When Littleton’s Sean Swarner reached the North Pole two weeks ago to complete the Explorer’s Grand Slam, he pulled out a Denver Broncos ball cap to pose for a photo and called his girlfriend on a satellite phone with a marriage proposal.
She said yes, adding some excitement to an experience that seemed strangely lacking in it.
“I don’t want to say it was kind of a letdown, but it was very anticlimactic, just because there is no marker,” said Swarner, a who makes these treks to offer hope and inspiration for those battling cancer and other challenges. “Fifteen years of working on Explorer’s Grand Slam (reaching the highest peak on all seven continents plus both poles) and that was it, it was done. I collapsed on my hands and my knees and I cried like a baby, because I was so happy, but at the same time I was thinking, ‘I need to get feeling back in my fingers.’ It was a short-lived celebration, but it was one I definitely will remember forever.”
It took seven days of skiing in temperatures of 30 degrees below zero to reach the pole. Swarner figures his party of six skied about 70 miles over that time, but that’s just an estimate because the polar ice cap moves with ocean currents. They spent the night where they stopped after reaching the pole, and the next morning they had moved more than a mile. There they were picked up by a Russian helicopter.
“This has been such a part of my life for the past 15 years, there is going to be a void there,” Swarner said. “I need to fill that with something. I’m sure I’ll figure that out. I’m not too worried about it, but it will take a while for it to sink in.”
