NOLS at the Earth’s Poles

Remember when you were a whiny little whipper snapper, how your dad used to say “Suck it up! I walked barefoot uphill 5 miles both ways to school when I was young!” And you thought “wow, he was so hard core!”

Now imagine that your dad is nearly 60 and he says “I just skied over 870 kilometers of sea ice in soft snow hauling a sled for 60 days in whiteout conditions and temperatures as low as negative 50 degrees to reach the North Pole, sleeping for only 2 hours every 10 hours.” That is way beyond hard core. And that’s what NOLS Instructor Rob Rigato and his wife Linda Beilharz can tell folks now that they have successfully completed their goal of skiing
overland to the North Pole, making Linda the first Australian woman to
accomplish this feat.

This isn’t a first for NOLS. NOLS Trustee and Instructor
Tori Murden McClure became the first woman and first American to ski overland to the South
Pole in 1989. Rob’s wife Linda has also made the same journey. And Rob completed an east west crossing of the Greenland Icecap in
2007 and recently attempted a crossing of the South Patagonia Icecap.

Read more about Rob’s North Pole expedition on Explorersweb and the Ice Cap Journeys expedition web-site. Congrats Rob!