John Jancik and Ken Zerbst were hooked. From the day they walked into UW-Milwaukee Professor Donn Haglund’s Northern Lands class in Sabin Hall in 1977, the High Arctic called to them. Avid hikers and climbers, they dreamed of being the first to summit the tallest peaks in the northernmost mountain ranges on Earth.
“The UWM library had an Arctic section with some remarkable stuff,” said Zerbst, a Milwaukee native who has lived in the Denver area since 1981. “I started researching northern Greenland and was amazed at how little of it had ever been explored.”
The two friends decided to organize an expedition to Peary Land, the northern Arctic wilderness first explored by Robert Peary in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. “We were young and overly ambitious, and our first attempts failed,” Zerbst said. “But we kept at it.”
Nearly two decades later, they made history in 1996 with their Top of the World Expedition, a monthlong 10-person journey to the Roosevelt and Benedict ranges of northern Greenland, about 450 miles from the North Pole.
“Dr. Haglund told us that once you’ve been to the High Arctic, it gets in your blood,” said Jancik, also a Milwaukee native who moved to Denver after graduating. “He was right.”
This month, Jancik (’79 Geological Sciences) and Zerbst (’80 Geological Sciences) are marking the 30th anniversary of their historic trek, as well as the 25th anniversary of their follow-up expedition in 2001.
Trekking to the top of the world
Jancik and Zerbst had completed their UWM studies when they began planning their 1980 Wisconsin-Greenland Expedition. They recruited team members, set goals and raised money, but fell short of the funds needed.
“We were disappointed, but we still believed in our dream,” said Jancik, who founded ECHO Geophysical Corp. a few years later and hired Zerbst as a geophysical analyst. That partnership allowed them to advance their expedition planning while working together professionally.
In 1996, their dream came true. With funding from corporate sponsors including Osprey Pack, North Face and PowerBar, Jancik, Zerbst and eight others set out for the top of the world. Team members included Jancik’s wife, Dr. Terri Baker, who served as team physician, and renowned wilderness photojournalist Galen Rowell, who documented the adventure in a 1996 Life magazine photo essay.
They took a bush plane from Iceland to the northern coast of Greenland. “We landed on the coastal plains, between the mountains and sea,” Jancik said. “No runway, just tundra.”
An arduous itinerary
After establishing base camp, team members strapped on backpacks holding about 100 pounds of gear and embarked on a 30-day trek across the Arctic with three ambitious goals.
They wanted to be the first explorers on foot ever to reach Oodaaq Island, believed to be the northernmost point of land on Earth, the “Ultima Thule” of ancient literature and cartography. The Danish discovered the island by helicopter in 1978 when surveying the north coast of Greenland.
The itinerary also included two other firsts — exploring the untouched Moore Glacier, the largest valley glacier in the Benedict Range, and climbing Star Spangled Banner Peak, so named by Peary, who saw the mountain from the north coast of Greenland but never tried to climb it.
Navigating the peak’s snow-covered ridges and hidden crevasses required skill and stamina, but the bigger concern was planning for any contingency. “The most challenging part wasn’t the climbing and hiking,” Zerbst said. “It was the logistics and equipment coordination. Once that bush plane leaves you on the tundra, you better be prepared.”
Four weeks, hundreds of Power Bars and many blisters later, the team accomplished all their goals, with one unintended detour. They didn’t actually find Oodaaq Island, but rather an unknown island farther to the north, which had never been documented.
From the majesty of musk ox herds to the adversity of navigating frigid water on foot, the team embraced beauty and hardship. “We spent hours wading in glacial meltwater streams up to our thighs,” Jancik said. “Some team members suffered nerve damage as a result. But there is nothing like being in a wilderness where no one has ever been.”
A documentary about the expedition, “To Be at the Top of the World,” aired on Denver’s PBS station later that year. In 1998, Jancik and Zerbst were inducted as fellows of The Explorer’s Club, an elite international society dedicated to scientific exploration.
Returning for round two
Five years after realizing their dream, Jancik and Zerbst headed to the far north again in July 2001. Their nine-person Return to the Top of the World team departed with four new goals.
They wanted to be the first Americans to climb the highest point in Earth’s northernmost mountain range. That meant summiting Helvetia Tinde, or Swiss Peak, which was first climbed in 1969 by a British military expedition.
They also wanted to make the first-ever ascent of a major peak in the Roosevelt Range, a goal that tested their physical limits as they climbed ice, often at a 55-degree angle, over the course of 24 hours. At the summit, they named the mountain John Denver Peak in memory of the late singer-songwriter, who lived in Colorado for nearly three decades.
Beyond their mountaineering goals, the team wanted to reach Cape Morris Jesup, the northernmost continuous point of land on Earth, first explored by Peary in 1892. They also gathered water samples for research on potential pollution in the pristine Arctic.
Successful on all fronts, the team returned home to a hero’s welcome and news conference with Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and John Denver’s family members, who thanked the expedition members for their efforts to honor a beloved Colorado icon. Their adventures reached a wider audience with the 2002 publication of a book, “Under the Midnight Sun: The Ascent of the John Denver Peak and the Search for the Northernmost Point of Land on Earth.”
In 2004, when The Explorers Club marked the 100th anniversary of its founding with a special event in New York City, Zerbst was there to share the story of the Top of the World Expeditions alongside a lineup that included explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, National Geographic President Gilbert Grosvenor and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
Looking back, and looking ahead
Zerbst returned to the northern Arctic in 2007 as the leader of the Greenland Odyssey, a 100-person icebreaker excursion sponsored by The Explorers Club, and again the following year on a smaller follow-up expedition. He also leads hunting and fishing trips in Colorado.
Jancik has traveled all seven continents and summited the high points in 48 states and 19 countries, including the mountains Kilimanjaro and Fuji. He also serves on the board of the Rowell Fund for Tibet, which awards small grants for Tibetan environmental and humanitarian projects in memory of Galen and Barbara Rowell.
While they haven’t trekked together in many years, Jancik and Zerbst have talked about returning to the Arctic.
“We’ve asked ourselves if there’s one last expedition in us,” said Jancik, who welcomes inquiries about the Top of the World Expeditions via email at echojj@aol.com. “We have a potential opportunity to return next year, but the pieces of the logistics have yet to be worked out. Mountaineering up there is beautiful, but if you make a mistake and get hurt, you are days away from rescue. There’s no 911 in northern Greenland.”
