THE PLAYER

Mr.coolPHOTOGRAPHS BY TOM FOWLKS

Steger at the Homestead, chilling in the frigid waters of Picketts Lake

Guess who’s hot in Hollywood? Will Steger. With producers suddenly primed to make environmental films, the legendary polar explorer hit L.A. with a scary pitch about global warming—and he was a smash.

BY STEPHANIE PEARSON mental documentary 11th Hour. The $700,000 project is being funded by private donations and four corporate sponsors, but the ultimate goal is to interest studio bigwigs in producing a film that, according to Isaacs, “won’t be your typical National Geographic documentary.” She’s thinking more like An Inconvenient Truth meets YouTube— an entertaining, marketable, wide-release teaching tool set against the rich backdrop of polar life. But first things first: Steger is in town to meet people, so Isaacs WILL STEGER IS LATE for an appointment, and the has turned his visit into a five-day endurance event. This morning world’s greatest living polar explorer is losing some of Steger gave a PowerPoint presentation to the student body at an his cool in the purgatory of Southern California traffic: upscale Episcopalian school in Pacific Palisades. (The takeaway: “We’re lost, dammit!” “Global warming is all you’re going to hear about for the rest of Steering his rented Dodge Stratus into a leafy side your lives.”) Tomorrow, he’ll have lunch with Howard Ruby, a real street in Santa Monica, Steger stops for a route check. estate magnate and professional photographer who’ll join the ex- His co-pilot, Elizabeth Andre, a 29-year-old former pedition in March. Miss Teenage America turned Outward Bound Now that David has the gist, she fires a question at Theo: “What are instructor, is trying to decipher a hand-drawn map, you seeing up in the Arctic?” while Theo Ikummaq, a 52-year-old Inuit hunter and “In the last five years, new animals—robins, finches—have come in, guide from the Canadian Arctic, sits quietly in the and we don’t even have names for them,”Theo says. “And older folks backseat, paying no heed whatsoever to his new Swiss aren’t comfortable to go off the land anymore....We’ve lost about Army watch as the hands creep toward two o’clock. one-third of the summer sea ice.” Theo is more interested in the hot-pink bougainvillea “Polar bears are starving to death,”Steger interjects. He fires up his outside the car window. Where he lives, it’s mostly dark laptop and clicks to a photo of an emaciated furry mass, lying dead on this time of year, and he’s loving the subtropical sun- the tundra. “This polar bear was 300 pounds when it died,”he says. shine and flora. Just a few minutes ago, as we sped down “It should have been 1,700 pounds.” Highway 1 from Malibu, he pointed to a tangled jungle Bears starve, Steger explains, because melting sea ice of palm fronds and joked, “These plants aren’t plastic?” can cut off their access to the ocean’s rich food supply. Steger and Andre get reoriented and before long David, who’d been scribbling notes, literally starts 04.07 we’re inside the Marmalade Cafe for a sit-down with waving her arms. “I want to put this image up on my Web page 113 Laurie David, a co-producer of An Inconvenient Truth site!” she says. “Let’s get this image out there! It’s shock- and wife of Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, and ing. Shocking!” Diane Isaacs, a co-producer of Killing Pablo, a forth- Business cards are exchanged, hands clasped. “I’m at a loss for coming film about drug lord Pablo Escobar. Isaacs words,”says David. “That never happens.”Everyone stands around in takes the beverage order while David, smartly dressed awkward silence until she says, “This is the beginning of a beautiful in a gray velour jacket, gets down to business. partnership, I’m sure.” “You’re the first Inuit I’ve ever met!” she tells Theo. With his close-cropped black hair, khaki pants, and polo IF IT WEREN’T FOR GLOBAL WARMING, Steger, a self-described shirt, Theo could pass for an Angeleno. The only give- “closet introvert,”might still be living “a beautiful, simple life” at the away is his baggy white anorak. Homestead, his 240-acre, 100 percent solar-, wind-, and propane- “It’s an honor to meet you, Will,”says David, turning powered compound near Ely, Minnesota. to Steger. “How has your work been going?” But that life is on hold, as is Steger’s once-firm plan to retire from In most photographs, Steger is the über-snowman, expeditioning. I visited him at the Homestead last November, prior to with his fur-lined hood and mukluks, but in real life he’s the L.A. trip. On a suspiciously balmy Minnesota afternoon, during a less intimidating. Wearing Levis and a T-shirt, the 62- tour of a half-dozen Homestead buildings where Steger designs and year-old is a fit and sinewy five foot nine. He has wavy builds equipment for his many adventures, he told me that, after brown hair that says ex-hippie; his