Larsen Eric (United States)

Larsen Eric

Eric Larsen's life epitomizes adventure. A polar explorer, dog musher, adventure racer and educator, he has spent the past 12 years of his life adventuring in some of the most remote and wild places left on earth. Totaled, Eric has traveled enough wilderness miles to circle the globe nearly two and half times.

Eric has recently returned from a history-making expedition, the One World Expedition. On this first ever summer journey to the North Pole, Eric and expedition partner, Lonnie Dupre pulled and paddled specially modified canoes over 600 miles of shifting sea ice and open ocean. Eric's other expeditions include a 700-mile dog sled journey through northern Ontario, a six week dog sled journey in the barren lands of the Canadian Arctic, several training trips to Hudson Bay and countless dog sled races. He has also ridden his bike across the United States, been a back country ranger in Alaska, a white water canoe guide in Colorado and wilderness trip leader in Hawaii.

A gifted communicator as well, Eric travels the country giving motivational and educational lectures to K-12 schools, universities, non profit organizations and corporate groups. Several documentaries have also been created around expeditions that Eric has been involved with.

Eric lives in Grand Marais, Minnesota.

In 2009, he set up a trilogy that would take him no only to the South and North Poles, but also to the top of Everest. In less than 365 days. His objective was to promote clean energies, to propose strategies for effectively reducing carbon emissions and for producing educational programmes for young people on the subject not only of the global warming but also on adventure and team spirit.
During the winter of 2009-2010, he successfully completed the Hercules Inlet - South Pole trek in the company of two clients, the Canadian Liu Dong Sheng and the Irishman William Hanlon. They left Hercules on 16 November and reached the Pole on 04 January, after a trek of 47 days and one re-supply operation.

In the spring of 2010, he attempted the second part of his adventure, the Ward Hunt - North Pole trek. He had two companions, Antony Jinman, a British explorer (28) years who is on his tenth expedition in the Arctic and who this time is looking for microscopic algae in the Arctic ice, and Darcy St-Laurent, a Canadian military Search and Rescue Technician. They were deposited on the ice on 03 March and reached their goal after 51 days and two re-supply operations, on 23 April 2010. Like all the other teams attempting the NP this season, the Larsen trio will have been greatly slowed down by strong and constant negative drift that accompanied them throughout their entire journey.