Colin O'Brady Completed First Unaided Solo Trek Across Antarctica | Joe Rogan

Four, three, two, one. All right, we're live. What's up, man? What's up, dude? What's hilarious, folks? I have to tell you this. I did a podcast earlier today, and he said, wow, it's your second for the day. He goes, impressive endurance. Do you know how fucking ridiculous that is for you to say? This is a guy who walked across Antarctica, how many days did it take you? 54 days. By yourself. By myself. Fucking across the fucking frozen tundra. That was an endurance feat of its own, yeah. No, that's a real endurance feat. I'm just sitting down talking to people. Oh my God, you talked already for two hours. How do you do it? Two more hours, here we go, yeah. Crazy. Yep, yep. Dude, what the fuck were you doing? Just getting back, actually, still practically have the snow on my shoes. Yeah, I got back about a month ago, 54-day journey, first person in history to cross the entire continent, solo, unsupported, so no resupplies throughout the thing, no aid, no wind kites, nothing, just me dragging a 375-pound sled across Antarctica. I can't believe it only took you 54 days. Yeah, yeah. Why did it, it's so big. Look at Antarctica on a map. How long do you think it would take you to walk across America? Well, you got, so we usually look at Antarctica on a map. This is hilarious, I have to show people a picture of Antarctica. You're a smart guy, you probably know this, but usually people see it on a map projection because then it gets flat, right? It's actually circular, so I went from the edge of the raw and ice shelf to the, via the south pole to the raw-sized shelf, so basically kind of a diagonal across through the center and then back to the other ice shelf. What do the flat earthers think about your traversing this area? This is what you did, this is how you winded it. There it is, exactly, yeah. So you went to the center of the fucking earth, basically. There it is. You went to the top of the pole. Yep, bottom of the earth, standing down there holding everyone up on my shoulders. Wow, so you were at the south pole and then you trekked over to the ice shelf on your side. It's funny you say about the flat earthers though because all jokes aside, I've been getting a lot of trolling on my Instagram page from the flat earthers. I've got guys going like, oh, I was doing this speech the other day, people are super nice, come up in the Q&A afterwards, want to shake my hand, take a picture, whatever, and this guy walks up in this real earnest look on his face and he's like, so I really wanted to ask you, how was the hole? And I was like, excuse me? He was like, you know the hole at the center. And I was like, give me a little more. He was like, you know, like when you got to the edge. And I was like, oh man, like you're really asking this question right now. Like we are talking about this. I didn't quite know where to go with it. I was like, yeah, there was actually, at least I didn't see the edge and the curvature kept going and I made it to the other side. It is such a strange thing to believe, but people do. And people think people are trolling about that. And you know what, it actually started out. It's another 4chan thing, you know. Did you know that? Well, I'm sure there was probably somebody who believed it before that, but it started off people trolling on 4chan and then eventually people just started actually going, hey, but it is flat. And then they started believing it and videos, YouTube videos popped up. There's another YouTube video, someone linked to me the other day and I thought it had like, I thought it had like a few hundred views, but it had 28,000 views and there was all these guys debating like, call and prove that there's not a wall. Like the wall, like there would be like Game of Thrones at the edge of the world. There's this whole conversation about that. Another 28,000 people, it's proved that Colin never actually went. Of course. He's a New World Order shill. Well, the other funny one was that we got a bunch on the Instagram page. I'm out there alone, completely by myself, but I wanted to share the whole story through my Instagram to like share the journey with people, inspire others to do whatever they want to do. And I kept being like, well, I mean, he's not out there alone. He's taking pictures. I was like, the film crew. I was like, guys, have you never heard of a tripod in a timer? Have you ever watched Survivor Man? Exactly. So it's a funny comments along those lines. So your sled was 300 and how many pounds? 375 pounds to start. So basically food and fuel was the main weight. So people, I called my project the impossible first. That's sort of what I named the project because several people had tried. That's it right there? And there it is. So not only are you walking, you're dragging this big ass heavy sled. Yeah, yeah. Fuck dude. So people have tried this, going back a hundred years to Ernest Shackleton saying if it was possible. And then the last few years, some really experienced polar explorers have given it a shot. And one guy actually died less than a hundred miles from the finish line because of lack of nutrition and some challenges with the weather and things like that. But people called it, people after that were like, it's impossible. And the reason people thought it was impossible was because you can't get resupplies, meaning if you fill your sled with food