Photo: Chris Emeott
Polar explorer and educator Ann Bancroft on discovering your path, spreading hope and embracing the adventure outside your door.
There’s a kaleidoscope of color waiting at the edge of the world. Through sheets of ice and a blanket of snow, guarded by intense winds and biting cold—the North Pole holds a magic that not many will witness.
Ann Bancroft, an educator and polar explorer residing in Marine on St. Croix, is one of the few to experience the North Pole. “I thought it was kind of a gray and blue and white world,” Bancroft says, recalling her expedition to the North Pole in 1986. But at the very top of the planet, where the sun seems to hang on the horizon, Bancroft says, “That light goes through all the ice crystals and refracts out, and you’ve got every color in the rainbow dancing around. And it’s like, ‘Who sprayed the glitter, man?’”
It’s a colorful comment befitting a person whose very essence is laced with wonder. Bancroft’s remarkable story—of becoming the first woman in history to trek to the North and South Poles—has been shared globally. But it’s how she’s used that platform to uplift girls and encourage them to pursue their dreams that has made her a hero to many.
In autumn of 2000, Ann Bancroft and Liv Arneson began a journey to cross Antartica. They skied and sailed for 94 days, traveling 1.717 miles with 250 pound sleds. Photos: Bancroft Arnesen Explore
The St. Paul native founded the Ann Bancroft Foundation (ABF) in 1997, which has awarded more than $2 million to 6,000 Minnesota girls.
Yet, you’ll often find this explorer entirely at home in Marine, shoveling her driveway, breathing in the crisp winter air and embracing the beauty of her backyard through the seasons. Her advice for enjoying the winter? “I think you have to be willing to let that 10-year-old girl out, even when you’re 69, because that’s where the magic is,” Bancroft says.
At Home in the World
Bancroft settled in the Valley in 1991, familiar with the area from family trips spent swimming, paddling and climbing. “In a way, it felt like coming home,” she says. Her little slice of Marine isn’t unlike the farmhouse in Mendota Heights that she grew up in—full of opportunity. “My mother would say that right from the get-go I was on my way. She couldn’t contain me,” Bancroft says. “… It was adventure right out the door.”
Her enthusiasm for exploration was deepened by long winter nights sleeping in the orchard. “I always call that my first expedition,” Bancroft says of her first snow camp at the age of 8. “And they just got longer and longer and further and further away from home. But, for me, it was idyllic because it fit my personality. I didn’t feel lonely, but I had plenty of time alone and in my imagination.”
When Bancroft was in fifth grade, her family moved to Africa for two years to volunteer. The experience broadened her sense of the world. “[My parents] had a sense of adventure, a sense of travel—and they let their kids free,” she says. “… They had a huge impact on all of us following our own adventures and our own path in the way it’s best expressed for us.”
Through her childhood, college years at the University of Oregon and early adulthood, Bancroft continued to explore farther and higher. “I always was finding opportunities to learn more skills, see more wilderness,” she says. “I used to joke … ‘I’m an expert at none, average at everything.’ I’ll kayak. I’ll canoe. I’ll climb. I’ll ski. But I’m more voracious for all of it. I’m not a singular climber or a singular polar explorer. I’m just hungry about seeing the wild parts of our world.”
Blazing a Trail
In 1985, Bancroft left her job as an elementary school teacher in the Twin Cities to join the Steger International Polar Expedition. It was the realization of a lifelong dream. The eight-person team, co-led by Will Steger of Ely, sledge-hauled its way to the North Pole with a dog team. “It’s always the hardest thing of your life. It’s the hardest thing you’ll do, but it’s the best thing,” Bancroft says.
Ann Bancroft after crossing Antarctica. She and Norwegian explorer Liv Arnesen were the first women to do so.
Becoming the first woman to trek to the North Pole, “wasn’t even a kernel of a thought,” Bancroft says. A week before the team arrived at the pole, she was pushing a sled with expedition co-leader Paul Schurke when he said to her, “You’ve got to get ready. You’re going to be the first woman to the top of the world across the ice.”
“I didn’t know what that meant, even, to get ready,” Bancroft says. “Nobody knew us when we left … like 20 people in St. Paul said goodbye, and we came home to thousands.”
The next few years were a whirlwind. Bancroft became a public figure overnight. “I felt very undeserving of all the attention,” Bancroft says. “… It was much harder than the trip.”
A turning point came when she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995. As Bancroft walked into the church in Seneca Falls, New York, where Alice Paul helped secure women’s right to vote in 1920— surrounded by women of various backgrounds and disciplines—she questioned her place in it all.
“And then I realized, I am standing on the shoulders of women that have gone before me—not in polar exploration, but in sports and in politics and literature and education and science. It’s a stew, and I think what I learned from that afternoon, of beginning to feel fraudulent and then listening to their stories, is we’re all effecting change for each other,” Bancroft says. “If you don’t follow your passion and do the thing that you’re best at, we’re not going to make the inroads that we need. I’m best suited to do what I did on the ends of the Earth. That’s where I shine the best … I’m doing my thing, and when I do my thing with my heart and my head, it changes the world around me a little bit.”
Rather than squander the platform she had discovered—Bancroft knew she could use it to benefit the world around her. So she did.
A Platform for Girls
Bancroft’s efforts in exploration and public speaking have brought attention to the importance of preserving wild places and empowered women and girls to pursue their dreams. She organized and completed an educational expedition to Antarctica alongside three other women in 1992. The educational component involved a curriculum that reached more than 350,000 students in the United States.
Back in Minnesota, ABF has remained a strong source of support for girls. Inspired by her experience in Africa as a girl, Bancroft and the ABF board honed the foundation’s focus to a grant and mentorship program early on. Those who identify as female or are nonbinary in grades K–12 may apply for a $1,000 grant to fund activities in areas such as art, sports, leadership and culture. Last year, ABF helped fund 140 Minnesota girls’ dreams.
Bancroft continues to explore with her long-time skiing partner, Liv Arnesen of Norway. Their latest project is Access Water, a seven-continent multiyear journey to bring attention to the world’s freshwater issues via expeditions on every continent. This February and March, they’ll be in New Zealand on a series of excursions with an international team of women, amplifying stories along the way.
Her greatest hope is that the world stays hopeful. “I think that’s the old person’s job, quite frankly. We’ve been at life for so long, you realize, regardless of what gets thrown at you—what else is there to do but just have a giggle and keep going?” she says. “… I’m on my way out, so I need [young people], and I need them engaged and I need them hopeful. It’s not gonna be easy, but you can be hopeful. And there is joy; you just have to go out the door.”
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