SA man endures frostnip, hallucinations to win Arctic ultra-marathon

He has no feeling in some of his fingers and repeatedly wakes in a cold sweat believing he’s still on the Arctic ice, but Adelaide’s Aaron Crook is buzzing after winning one of the world’s hardest ultra-marathons.

The 41-year-old entered Canada’s 6633 Arctic Ultra in late February hoping just to finish the gruelling 620-kilometre trek in which self-sufficient competitors must cart their own supplies.

But after sleeping for 11 hours over seven days, experiencing hallucinations, and enduring painful frostnip in −42C temperatures, Crook surprised himself by coming first.

“The temperature on the first couple of days was around the minus 25 degrees mark, which was actually pretty good,” he said.

“But the last three nights, the wind picked up a lot and the temperature plummeted, and was high minus 30s to low minus 40s.

“Any time you needed to do something that required taking off your big mittens, it had to be done very quickly, because within one minute your fingers were at risk of frostbite and would instantly be numb.”

Crook had previously competed in the Marathon des Sables, a 250-kilometre race through the Sahara Desert in Morrocco.

But that is a staged race and competitors are able to switch off and rest each night, unlike the Arctic Ultra, where they must get from start to finish as quickly as possible while carrying their own supplies.

From a field of 14 international competitors, only five managed to finish.

Dinosaurs and teddy bears

Crook said he started hallucinating from the second night because of the lack of sleep.

He managed to get two to three hours of sleep at the start of the seven-day race and another two-hour sleep further in.

From there it was mostly just the occasional microsleep, when Crook would lie down on his sled for “anywhere from four to eight minutes”.

“I knew it was just my eyes playing tricks on me, but I was seeing stardust from my hands,” he said.

“I was seeing dinosaurs and teddy bears and lots of different things on the side of the road, but it was probably more amusing than disturbing, especially as I got used to the phenomenon as the race went on.”

Crook believed his minimal sleep strategy helped him win because he would get into safety checkpoints later than other competitors but sleep less and leave before them.

When the competitors did pass each other, Crook said they mostly just checked on each other’s wellbeing, particularly in the later stages when the temperature plummeted.

“The stakes were a lot higher in those lower temperatures and it was almost a little bit scary, to be honest,” he said.

“It was a strong side-wind … it was constantly hitting the right side of my face and I started to lose some of the vision in my right eye.

“I could also feel frostbite forming on my cheek and the top of my nose.

“It’s painful, like [getting] sunburn in real time.

Crook said he would hold his mitten up on the side of his face to try and protect it, but over such a long distance it was too demanding to maintain that.

“The fingers in my right hand, I still don’t have any feeling in those,” he said.

“I’m not concerned about it, as I can see there’s blood flow, so it’s really just the nerves that need to heal.

“There’s no lasting injuries, luckily.”

Touching the sign

The race across the Eagle Plains of the Yukon ends at Tuktoyaktuk, an Inuvialuit hamlet in Canada’s north-west territories.

“They have a sign there that is the point where you hit the Arctic sea and that’s always been the end of the race,” Crook said.

“You touch the sign and you’re done, and then they take you to the local school, which offers up their gymnasium for you to hang out in until the race is finished.

“They check your fingers and toes and make sure you don’t need urgent medical attention, and the recovery starts.”

He described the heating inside the gym as “glorious”.

“But I was pretty much a shell of a human,” Crook said.

Money raised for charity

There was no financial reward for finishing first, but Crook did raise $26,500 for the Sebastian Foundation, which supports youth mental health, and the Adelaide Crows Foundation, which works to engage young people in sport.

Both foundations supported the Open Parachute program that worked to improve school students’ mental health.

“$15 puts a kid through that program for 12 months, so we’ve been able to do some really good work there,” he said.

Back in Adelaide since Wednesday, Crook said he had been “very thankful” for its hot temperatures while he “thawed out”.

Crook said he had gained a “great deal of confidence” in the resilience of his body and mind from the experience, but his sleeping pattern remained disrupted.

“Pretty much every hour on the hour I’m waking up thinking I’m on the Arctic still, and I’m just in a cold sweat, so it’s been a bit of a nightmare for my wife trying to sleep with me, but I think it’s just part of the process of healing from it all,” he said.

“I promised her that there were no plans [for another ultra-marathon] in the near future.