than just being like okay, they're when I get there And I was just and afterwards me and Roy were like this Roy is the same guy as kayking within Hong Kong He foot flew across me to this guy
52:58
[SPEAKER_02]: He was like, yeah, what was the best part was that the beautiful views on the summit or and I'm like the last three hours when we were grinding
53:07
[SPEAKER_02]: and you're worried it was probably having the worst time because he would get like ten minutes ahead of me every five minutes have to wait but I'm like, uh, just good to be back, you know what I mean?
53:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, uh, yeah, so it's like that transition and, um, you know, I was talking before about the performance discovery relationships.
53:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I, I feel like I've now distilled it into this like intrinsic motivations.
53:26
[SPEAKER_02]: There's only four challenge.
53:28
[SPEAKER_02]: experience relationships or cause, like as a meaningful cause, I'm doing this with charity, experience and relationships have been over, but challenge, it's like performance, but it's got a new one's to it because it's not necessarily outcome based and I feel like that one was ticking my challenge in intrinsic motivation.
53:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I think we're on the same page when we say, yeah, sooner or later, you learn to love it.
53:50
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't just learn to love having done it.
53:52
[SPEAKER_04]: yes exactly when you first start doing difficult biking and it's a perfect example all you can think about as being at the top of the hill when you're trying to get up the steep long hill but there comes a point in your biking where you're like no there is no hill right like we talked about before there's only biking and this is part of the fun well with the break on we was no downhill
54:14
[SPEAKER_04]: We're really, I guess, out of time, I thoroughly enjoyed this so much mark.
54:18
[SPEAKER_04]: It's been a real honor to hear about your experience and few to share, so candidly with us, I appreciate it.
54:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to say thank you for that.
54:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Did you draw a life lesson that we could end with?
54:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Something that you would say, you know, from the Northwest Passage in particular, this is one thing that I drew from that that I think would be valuable for others.
54:40
[SPEAKER_02]: If you define the pursuit, then it's easier to love.
54:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you love the pursuit, then the outcome will look after itself.
54:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so it again.
54:48
[SPEAKER_02]: If you define the pursuit, it's easier to love the pursuit.
54:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you love the pursuit, the outcome will look after itself.
54:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess what I'm trying to say is, you know, it's the journey, not the destination, but journey is defined by the destination.
55:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's almost impossible.
55:04
[SPEAKER_02]: What does the journey mean?
55:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you know, Sisyphus going perpetually but pushing a rock up a hill.
55:09
[SPEAKER_02]: He's not on a journey because there's nowhere to go.
55:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So difficult to disentangle destinations and journey.
55:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So you got to define the journey.
55:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it a challenge?
55:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it an experience?
55:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it a relationship?
55:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it a course?
55:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And you can say to yourself, I'm doing this because there's a challenge.
55:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Then that makes the journey real measurable, tangible, and you can say, Well, now I'm achieving my goal because I define the pursuit as the challenge.
55:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Or next week, going cycling with my dad, he's 81.
55:36
[SPEAKER_02]: It will be a little bit challenging, and it will be outdoors.
55:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's about relationships.
55:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And if my dad or I are not up for 100 mile a day and we do a 10 mile a day the point that the journey that time was relationships and the outcome doesn't matter so to find the pursuit and then you can love the pursuit and then the pursuit and then the goal looks after yourself.
55:59
[SPEAKER_02]: That's beautiful.
56:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Where can people find your book?
56:02
[SPEAKER_02]: If you just google there will be headwinds, kayaking in office passage you'll find it on Amazon certainly and
56:10
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, and how else might people contact you?
56:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe they want you to speak to their group.
56:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, adventureagnew.com is my website, and yeah, my full-time job now is to travel the world, talking to corporate audiences in particular.
56:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, if you're in London and you've got a kid, any state school, I'll do for free.
56:31
[SPEAKER_02]: All old folks home as well, I'll do them for free.
56:33
[SPEAKER_02]: If they're in a reasonable distance of my house,
56:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you want to hire me for your company to help them understand how to love the pursuit so the goal looks after themselves, then I'm your man.
56:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Alright, Mark Agnew, thank you so much for your time today.
56:47
[SPEAKER_04]: That was delightful.
56:48
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, for all of you out there, choose the big goal because that helps all the rest of these things to fall into place.
56:55
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's not necessarily about, you know, getting to the top of the mountain as Mark's so clearly pointed out.
57:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It's about doing the thing, getting started, having a goal that's big enough to get you out there and trying and learning and experiencing life on a whole new level.
57:09
[SPEAKER_04]: So until the next show, do get out there and have some fun.