Winter play: Skiing with adventurer Ann Bancroft

CATHY WURZER: Some people tolerate the cold, some people love it, and some people like polar explorer Ann Bancroft have made a career out of living in it. You might know Bancroft from her many accomplishments. She is the first woman to cross the North and South poles and the first woman to traverse Antarctica with skis and sails.

She also happens to be a lifelong Minnesotan who invited reporter Kathryn Richard along for an activity she does closer to home, hok skiing. Capping off our Winter Play Series, Kat joins us to tell us about her adventures with Ann Bancroft. You lucky dog, you, that you do this.

KATHERINE RICHARD: I'm so lucky.

CATHY WURZER: Oh my gosh. Yes. I love Anne.

KATHERINE RICHARD: I got a lucky invitation to join her for a day. And when I found out I was super excited, and frankly, a little star struck, so it was a great day.

CATHY WURZER: Who wouldn't be? OK, so I have to say when I saw this lead for our conversation here today, I thought, H-O-K skiing? Hok skiing? I mean, what is that? I've never heard of it.

KATHERINE RICHARD: Neither had I. And I've lived here long enough to a few things. But hok skiing is kind of a hybrid between snowshoeing and cross-country skiing and a little downhill skiing thrown in. Envision these short, fat skis that look like tongue depressors. At most, they're going to be about 57 inches long.

And you use poles with them, like you would with skis and sometimes snowshoes. And when you're on them, on the flat parts you're gliding, like you're cross-country skiing. And when you hit a hill, because of this sheath of material on the bottom, you're able to gain some traction to go up the hill. So you can kind of climb over stuff.

And then, if you're going downhill, you ski downhill like you would on downhill skis.

CATHY WURZER: OK, where did you do this?

KATHERINE RICHARD: So Ann invited me to her property, which is in the Stillwater area. She has about 120 acres out there of just beautiful woods. I mean, stunning.

The weather was great. It was like cold and sunny and everything was sparkling. It was lovely. She does this every single day on her property just to get outside and to get rejuvenated and also to get some exercise.

And that's the beauty of these hok skis. They can be used by anyone anywhere. They have these universal bindings that make them really easy to just strap on to regular boots, and again, they're small. So you can transport them very easily. They can cost anywhere between $200 and $500, but they can also be rented for a much smaller fee.

- OK, it looks like almost anybody can do this.

KATHERINE RICHARD: Yeah, right. I mean, I don't think you have to have a high level of skill in any of those types of activities to strap them on and give it a try. I wouldn't say it was any harder for me than maybe snowshoeing.

But let me tell you what, I happened to fall three times in front of Ann Bancroft, which I have to admit was a little bit embarrassing and I don't know that she's going to ask me on a polar expedition. She said, you know what, Kat, it happens to me all the time. So she didn't make me feel too bad about it.

CATHY WURZER: OK, so does she ski daily?

KATHERINE RICHARD: She does. She also has a relatively young dog. He's about a year and a half. And she's like, even when I don't want to go outside, which does happen to Ann Bancroft, her dog will make her go outside. And she said she's always glad when she does.

CATHY WURZER: She, of course, has had an incredible life, obviously. She's known for her polar explorations. But she's done such good work educating kids about the Arctic and climate change and natural resources. And she's just-- she's an icon. So obviously, you did more than just hok ski with her, for goodness sakes. You talked about what?

KATHERINE RICHARD: Well, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to ask her a lot of questions. I happen to have read one of the books that she published with her polar exploring partner, Liv Arnesen, who lives in Norway. And so I just wanted to know, how did you do this? What did this look like? How did you navigate this? I had a lot of questions.

And I wasn't going to let the opportunity go by without asking her a bunch of other stuff that didn't make it into the story, but I was really interested in. She has lived in absolutely remarkable life. And she's also just very fun to talk to. So here's an excerpt of our conversation that we had after we put our skis away.

I asked you this earlier on the trail, but I'm just wondering how-- what you do professionally has changed over the last few decades? The gear is different, the climate in which we're living is different, so how does all of that factor into how you would manage a trip to Antarctica now as opposed to in 2000?

ANN BANCROFT: Certainly, with the warming of the climate, unfortunately, I've been able to witness dramatic changes that I think early explorers didn't pay much attention to. But we are always looking for the best nutrition and the best skis and the best sleds and redesigning things and taking our learnings from the past and bringing them forward because things changed.

