Two famed polar explorers crossing Juneau Icefield to prove large point about shrinking glaciers

It won’t take Børge Ousland and Vincent Colliard quite as long to cross the shrinking Juneau Icefield during the next few weeks as it would have when they started their quest to cross the world’s 20 largest icefields in 2012 — which in a way is largely the point of their project.

The two longtime polar explorers, who have completed nearly half of their crossings together so far, gave a public presentation of the project in Juneau on Friday evening before departing for Skagway on Saturday morning to begin what’s expected to be about a 20-day trip. Both said the crossings are intended to call attention to Earth’s polar regions and the impacts climate change is having there — and as a result on the planet as a whole.

“We don’t want to cross these ice caps just for the sake of doing expeditions one after the other,” Colliard said during Friday’s night’s presentation at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. “Our idea is to try to bridge as much as possible adventure and science, because we really want to question our impact on glacier recession.”

The Mendenhall Glacier has retreated about a mile from the visitor center and narrowed by about 2,000 feet during the past 40 years, according to NASA Earth Observatory data. The agenda states climate change is affecting the icefield at twice the rate of the planet’s average — some other parts of the Arctic are warming at a considerably faster rate than that.

In addition to the ongoing rapid shrinkage that may cause the Mendenhall Glacier to vanish from view from the visitor center by 2050, melting due to climate change has become a top priority local issue due to record glacial outburst dam flooding that in August damaged about 300 homes.

However, the Juneau Icefield at about 1,500 square miles (3,900 km²), remains one of the largest icefields in the Western Hemisphere outside of the polar regions and feeds more than 40 large glaciers, including the Mendenhall, Taku and Herbert glaciers.

Ousland, a Norwegian, and Colliard, a Frenchman who moved to Norway, both have numerous polar expedition firsts and records to their credit, and their now 12-year-old Ice Legacy project would make them the first to cross all 20 of the world’s largest icefields. They have already crossed three others in Alaska on the list — Wrangel St-Elias, Chugach and Stikine — with Juneau the fourth and final one in the state.

“Alaska is by far our favorite destination because the nature here is like nothing else in the world — especially when you have bears and wolves around the glacier it makes it very, very exciting,” Colliard said.

Colliard, when asked by an audience member why the pair is taking the trip now as chilly and wet fall weather sets in, quipped “because Leif was born in May,” referring to his recently-born son.

But he said while the pair typically tries to make such crossings in May, the latter-season trip across the Juneau Icefield will serve a purpose beyond the crossing itself since fresh snow is likely to occur. They are planning to collect snow samples as well as ice cores that may provide climate clues dating far back in time to give to a University of Alaska Anchorage professor who specializes in Arctic ecosystem research.

Colliard cited as one of his inspirational examples U.S. explorer Will Steger, who co-led the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica during a 220-day period in 1989-1990 “and then he managed to talk to the highest political people in the U.S. to ban mining to make sure no mining would occur in Antarctica.”

“So what I hope in between Børge and me with Ice Legacy, and hopefully Leif in the future generation, is that Ice Legacy will be able to question really our impact to the highest political level so we can influence a little bit and do our share to try to clean our acts because we live in a pretty messy world,” Colliard said.

Ousland said they arrived in Juneau earlier this week and Colliard took part in a flyover of some of the icefield to help with route planning “just because some places we need really more detailed information to be able to do it in a safe way.”

Also, in addition to making sure they can cross safely, the explorers will be accompanied by a couple of filmmakers recording the trip for a project to be determined, he said.

Questions from audience members focused largely on details of such trips — when asked about food Colliard said he was eating 7,000 calories a day at the end of a 22-day trip earlier this year that set a solo speed record for reaching the South Pole — along with some inquires about environmental and climate elements. One person asked about the carbon impact of the Ice Legacy project itself, and what Ousland and Colliard might be doing to avoid adding to the concerns they’re raising.

“Of course we are adding to the carbon into the atmosphere by doing this expedition, somehow both of us coming over here from Norway,” Ousland said. “So we’re both in the glass house. But you can go with the back in the cave and stay there, and shout into black hole. If you want to speak out there will be an impact on much of what you do. We have tried to balance that. We do go over expeditions and the support for it. There (are) no drops or helicopters or snowmobiles that support us along the way.”

The most recent Ice Legacy crossing by the pair was the Devon Ice Cap in the Canadian Arctic in 2022. Officially they have crossed eight icefields together for the project, although Ousland has already crossed a few others on the list on his own or with different companions.

Ousland, in singling out a past expedition during the presentation, said Alaska is memorable because it was the starting point for what turned into a wintertime crossing of the Arctic Ocean — going over the North Pole to reach Norway on the other side — with Mike Horn in 2019. They departed on a boat from Alaska on Aug. 25, reached the edge of the sea ice on Sept. 12 and were supposed to reach the northern archipelago of Svalbard in mid-November. But instead weeks of delays saw them reach the Norwegian islands at the end of December as they were consuming the last of their food.

“So it’s just if you can turn your mind from thinking about the problem and then focusing on a solution if you can do that,” he said, describing overcoming hardships that occurred as difficulties and 24-hour winter darkness set in. “Yeah, it’s fine to feel sorry for yourself for a while, but then at some stage it’s a good idea to start to think about solutions.”

• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.