gray-blue eyes flick- three decades of traveling over polar ice, he’s found his true calling: er between expressions of delighted animation and to make the world confront the reality of climate change. steely non-emotion. The reality, as Steger sees it, is clear. The heat is on, thanks largely Steger tells David he’s in L.A. to generate buzz about to the rapid release of carbon dioxide brought on by mankind’s burn- his upcoming Global Warming 101 expedition, a four- ing of fossil fuels. Today, CO2 levels are the highest they’ve been in at month, 1,200-mile journey across Baffin Island, the least 650,000 years, with effects that are most obvious in the polar 195,298-square-mile chunk of Canada’s Nunavut Ter- regions. Two major ice shelves, the Arctic’s Ward Hunt and Antarcti- ritory that sits between Greenland and Hudson Bay. ca’s Larsen, have broken up in the past 20 years, while Arctic sea ice The trip, which represents the official end of a has lost a third of its thickness and more than a quarter of its extent. decade-long semi-retirement for Steger, was slated Steger, who’s seen the changes unfold firsthand, has been infatuat- to begin February 18, with a crew composed of Steger, ed with climatology, meteorology, and biology since he was eight. To Andre, Theo, four other American and Inuit crew him, the situation makes it impossible not to do something. members, and four sled teams. The plan is to village- “Once you see what’s happening as a moral issue, the mass extinc- hop, shooting interviews with Inuit elders to docu- tion and other implications of what we’ve done and what’s going to ment how global warming is changing their lives. happen,”Steger says, “you lose a certain purity of peace that forces Steger and company will also spread the word, via you into action.” satellite, on GlobalWarming101.com, a clearinghouse for global- This from a man whose mind and body are in perpetual motion. warming news and information that includes a special educa- At 15, Will and his older brother, Tom, launched a powerboat tional section for schoolkids. journey from Minneapolis down—and back up—the Mississippi Isaacs, a world-class triathlete, will join the team at three points River, occasionally landing in jail and getting sprung only after along the way. En route, she’ll edit the footage into a five-minute teas- their parents assured the police that they hadn’t stolen the boat. er, which she’s already started promoting to potential partners like When Steger was 17, he and a buddy hitchhiked to Juneau, Alaska, Tree Media, the company producing Leonardo DiCaprio’s environ- where they paddled across blank, unmapped territory in the Yukon and Alaska. north traverse of Greenland, the stressed that I came back here. Arctic preservation—but Holly- Between adventures, Steger longest unsupported dogsled It was quite a relief.” wood is a different world. The worked odd jobs to pay his way expedition in history. In fact that he’s here, eating steak through Catholic high school, 1989–90, he led the Interna- A DECADE LATER, Steger is with the stars, involves a curi- college, and graduate school. In tional Trans-Antarctica Expe- hanging out in a tony Los Ange- ous convergence of events, 1970, he hitched to Colorado, dition, a 3,741-mile dogsled les neighborhood—not a place starting in 2002 with the where he was hired on the spot traverse of Antarctica, a mas- you’d expect to find him. Just breakup of the Larsen Ice Shelf, as an Outward Bound instruc- sive $2.5 million undertaking. now he’s sitting lotus style on which he’d traversed in 1989. tor. Two years later he moved “The first North Pole trip was the floor of former supermodel Such signs of climate change to California, where he spent like a sporting event,”Steger Cheryl Tiegs’s Balinese-style dovetailed with his increasing time at a Zen monastery, fol- says. “But the purpose of living room, listening to Frank irritation with the Bush admin- lowed by weeks of trekking and Antarctica was to make the Sinatra sing Christmas carols istration, which, in his view, fasting in the Sierras. In 1974 continent famous, so that world and watching Tiegs, Theo, and a showed little interest in taking a he returned to Minnesota, leaders would protect it from few other guests trim the tree serious look at global warming. where he leased a team of sled mineral exploration.” while he shoots the breeze with “The president dogs and started an outdoor- For more than seven months, actor Ed Begley Jr. was doing nothing education school at his prop- Steger and five teammates bat- Begley is one of Hollywood’s 04.07 about the environ- erty near Ely. tled windchills of minus 150 original greenies. He lives in a page 114 ment,”says Steger. “Everyone thought I was degrees and mind-numbing solar house, drives an electric “It was making me nuts,”says Steger, referring to whiteouts. After they finally car, and has a new