at a certain amount, you actually can't drag the sled anymore. So the whole math equation really was figuring out just how much food and fuel I could put in the sled. The fuel melts the water. So it melts the ice into water essentially. And that equaled to 375 pounds. And to be true, I could barely pull it on the first day. Like I, one hour into getting dropped off, I'm dropped off completely alone out there in Antarctica. I planned this project for a year, you know. And I get dropped off and after about one hour pulling 375 pounds sled through the snow, it's minus 25 degrees out. I'm crying. I'm literally crying. And the tears in my goggles are starting to freeze. And I'm like, oh my god. So I pick up my satellite phone. I call home to my wife Jenna, who also creates and plans all these projects with me. And I'm like, babe, I think we named the project the right thing, the impossible first. Yep, it looks like it might be impossible to keep going. So I'm one hour into 1,000 mile journey pulling a sled, told everyone I'm going to do this. And I'm already having those doubts pull up. But fortunately, I was able to get a little bit further that day. And 54 days later, made it to the end. How far did you get in the first day? Well, it's funny, because we just showed the map. I actually, you know, it starts on the ice shelf, which is basically the frozen sea ice. And there's an edge of that that's where the continent starts. And so I have a waypoint on my GPS that marks that. So the plane that drops me off actually dropped me off on the ice shelf before the continent starts. And my first waypoint was kind of like the actual start. And so one hour in, I haven't even hit the real start. So when I call her on the phone, she's like, because she knows the route, she's like, well, how far are you from the first waypoint? Which is where the actual start is. It's 0.63 more miles. She's like, it's half a mile? You have 1,000 more to go. Get to the first waypoint. You know? And I was like, OK, OK. So I rallied myself, got to the first waypoint, and then finally got in my tent that night and just kind of took a deep breath. I think I was just overwhelmed by the magnitude of it. I mean, imagine being a speck in the middle of Antarctica, alone, these crazy temperatures, all the excitement but fears of the journey ahead, and 375 pounds on my back. When the snow is deep, too, loose snow, it makes 375 pounds even heavier than if it's like light, icier, consolidated. So yeah, it was a rough start, to say the least. Did you do any sort of test run, pulling the sled anywhere else? Yeah, so the training element of it was pretty cool. So I actually set a few other world records previous to this in the mountains and things we could talk about if you want. But the last year, as I really committed to this project, I decided to obviously start training specifically for this. I needed to put on about 20 pounds of muscle. I'm usually 6 foot 165, pretty lean. I had raised triathlon professionally for a number of years and realized I needed to be a bit bigger because I was going to lose so much weight. And I found an amazing coach in Portland, Oregon, where I live, this guy named Mike McCassell. I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but I know you've had David Goggins on your show. I take it. So Mike actually surpassed David's pull-up record. Mike did 5,804 pull-ups in 20 hours. I think Goggins did about 4,000, which are both insane to me because I can do like another thousand. And he was wearing, Mike was wearing a 30 pound weight vest. No. Yes. Just to add insult to injury. Mike McCassell, absolute legend. So wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. He did 5,000 fucking chin-ups with a weight vest on? Dude, I barely can do 10. I'm right there with you, man. Pull-ups are not. I've got some other physical strikes, but the pull-up department is not my strong suit. That is fucking insane. Get this too, just because I got to big up my man for a second. That's his fourth road right here. He also pulled an F250 truck 20 miles across Death Valley in a harness. So I'm trying to look for the best guy to teach me how to pull heavy shit. Oh my god, you got the guy. I found the guy. I was like, damn. This is the guy. I just love that there's people like that out there that make you feel like such a pussy. Oh my god. And the greatest thing about Mike, big, strong, jacked dude, but super soft-spoken. He's like, yeah, I did this pull-ups. It was cool. So anyways, I went to- He basically fucked with that record so hard. He could die and come back to life and live a whole other life, and no one's ever going to do it. So anyways, my training, he was the guy. I went to him, trained out of this gym in Portland, where he trains out of, and he got me bigger. He got me stronger, but he also did all sorts of badass, crazy stuff. I mean, this is a physical challenge, but it's more of a mental challenge than anything. So he had me, my hands in ice buckets doing planks to get my heart rate jacked up, and then he'd be like, get out of the water. Then I'd pull my hands out of the ice buckets, do a seated squat against the wall, but then he would hand me Legos. And so my hands are frozen. My feet are in ice buckets now in a plank. My heart rate's 190, and he's like, put this Lego set together. So the dexterity of my fingers, the mental acuity to pull this all together. There he is. Look at this guy. What