Helen credits her and Bill’s ages (she is 74, he is 85) as a big advantage to arranging their cultural immersions. “We are treated as respected elders, so it works well,” she says. “They wouldn’t allow us in to some of the places we’ve explored if we were younger.” She also notes that their age never seems to slow them down. “We still work out and people can’t believe our real ages. They tell us we look 25 to 30 years younger.” The couple resides in Washington state at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, where they hike the rugged trails on a daily basis and work out in their home gym when they’re not traveling the globe. “We keep ourselves tuned up by hiking long and hard, lifting weights, and stretching,” says Helen. “Age means so little to us,” she adds. “I remember the days when I would meet an older hiker on the trails and think ‘wow, how did he get up here?’ Now Bill and I are a pair of those hikers, and when we get up on the high trails, younger people come along and talk to us. You can see them looking at us and guess the thoughts in their minds about how did we get up here.” The mountains have always been near and dear to Helen. She’ll say that the seed for Adventure Classroom was sown in 1986 as she stood on the summit of Peak Communism (24,590 feet) in Tajikistan at age 48. But in reality, it had been germinating since she was a 9-year-old, hiking up Mount Taranaki (8,261 feet) in her home country of New Zealand with Helen and Bill have traveled much of the African continent on foot, first walking 1,600 miles across the Gobi Desert with camels and, most recently, walking 900 family friend, Sir Edmund Hilary. Yes, the Sir Edmund Hilary.
“Ed was a family friend. I went climbing with him and my parents in the Southern Alps in New Zealand,” says Helen. “He was an absolutely wonderful man, so goal oriented. But he was also very modest and always concerned about the needs of other people before his.” The climb was tough for her 9-year-old legs, but Helen credits that first big mountain climb as the start to her life of adventure. “It set the pace for the rest of my life to set goals,” says Helen. “Once I put a plan in place, I went for it.” During those early years, Helen climbed the highest peaks around New Zealand with “Ed.” She eventually went on to summit some of the highest peaks around the world, including Mt. McKinley (20,320 feet) in Alaska, Aconcagua (22,841 feet) in Argentina, and, of course, Peak Communism in Tajikistan. When Helen became the first woman to trek solo to the magnetic North Pole at age 50, she reminisced about climbing those New Zealand peaks at an early age. “On the flight back to base camp [after walking to the Pole], I realized what the journey to the Pole taught me,” she says. “It made me grateful for that early start, knowing I could do it, and having that belief in myself. You don’t realize what you have inside until you do it yourself.”
She would live with the Inuit people, polar bears, and other wildlife, and work with Canadian scientists in an environmental project to record daily ice temperatures. She would walk and ski alone, pulling her own sled without the aid of dog teams or snowmobiles. “Being the first woman to do this, I really had to reinvent the wheel because there were no other women I could ask questions,” says Helen of the journey. Because she was traveling to the magnetic North Pole, she couldn’t rely on a regular compass as the needle wouldn’t point correctly. Instead, she relied on Inuit navigation using a 24-hour clock, a piece of cardboard, and the shadow system to determine her direction. Navigation wasn’t the only challenge, though. Helen was embarking on a strenuous journey through dangerous polar bear territory. Lucky for her, a local hunter sold her Charlie, a black husky that became her loyal travel companion and “polar bear dog.” Together they survived storms, barely escaped drowning, and, yes, fought off polar bears. After 364 miles and 27 days, Helen and Charlie successfully reached the Pole. Helen wrote a best-selling book about the journey called Polar Dream. “I was the first woman to accomplish this trek, but I didn’t do the trip for that reason. I wanted the focus to be something different than that,” she says. Because it was her first program for Adventure Classroom, Helen wanted to prove to kids that if you plan correctly, you can finish such a journey and live in harmony with wild animals. Even today, Polar Dream is being used in schools and is available in nine languages and in Braille.
In 1988, Helen decided to take on the challenge of trekking solo to the Four years later, for their 30th anniversary, Helen and Bill traveled magnetic North Pole as her first “assignment” for Adventure Classroom. the same route to become the first married couple to walk to any of 56 WAM • WINTER | 2011/12
COPYRIGHT OF HELEN THAYER
“Some people have a nice dinner for their anniversary, but we like to find ourselves doing other things.”
miles across the Sahara Desert. Along the way, they immersed themselves with various tribes and cultures, and encountered a plethora of wildlife.