television angry. I started to the locals, a stoic Slavic bunch succeeded, the exuberant show, Living with Ed, that de- feel negative, and I can’t live who earned a hard living out of multinational team traveled the buted on the Home & Garden with negativity.” timber and mining. “I didn’t globe, lobbying leaders to for- network in January. Finally, in 2003, Steger had a know anything about sled dogs.” bid mineral extraction in “Living with Ed is basically fateful lunch in St. Paul with He learned, and in 1982 he Antarctica. In 1991, the Proto- about what it’s like to live with fellow Minnesotan and explorer launched an 18-month, 7,200- col to the Antarctic Treaty was an environmental zealot,”Beg- Dan Buettner, who invited him mile dogsled expedition in the adopted, banning mineral and ley tells Steger. “It’s like a 21st- on an expedition to retrace the Canadian Arctic and Alaska, oil exploration on the continent century Green Acres.” frankincense route through the which inspired him to try an- for another 50 years. “The show is great,”says Middle East. That never hap- other polar trek—all the way to After a fourth major expedi- Rachelle Carson, Begley’s co- pened, but the conversation in- the North Pole. The aim was to tion—a successful traverse star and wife. “If I can go green, spired Steger—who’d been do it the hard way, taking from Russia to Ellesmere anyone can.” cooling his heels for years at the everything his eight-person Island in 1995—Steger’s luck “Even Danny DeVito solarized Homestead, reading, writing, team needed and nothing more. ran out. In 1997,just seven days his house,”Begley adds. “Every- woodworking, and mounting “The North Pole was do or into a solo attempt to haul and one wants to take action.” small-scale expeditions—to get Steger nods, but I have to back in the game. In January wonder if he’s ever heard of 2006, he created the Will Steger WILL STEGER IS AT CHERYL TIEGS’S Green Acres or Danny DeVito. Foundation, an environmental Theo, on the other hand, seems nonprofit based in Minneapolis. HOUSE, LISTENING TO ED BEGLEY JR. ready to give the environment a “Will eats, breathes, and TALK ABOUT HIS NEW ECO-THEMED rest. Earlier, he discovered a sleeps global warming,”says new gadget in Tiegs’s kitchen. Buettner. “He’s hardwired to REALITY SHOW. “ I NEVER PAID (“Is this one of those iPods that thrive with a sense of purpose. everybody’s talking about?”) His resurgence has been like MUCH ATTENTION TO HOLLYWOOD, Now he’s engrossed in his first- Lazarus rising from the grave.” HE SAYS. BUT IT S AN ENGINE FOR ever tree trimming, which is Buettner had a few contacts “ ’ one tradition Catholic mission- in Hollywood, starting with his CHANGE. PLUS, IT’S FUN.” aries didn’t force on the Inuit, longtime girlfriend, Cheryl given that there are no ever- Tiegs. Tiegs had met Steger greens where Theo grew up. years before and was excited to die,”Steger says. “I was not paddle from the North Pole to This is Steger’s third trip to introduce him to friends. coming back unless I made it.” Ellesmere Island, he aborted. L.A. in five months, and he’s “In Hollywood, we’re just In 1986, Steger’s team became “I was dropped off at the Pole finding the SoCal lifestyle talking about global warming the first to dogsled to the top of by a Russian icebreaker and got agreeable. “It’s sort of like a and thinking about it and won- the world without resupply. into horrible conditions,”Steger vacation,”he told me on the dering about it,”Tiegs tells me. “Will is an absolute genius at told me as he stoked a fire inside ride over. “I never paid atten- “We’re not particularly living it. expedition logistics,”says Paul his compact bachelor cabin, tion to Hollywood. In fact, a lot Will is our conduit to the peo- Schurke, the co-leader of that which is packed with books on of times I don’t know who I’m ple who are really going to suf- famous trip. “We left the north architecture and exploration. “I meeting. But I like the attitude, fer. What he’s doing is unique.” shore of Canada with 7,000 made one final try and, for some and it’s an engine for change. The fun at Casa Tiegs winds pounds of supplies, which Will reason, I just said, No más. I had “Plus,”he adds, “it’s fun.” down before midnight, at which tracked meticulously. We ar- to organize a rescue.” Steger has pressed flesh point Steger slips outside to a rived at the Pole with eight And that was it. before—in the eighties and chaise lounge at the edge of the pounds left.” “I left expeditioning,”Ste- nineties, he spent a lot of time swimming pool. Tiegs has given Steger parlayed his skill into ger said. “The demands of in Washington, D.C., working Steger the run of her house, other firsts: In 1988, he com- marketing and the media were with Al Gore and the Wilder- but, true to form, he prefers pleted a 1,600-mile south- too complicated. I was so ness Society on issues like sleeping under the stars.

