GREAT ADVENTURERS FROM THE LAND OF GREAT ADVENTURES
 

RUNE GJELDNES.
          Over three months from November 6, 2005 to February 3, 2006 (encompassing the short Antarctic summer), 34-year-old Norwegian Rune Gjeldnes skied and walked alone across a 3,000-mile-long diameter of Antarctica, pulling a sled laden with all the supplies needed for the journey. Along the route he stopped at the science station at the South Pole, and visited the cabins used by British explorers Scott and Shackleton when they made their star-crossed South Pole expeditions in 1911 and 1914-16.
 
         Gjeldnes’s remarkable solo trek capped a distinguished career as polar adventurer and mountaineer during which he:

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     • Crossed Greenland, Baffin Island (Canada), and the North Pole on skis.
        His 3-month-long ski trek across the Arctic Ocean (crossing the North
        Pole with countryman Torry Larsen) in 1999-2000 was, like his 2006
        Antarctica crossing, self-sustaining: Gjeldnes brought all his supplies
        with him.
     • Has climbed 7,000 meter high Aconcagua in the Andes.
     • Was first to canoe the length of the remote Merevari River in Venezuela
        (in 1998 with countryman Bjørn Løe).

          Gjeldnes, born in May 1971, became a member of the select Norwegian Navy Special Forces (like the US Navy Seals). Gjeldnes has written books about his two-man Arctic Ocean and solo Antarctic crossings (“Dead Men Walking” and “Beyond the Poles”). Currently at home in NORWAY he manages the SEAL adventure trekking company, and is active on the lecture circuit.
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