a fucking savage this guy is. Yeah. And he did that for veteran suicides? Yeah, exactly. So he's got really, really important missions behind all of his projects. He calls him 12 Labors, and over his life, he's trying to set 12 world records in various things. Jesus Christ. There's people that are just, they're just designed different. Yeah, yeah. So he's the man, but like this crazy training he came up with for me that was like, the ice, the water, the mental acuity, all of this was like, he was like, yo, you're gonna be in Antarctica. If your tent blows away when you're blowing it up, you're dead. Like the stakes are that high. 50, 60 mile per hour winds, like absolutely crazy. So. Did you ever have an issue like that where you thought the tent could blow away? I think, I don't know if you have it. There's a clip on my Instagram I posted a few days ago of me setting up the tent in a minus 80 degrees out. 60 mile per hour winds. It's pretty gnarly, but yeah, I mean, there was one time when the tent almost did blow away from me. Yeah, there's this one, there's one other one. This is me getting in the tent looking like an absolute disaster when I get out with audio, but that's me. That's me. Whoa, you're pulling ice out of your eyelashes. I got caught out in a massive storm. And I just, so hard to get the tent up. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to get it up but I was gonna have to just keep walking. Jeez. I'm in the tent now. Hoping these tent holes hold. Man. That was really intense. How do you stay warm in that tent? So it's average temperature is about minus 25, minus 30 in Antarctica. But like I said, when the wind jacks up, I don't know if there's that other clip of me setting up the tent, but if you get a chance to see that, it's about, give me about minus 80 outside, which it's hard to wrap your mind around that, but I've tried to put it in perspective by saying, I could take a cup of boiling water and throw it in air and it immediately turns to ice. Like that's the temperature we're dealing with. Yeah, this is me trying to keep the tent poles together. Usually you'd have someone else to hold onto it, but I'm alone. I'm completely alone out there. So this is me struggling with my tent, just trying to keep it up. I've got it tied down to my sled there, just battling, battling the winds. Like I said, the stakes are high. If that blows away, I don't have a spare tent. I've got no extra weight in my sled to hold spare stuff. So it's do or die quite literally in a moment like that. Did you have a patch kit? I had a couple things repaired, a sewing kit, a patch kit, stuff like that. But if the tent itself or the tent poles ripped apart, pretty much done. And also you have to set up your tripod and film this and then press stop and go back inside. And how are you keeping these batteries juiced up? No, this is the film crew, man, that was following me around. That right of the flat out film crew. Yeah, near the ice wall. No, it was basically I had to keep the batteries warm by keeping them right against my skin. So I'd keep the batteries right against my skin. My body weight would keep it warm. And the second I wanted to take it out, I'd pull it out real quick, hit play, and then it would usually last a minute or enough to get a little clip or something like that. You couldn't just let it run, but then it would completely freeze. Even a full battery would be on zero battery by pretty quickly. Were you using solar panels to charge it? Yeah, so one crazy cool thing about Antarctica that time of year is it's 24 hours of daylight. And so the sun never sets. So even when I'm in my tent in the middle of the night, eye mask, earplugs, I kind of pretend like it's nighttime, but 24 hours of daylight. So solar panels, keeping everything charged, cameras, phone batteries, all that. And are you traveling with, are you using GPS? Yeah, so I had some waypoints, the GPS waypoints that kind of led my path to the South Pole, et cetera, but mostly actually using a compass. So I'd look at my GPS maybe once every week or something like that, just to get the bearing. The juice factor or? It was actually just easier. So I basically had like a harness on front of me that would have my GPS or my compass kind of off my chest more or less, because some of the clips we saw, the sun's out, but actually more than half of the time, the clouds would come in. So it'd be just complete and utter white out. I couldn't even see one step in front of me. And so I'd actually have to just stare down at my compass, keep it on this bearing. And so imagine you can't see anything, can't see one step in front of you. I'm pulling a 300 pound sled, 12, 13 hours per day, not listening to anything really can lead dead silence and just staring at this compass bearing all day long. So. Oh, damn dude. Are you going crazy at all? I mean, the mental side of it was by far the most interesting side of it for me. I have a lifelong endurance athlete, but really kind of an exploration into the mind is what it was for me and why I was curious about it. So spending all this time in silence, are you familiar with Vipassana meditation? Yes. So I've done a couple of these 10 day silent meditation retreats before this, which is 10 days, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, kind of dove into that piece of it. But 54 days alone in Antarctica and complete silence was next level of that for sure.