walk the walk HIT THE BEACH OR TRAILHEAD IN AN NEV (NEIGHBORHOOD ELECTRIC VEHICLE) LIKE THE ZERO-EMIS- SIONS DYNASTY IT UTILITY. WITH A RANGE OF 30 MILES FOR LOCAL TOODLING, IT’S STREET LEGAL ON ROADS UP TO 35 MILES PER HOUR. $14,500; ITISELECTRIC.COM >PULL UP A CHAIR WITH “OUTSTANDING IN THE FIELD,” AN ALFRESCO ROAD SHOW TWO NIGHTS LATER, Steger is back on the party circuit. This time it’s a mellow gathering at proJect GreeN Diane Isaacs’s art-filled home in Brentwood. Looking refreshed the player after a three-hour hike in the Santa Monica Mountains, Ste- ger mingles with early arrivals while Diane’s husband, Greg, an athletic trainer from South Africa, shows a few digital photos of Lance Armstrong training for the New York City Marathon. Greg was his coach. Isaacs has assembled an impressive group. On hand for margaritas and homemade paella are Lew Coleman, presi- dent of DreamWorks Anima- tion; Lloyd Phillips, a producer from Sony; Beau St. Clair, Pierce Brosnan’s production partner; Richard Bangs, an ex- plorer and entrepreneur; and Bangs’s girlfriend, Laura Hub- ber, a reporter for the BBC. Just before everyone sits down to eat, Peter Guber, the producer of The Color Purple, Gorillas in the Mist, and other blockbusters, rolls in with his wife, Tara, a redhaired fireball who’s heavily into yoga and the environment. She’s toting a copy of Contact: The Yoga of Relationships, a book she co- wrote. After hearing about Ste- ger’s exploits from her friend Isaacs, she insisted that her husband meet him. Peter Guber skips the buffet and sits next to Theo and Ste- ger, who listen silently as Bangs quizzes Guber about movies. “What do you think is the most impactful film you’ve ever made?” he says. “Gorillas in the Mist made a Will Steger at his huge impact,”Guber says, home near Ely, shaking the ice in an empty Minnesota, Starbucks cup. “Movies are an January 2007 emotional issue, just like the environment. But in the end, it all comes down to the pocket- book. It’s the same with global warming—it’s market-driven.” After dinner, guests migrate Steger, who kept mum says. “My culture has been the penguins in the Arctic?” to the living room for Steger’s during dinner, starts clicking same for 8,000 years. But it’s “I don’t think they’d adapt slide show, while Guber self- through slides of receding polar changed drastically in the last very well,”Theo replies. mockingly vents about the ice, mixed with charts and 30 years. Who knows what’ll type of Hollywood environ- graphs. After 20 minutes, he happen in the next five?” ON THE EVE of New Year’s Eve, mentalist who owns both a turns the floor over to Theo, Soon, the lights come on and expedition prep is in full swing hybrid and an Aston Martin— who tells it like it is. the group sits in silence. Bangs at the Homestead. Isaacs has like he does. “I had a friend “I was born in an igloo. We tries to lighten the mood. “I flown in, and most of the team who bought a car that ran on had no electricity. We lived have a dumb question,”he says (minus Theo, who’s getting French-fry oil,”he jokes, “but nomadically and traveled by to Theo. “Why can’t we just put remarried in two weeks) is get- it always made him hungry!” dogsled to visit relatives,”he polar bears in Antarctica and ting down to brass tacks as the

