That's way too harsh to describe a man's personal quest for adventure. It's not just vanity. You have no idea how many young minds have been influenced by this adventure. How many potential new startups will come about because someone somewhere out there thinks 'well this guy just gave up his life trying to cross the Antartic, what stops me from doing something perhaps tiny in comparison, but monumental in value, or something that I can undertake'. This is true of all adventurers who seek to accomplish something beyond perceived abilities - free diving, climbing k2 or summitting Mt.Meru on the shark fin route.

The indirect benefits of such expeditions have not been measured. If someone did, I'm quite certain, a ton of benefits will crop up.

I'd agree but if you were talking about going to Mars or something, but for this particular quest, that seems a bit much. Just look at this list of "first person ever to do X from Y to Z" since 2000:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Antarctic_expeditions#...

I'd liken this more to climbing Mt. Everest: challenging and personally rewarding, sure, but of ever-diminishing inspirational value to the rest of the world.

I understand the appeal of such adventures and excitement that goes with it, but lets not pretend they are doing something useful. There is no real value in people free diving, climbing k2 etc. People do it for themselves and that is fine as far as it goes and interesting.

It can inspire people to train a bit or visit nature or something of the sort. If watching expedition makes you start startup, then it is odd as caring about business makes physical training harder.

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.

Rene Daumal

An excellent book: Mount Analogue.

Yeah, maybe. But I also think it’s cool to see humans push the boundaries on physical and mental limitations in these types of ways.

That's why I watch pro football. Honestly I'll bet there's quite a few people who have the physical and mental stamina to cross the Antarctic, just nobody else wants to.

Those are harsh words. Great feats don't necessarily involve discovery or profit.

I thought it was a real adventure, an extreme form of hiking in a very extreme and cold environment, as well as an exercise in managing risks. I have the impression that he did it just to see if it can be done, as a kind of personal adventure, as a way to win a victory over himself.

I recently read an interview of a retired ex-paratrooper who lost his friend to Piteraq in Greenland (similar katabatic winds exist at Antarctica), the tent broke, exposing the people and they froze to death. With winds up to ca. 80 m/s and double-digit subzero temperatures, the wind chill effect is insane and a new shelter must be up within minutes.

It was a dangerous undertaking, no doubt. But then again so was Thor Heyerdahl with his raft, and Apollo 11 with the flight to the Moon, and so on.

Tip: if you want to concretely experience extreme cold, and the sheer brutalness of it, look up a cryotherapy room. -110 C or so for a few minutes while wearing swimming gear (and some cover for the extremities) felt like a hopeless, prolonged open ice swimming without the immediate endorphin rush (which eventually did come sometime later).

It would be a sad and cheerless world if the only motivations were discovery and profit.

What have you done?