By MEGHAN BARR, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago
NEW YORK - The bone-numbing trek to the North Pole is riddled with enough perils to make a seasoned explorer quake: Frostbite threatens, polar bears loom and the ice is constantly shifting beneath frozen feet.
Hillary, of Averne, N.Y., grew up in Harlem and devoted herself to a nursing career and community activism. At 67 and during retirement, she battled lung cancer. Five years later, she went dog sledding in Quebec and photographed polar bears in Manitoba.
“I said,
What‘s wrong with this picture?‘” she said. “So I sort of rolled into this, shall we say.”
Ann Bancroft, a physical education teacher from Minnesota, was the North Pole‘s first female visitor in 1986 as a member of the Steger Polar Expedition, which arrived unassisted in a re-creation of the 1909 trip. Various scientific organizations said no record exists of a black woman matching Bancroft‘s feat, although such record-keeping is not perfect.
Russell‘s paying customers can travel to the North Pole in various ways, from 18-day cross-country ski trips to simply being dropped off at the Pole via helicopter. The trip costs about $21,000 per person.
“It wasn‘t a popular sport in Harlem,” she quipped.
“She‘s a headstrong woman. You don‘t tell her ‘no‘ about too many things,” Russell said.
“Before I arrived, the word was out that soul food was coming,” she joked.
As the sunlight glinted off the ice, distorting her gaze, Hillary struggled beneath a load of gear and pressed on. In her euphoria at reaching the Pole, she forgot the cold and removed her gloves, causing her fingers to become frostbitten.
While such expeditions serve as major accomplishments, some historians and Arctic experts criticize what they call an over-hyping of being the “first” to do something.
“The same issue is in effect for the climbing of Mount Everest ,” said Michael Robinson, a University of Hartford professor who wrote “The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture.” “You see the first diabetic, the first blind person to climb Everest. I‘d hate for there to be a constant emphasis on nationality and race and gender, or disability.”
But for Hillary, the achievement extends beyond race. She hopes her journey will inspire hope in other cancer survivors. With her feet back on dry land in New York, she is already plotting a new adventure: that of a global-warming activist.
“What if?” she said. “I‘d like to go and lecture to different groups on what they can do on a grass-roots level (to fight global warming).”