I mean, we went to the North Pole with a sextant, a compass, and the sun and the wind. And when we crossed Antarctica in 2000, so from '86 to 2000, we had a sat phone and that was brand new technology for the layperson. And we had-- all of our documentation equipment was different. So we're always building.

I think the most dramatic change for me has been in the-- where you see it is the Arctic, primarily because we're traveling on ice with an ocean underneath. And so that ocean, typically, on a natural course, it opens up and it closes up with the currents and the wind.

But in '86, we went and with dog teams. Our sleds were 1,400 pounds apiece. They were massive. When I went in '05 and '07, our sleds were more like canoes. They were built to be in the water as well. That was something that we never--

KATHERINE RICHARD: Had not occurred to you.

ANN BANCROFT: No. And we designed suits with a company called Helly Hansen that could go over all of our gear where we could actually swim across open expanses of water.

KATHERINE RICHARD: Did you have to do that?

ANN BANCROFT: Yeah.

KATHERINE RICHARD: Wow.

ANN BANCROFT: And so our--

KATHERINE RICHARD: Was that terrifying? I would have been honestly terrified.

ANN BANCROFT: Well, we practiced it. So it is terrifying. I mean, the constant shifting of that dance floor of ice opening up sometimes as your sleeping on it and stuff was super scary. Probably, the scariest things I've ever done is the Arctic in those mid 2000s.

And that's a dramatic shift. Something that I never imagined when I was starting off in this career.

KATHERINE RICHARD: Yeah, so I know a through line in all of your work has been education. And I know it's targeted often at kids. But I think probably educate adults too in ways that you don't always--

ANN BANCROFT: We hope.

KATHERINE RICHARD: Realize. When you think about our changing planet and the climate, how do you see that education, especially for school age kids, and solving some of the problems that we have that feel kind of insurmountable at this point?

ANN BANCROFT: They do. They can be kind of frightening. I mean, that's what we were focusing on in '05 and '07 was global warming. It was a very vitriolic time in this country. A lot of people didn't want to talk about it. Thought it was hooey.

So how to talk to kids in a way that-- where they feel hopeful and empowered and engaged. I use stories. I think being immersed in the environment and talking and sharing about what I'm seeing and what I'm experiencing and how I've seen it change is one way to do it.

I'm not a scientist, so I don't get encumbered with scientific language. It's grim, but we have to find our place where we can do something, and that something matters. And I believe in that because it was a trillion, gazillion steps across Antarctica. But one in front of the other eventually accumulates.

So each time we all do something, it matters to the bigger picture. A whole bunch of us are going to solve it, but we've got to all be in the stew. And that's what I try and encourage not just kids, but adults as well. Don't get disparing, just keep plotting.

KATHERINE RICHARD: So what are you doing these days?

ANN BANCROFT: What's fun for me is I get to share my story-- they're sort of timeless, even the old expeditions. Yesterday at 8:00 in the morning, I was Zooming with 45, 50 first graders in England and that was a gas. I'm on my way to Chile soon to go down and share my stories of Antarctica with a group of corporate leaders.

I mean, so I do a lot of lecturing and a lot of sharing of my stories and what I've learned. And hopefully, what happens on an expedition is applicable in some aspects of other people's lives, which I think is true. I'm still planning other expeditions.

KATHERINE RICHARD: You're really interested in water these days.

ANN BANCROFT: I'm focusing on water. So I'm traveling with Liv Arnesen, the Norwegian, whom I crossed Antarctica with. We're like sister souls. And she's an educator as well. And so we've been working for 23 years together.

And we've been doing a series of water expeditions around the world with a variety of just rock star young women trying to elevate the voices of women and girls around the world. Because I think women have a different approach to problem solving. And we want to make sure that those voices get into the global conversation. There's a lot of work to do still there.

CATHY WURZER: Wow. Kat, good conversation. Thanks for sharing.

KATHERINE RICHARD: Anytime, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: That was MPR News reporter Catherine Richard hoking and talking with the legendary explorer and, of course, native Minnesotan Ann Bancroft. If you want to learn more about polar explorer Ann Bancroft's current water expeditions, visit bancroftarneson.eco, eco, and you can catch Kat's hok skiing adventure with Bancroft on All Things Considered tonight. Photos and video are online at nprnews.org.