Like many Tuck graduates, Richard Smith Tu'11 will begin working at a financial consulting firm after he receives his MBA next year.
Unlike many Tuck graduates, he plans to take a break from work to spend 70 days dragging a sled across Antarctica.
Smith is part of a team of five men who will trek across the world's most inhospitable continent next December during the austral summer, pulling a 100-pound sled 600 miles while on skis. They hope their expedition, Polar Vision, will increase awareness of blindness and raise $700,000 for Sightsavers International, which works to end preventable blindness in the developing world, and Guide Dogs for the Blind, which provides seeing-eye dogs in the United States, Smith said.
One of the team's members, Alan Lock, lost much of his sight due to macular degeneration at age 25. Lock, a retired British naval officer and current MBA student at the Hass School of Business at the University of California, Berkley, will be the first visually impaired person to attempt the journey from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole, according to Smith.
Since he lost his vision, Lock has performed several other feats of athletic endurance, including a marathon through the Sahara Desert and a Guinness World Record trip that made him the first visually impaired person to row across the Atlantic Ocean, Smith said.
When Lock, a fellow Briton and longtime friend of Smith, sat down with him in a London cafe to ask if he wanted to be part of the venture, Smith said he agreed without hesitation.
"Antarctica has always had a special fascination for me," Smith said. "I find Alan's stories particularly inspiring, so to be able to help him create one of those stories would be a life-changing thing for me."
Smith and Lock will be joined by Haas MBA student Andrew Jensen, International Institute for Management Development MBA graduate Garrick Hileman and former British Army Captain Andrew Cooney.
Cooney previously led a polar expedition at the age of 23, making him the youngest person at the time to have reached the South Pole, Smith said.
During the summer, the temperature in Antarctica can reach as low as 16 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, combined with strong winds and treacherous storms. To prepare, Smith and his team members have been doing regular endurance training, including running marathons and climbing mountains, he said. Smith, as chair of the Tuck Triathlon Club, said he plans to participate in an Ironman competition in Zurich as part of his training.
"We'll be putting on harnesses, and we'll be pulling things like tractor tires just to simulate the sort of conditions that we will be facing," Smith said. "The traditional training is to drag a tractor tire along a beach. Hopefully, we're going to do some sort of stunt out on the Green one day dragging a tractor tire around behind me just to raise awareness of the project."
The team has also focused on raising money for the venture, Smith said. They have received support from Princess Alexandra, a member of the British royal family and a patron of Sight Savers International, and visited Buckingham Palace over the summer.
Part of the donations from sponsors will go toward the two charities, while the rest will go toward funding the trip itself, including transportation, appropriate clothing and food, according to Smith.
"We'll be trying to stack on some weight as well before we go out there, because they estimate you're burning several thousand calories a day because of the conditions and because of the exertions," Smith said. "So we'll be looking to go out there pretty well-fed, so to speak. That's one of the best bits of training: eating."
