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Bob Christ
interviewed by Anthony Qaiyum on December 4, 1995
"We get down to the North Pole after the -- oh heck -- about six minute free fall and parachute ride."
Bob helps lead a skydiving trip to the North Pole with Forum Travel International. This Arctic expedition may be the most extreme travel adventure ever.
Tripod: Going to the North Pole probably seems crazy enough to most people. What made you decide to do a skydiving trip there?
BC: [laughs] Well, actually I've been skydiving for 16 years. First off, I'm always interested in world events. One of the world events that has been most interesting to me is the collapse of the Soviet Union. To go over there and visit these guys was just very interesting. Especially to ride Russian military hardware to go do all of these things was even that much more interesting. We actually went over to Siberia -- Moscow, then Siberia -- and went into, probably the biggest black hole in the world. Siberia hasn't seen Western eyes until very recently. Since these guys needed hard currency so bad, we were able to go over there and visit these guys and tour the Tundra.
Tripod: How many times do you jump while you're there?
BC: I do the tandem jumps.
Tripod: What is a tandem jump?
BC: The tandem parachute system involves attaching an inexperienced person onto the front of an experienced instructor. All the inexperienced person has to do is cross his arms and his legs and hang on for the ride. The experienced instructor does all the work.
I took a 32 year old urologist in '94, so it was kind of funny. Her name is Denise. She's a urologist over at the University of Pennsylvania medical center.
Tripod: So overall, how many jumps do you do?
BC: Three to five depending on how the whole thing goes. We only really guarantee you one, which is the jump on the North Pole. But in actuality, we jump into reindeer herds. We jump into fishing villages, and so forth. So it's a jumping vacation more or less. But it's hardly what I would consider to be a vacation.
Tripod: What is the average temperature at the North Pole?
BC: We go in mid-April. The reason why we go in mid-April is it's just as the sun's coming up. It's about 12 degrees above the horizon, and it goes all the way around the horizon. There's no night. The second reason is it's just after winter, so the ice is the hardest. Any later than that, and the ice starts to soften up.
We get down to the North Pole after the -- oh heck -- about six minute free fall and parachute ride. From there we land ... we stick a pole in the ground for the North Pole ... have a few bottles of champagne and enjoy ourselves for about twelve hours or so. We do a little discovering, as we call it. The ice is like a monument. It's hard as rock, and it sticks up, sometimes, 15 or 20 feet out of the ocean. So it's quite amazing. We sit there, quite amazed the whole time we're over there. We didn't even slow down.
Tripod: Is your body completely covered the whole time?
BC: Completely wrapped. It was funny. During the '94 trip, we had a couple guys from California that decided that they were going to have bragging rights by having the Mr. North Pole contest. A couple of them stripped down completely nude. But they weren't there for very long. [laughs]
Tripod: How well does the polar suit protect you?
BC: It'll protect you up to 60 to 80 below. I've actually experienced it. We went up in the airplane to 12,500 feet. Of course, it was 30 below at the surface, so I'd put it somewhere around 45 or 50 below at altitude. My hands were real cold, because I had to put on less protection, because I had to operate the handles on the equipment. My hands got pretty cold, but the rest of me was pretty toasty.
Tripod: What about going to the bathroom? Is there any danger of losing vital body parts?
BC: [laughs] It's really funny, because we talked a lot about that, and it was the standing joke on the trip -- you've gotta walk slowly backwards or else you'll freeze yourself to the pole. Actually no. There's huge mounds of ice all the way through there. You stand behind one of those to get out of the wind, whip it out, and just go after it ... The equipment's just made for this, so all of the functions are pretty easy to do.
Tripod: I read on your Web site that the average thickness of the polar ice cap is about two meters. Does it ever break open -- is there a danger landing a plane there?
BC: The ice breathes -- goes in, goes out. The weakest is point is where it's going to separate. The strongest point, where it's the thickest, is where it's going stay the tightest. So landing an airplane on the ice, of course the danger's always there, but it's going to break in most instances on the part where it's the weakest. So you have leads, where the ice breaks apart and forms rivers. The next thing is ridges, where it the ice comes together and smashes and forms huge hills.
Tripod: Have you ever had anybody freak out that they're so far from actual land?
BC: Well, there's no water anywhere near there. [laughs]
Tripod: Is there any specific type of person that goes on this trip?
BC: It's really funny. Most of the guys on the trip are either in the computer industry, or in the medical profession. There were several people in the computer industry. In fact one of the guys in particular was Paul Burrill, the head of architecture with Sun Microsystems out of California.
He's a pretty sharp guy. He and I got into one of those animated computer discussions, after about a half a case of champagne, and having stayed up for close to 48 hours. He quickly shot over my head, and I'm in the computer industry. [laughs]
Tripod: Can you tell me about some of the other activities on the trip?
BC: Certainly. That was one of the more fun things that we did. We leave and go on a helicopter excursion out into the tundra. There's a couple of fishing villages out there. They look at us kind of funny, but those folks out there are pretty sharp too. They didn't understand a word of English. I'm not even sure if they understood much Russian. But they did know American dollars. The standard currency over in Russia for the last ten years has been American dollars. It was kind of funny. They were all very friendly. We actually took off from there into a reindeer herd. Denise is 5' 2", and she was a head taller than the nomads that chase around the reindeer herds.
From there we came back and took on the Chatanga volleyball team, and they stomped us. [laughs] It was a lot of fun. And from there we had a reindeer barbecue ... Every continent except Antarctica was represented in our group. We had some really amazing people with us.
Tripod: So the trip is open to anyone?
BC: The trip's open to anyone. It's a little bit more expensive when you're not a jumper, though, because we have to bring along a tandem master for the passenger.
Tripod: What are the dates for the next one?
BC: We've postponed the 1996 trip. So it's going to be 1997. April 12-20, 1997.
Tripod: I don't know how to jump, and I don't have a polar suit. Can you give me an estimate of how much the trip would cost with supplies and everything?
BC: It would be right at $9,900.
Tripod: Wow.
BC: Everything considered it's pretty cheap. Especially if you consider that a day trip out of Norway costs around $14,000.
If you want more information, visit Forum Travel International's Web site at:
http://www.afn.org/~skydive/np.html
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