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THE HOLLYWOOD SCHMOOZE PAID OFF: LAURIE DAVID AND STEGER ARE CROSS-POLLINATING THEIR

WEB SITES; A TUPAC SONG IS BEING world’s freshwater, and if its ice When it’s finally finished, CONSIDERED FOR THE MOVIE TEASER cap becomes unstable, it could around 2010, the Castle will ; be catastrophic to our society.” serve as the think tank for the AND BILLIONAIRE RICHARD BRANSON Steger and Isaacs hope to Will Steger Foundation, drawing parlay the next two expeditions small groups of activists, politi- HAS DECIDED TO COME ALONG FOR into movie deals, too. But Steger cians, and industry leaders from says the movies don’t mean around the world to cook up A TWO-WEEK LEG OF THE TRIP. much to him by themselves— new ideas about education, the they’re strictly a medium for environment, or whatever pro- launch date approaches. his 21-year-old son, Sam, are getting the word out faster. He’s found matter needs addressing. Since the Hollywood joining the trip for the last the first to admit he’s in a hurry. “Thirty years ago, I realized schmoozefest, climate change two-week leg. He can’t muscle an 800-pound that, to make an impact, you has remained big news—thanks “We haven’t even tried to go dogsled forever. have to bring together decision in part to the release of the after celebs yet,”says Isaacs. But Which may be why he’s makers,”Steger tells me as we UN’s latest report on the sub- the list keeps growing anyway: working so hard on one of his watch the sun sparkle off Pick- ject, a six-year effort that offers Mountaineer Ed Viesturs has final acts: completing the con- etts Lake from a Castle deck. a gloomy assessment of plane- committed to a two-week stint; struction of an ambitious, soar- “The setting will provide inspi- tary health. Laurie David and Cheryl Tiegs will fly up for a ing structure he calls the Castle. ration and vision. Seventy years Steger have started cross-polli- week with Howard Ruby; even Taking the money he earned from now, this will all be nating with shared Web links; Pierce Brosnan might make by licensing his name to Tar- covered by virgin forest,”he Isaacs is negotiating to use an an appearance. get—which in the late eighties says, pointing to the motley unreleased Tupac song in the “We’re definitely on good created a Will Steger line of buildings below. teaser’s soundtrack; and Lloyd footing in L.A.,”Steger tells me tents, packs, and sleeping But the Castle will endure, Phillips, the Sony producer, has later. “But I was really there to bags—Steger and a few locals Steger points out. Visionary passed word about Baffin Island make long-term relationships.” have been slowly erecting a pragmatist that he is, he hopes to a friend who passed it on to In 2008, Steger will kayak the massive stone, glass, and the Will Steger Foundation will billionaire Richard Branson. open water of the Weddell Sea. recycled-timber building. The endure as well. “I’m sort of like Branson got excited, and he and In 2009 he and the team will six-story Castle, which sits a dreamer and a doer,”he says. head to Greenland for another on a hill and dwarfs the cluster “A real dream is something you E overland dogsled trek. “Western of cabins at its base, has decks have to do.” O I S

OUTSIDEO NLINE T L For a podcast version of this Antarctica and Greenland will shooting off in every direction I W article, read by senior editor Senior editor STEPHANIE determine the fate of our civi- and roof angles that make it N

Stephanie Pearson, head to O lization,”Steger says. “Green- look like it’s sailing across PEARSON wrote about D outsideonline.com/podcast R Bhutan in June 2006. O

land holds 12 percent of the the landscape. {}G

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