First woman to ski across Antarctica to South Pole

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It has been 25 years since longtime Jefferson County resident Shirley Metz visited Antarctica for the first time, her first of more than 100 trips.

The initial visit led her to become the first woman and one of the first Americans to ski across Antarctica to the South Pole – a two-month-long adventure that would stretch 800 miles across the driest, coldest and windiest place on earth.

Due to her father’s involvement with the military, global exploration was no foreign concept to Metz. Though raised all over Europe and the U.S., Metz spent much of her childhood and young adulthood in Hawaii.

Metz completed her undergraduate degree in marine biology and communications at the University of Hawaii, and was first introduced to Antarctica by a college professor who had worked there in the past.

Following a separation from her then-husband, Metz needed to determine what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go. After some thought, she decided to travel, to expose herself to new experiences and go somewhere with a climate a bit different than Hawaii’s – Antarctica.

“It appealed to me because it was about as far as you can go,” Metz said. “I wondered where I could go to think about what I am going to do with the rest of my life now at only age 37.”

During her first trip to Antarctica aboard a passenger vessel of naturalists and scientists, Metz became aware of the politics of Antarctica from the onboard lectures, including the proposed mineral exploration for potential oil reserves. Upon her return to the U.S., Metz began lobbying for conservation in Antarctica and against mineral exploration. Conservationists worked to declare Antarctica a “world park” off-limits to commercial exploitation.

While Metz was lobbying, a group of explorers and scientists who planned to ski across Antarctica to the South Pole invited her along on the expedition, which would potentially make her the first woman to do so.

“If I became the first woman to ski to the South Pole then there’s the [political] platform I needed,” Metz said.

To prepare, Metz trained for seven months, seven days a week, for seven hours a day. However, she said, nothing could train her for what she would have to endure.

“It would never prepare for you how cold you’ll be and how tired you’ll be, and yet you can’t stop and can’t rest,” Metz said. “You have to keep telling yourself you have to keep going.”

The 1988 expedition took two months, and required skiing eight to 15 hours a day to cover the 800 miles from the ice’s edge to the South Pole. The group arrived on Jan. 17, 1989.

Her training did help, but it was Metz’s end goal and passion for conservation that drove her determination.

“I didn’t want to fail,” Metz said. “I had a purpose, I had a goal, and skiing to the South Pole was going to be the easy part of the expedition. The difficult part would be convincing the Antarctic Treaty members not to vote for the Antarctica minerals regime.”

Through Metz’s devotion and collaboration with many other conservationists and environmentalists, in 1995 the Antarctic Treaty member nations voted a 50-year moratorium on exploration of minerals in Antarctica.

“No matter what project you embark on, know what your end point is, establish a goal and go for that goal,” Metz said.

Metz’s drive for the conservation of Antarctica has since led her down a path of global conservation efforts along with her husband, Peter Harrison, a renowned ornithologist she met during a 1990 expedition to Antarctica.

Metz and Harrison co-founded Zegrahm Expeditions, an ecotourism company based in Seattle, and they continue to travel the globe conducting research, promoting conservation and educating. Antarctica is a recurring destination as her conservation work persists on the icy continent.

“It doesn’t matter how many times I go back,” Metz said, discussing a trip planned for 2014. “Antarctica never fails to impress me.”

Currently, much of Metz’s energy is spent assisting with a management plan to control the invasion of rats in the region that are affecting the livelihoods of the native seabird populations.

Despite having explored all around the globe, Metz and Harrison have called Jefferson County home since 1990.

“This [Olympic Peninsula] is the best place on earth,” Metz said. “My husband and I, wherever we are in the world and are weary, we always say ‘we can’t wait to get home.’”

Shortly after their marriage, Metz and Harrison needed to find a mutual place to live. They discovered the Olympic Peninsula, and specifically Port Townsend, through a friend’s suggestion. They live in rural Port Hadlock.

“Since then, we’ve never turned back,” Metz said. “We always look forward to coming home.”

Though Metz works on a more global scale, she and her husband make local donations to organizations such as the Port Townsend Marine Science Center and the Northwest Maritime Center.

At this point, Metz could never imagine retiring.

“Every day we [she and Harrison] go to the office, we love what we do,” Metz said. “A boring day out in the field is better then a good day in the office.”