Is our obsession with world firsts getting out of control?

Did you hear about the Hungarian man who became the “highest scuba diver in history” by swimming in a crater at the summit of a 21,000-foot Chilean volcano? Or perhaps of the New Yorker who set a world record for climbing a 9,000-foot Californian mountain entirely on stilts? Maybe not, but chances are you’ve read about a “world first” of some sort recently – probably involving an ocean, desert, mountain, or Antarctica.

We’re more adventurous than ever, it would seem – and in the first third of 2018 alone, some eye-catching records have hit the headlines. A Polish yacht and its crew became the first to circumnavigate Antarctica (south of the 60th parallel) – meanwhile the first all-female team crossed the same continent (using only muscle power) – and in the USA a man in Montana set a new world record for skiing the furthest distance (uphill in 24 hours).

All impressive feats of endurance in their own right, and this is certainly not intended as vitriol, but I’ve added in the parentheses to highlight a point. Are we actually more adventurous than ever? Or on a planet that has been explored (and exploited) to within an inch of its bursting point, are we simply becoming craftier at making the same old expeditions appear unique? It all seems somewhat contrived, doesn’t it?

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These “subtle qualifiers” (which I first found coined by Brad Weiners in Outside Magazine) give an expedition marketable value, while immediately piquing the interest of sponsors, publishers and, dare I say it, journalists, desperate to write about something new. This is now a huge industry, and those within it need annual turnover – not simply records that reach a finite point, but mountains, rivers and landmasses that can be “conquered” over and over again. Surely it won’t be too long before a team of sailors try and circumnavigate Antarctica south of the 61st parallel.

Granted, I know I’m sounding like a true curmudgeon, but I am, I’m afraid, a naturally cynical hack. And in recent years I’ve become increasingly incensed by words like supported, unsupported, assisted, unassisted, youngest, oldest, with oxygen, without oxygen – all attached to adventures of some kind in order to justify their worth. Whatever happened to just doing something because it’s fun and challenging in its own right? It’s a bit like a runner who, heaven forbid, would enter a marathon and do it entirely for their own personal satisfaction and not for charity.

Now, as a matter of full disclosure, I know this industry slightly better than I may have let on to this point. Because in 2016 when I sailed and cycled 15,000 miles from China to London across the Pacific, USA, Atlantic and Europe, I too enquired about setting a “world first”. It turned out that no one (who could be bothered to check) had ever been on that very specific journey, in that exact way, so it was up for grabs, for a price. But when I gave it some thought, it all felt horridly artificial – as though I was missing the point of the adventure entirely.

I can’t help but think that this obsession of finding rivers, deserts and mountain faces on which to set a “world first” stinks of the same brand of neo-colonialism that funded the Victorian age of exploration. Hiram Bingham, for example, didn’t discover Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes, but rediscovered a place that many local people knew of and lived close to. He was just the first western explorer to bring it to widespread global attention and even had the gumption to poetically rewrite his account of finding the citadel in order to make his “discovery” sound more exciting, to appease his publishers and sponsors. What we’re seeing now certainly isn’t just a modern fixation – “explorers” have never been short on hyperbole.

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Over a century on, I am not for one moment suggesting I’m exempt – on the contrary, I’m as guilty as the people I’m taking a pop at in this article. The saturated world of modern travel writing is that in a nutshell; a clamber to find and do something new before someone else does it. The world is growing smaller every day and we’re running out of ideas. But there’s a significant difference – just because something hasn’t been done before, doesn’t always make it relevant. Our fascination with being “first” is clouding our appreciation of that distinction.

There are some genuinely amazing new records being set, by people who are pushing themselves to extremes beyond comprehension. But while some of these expeditions genuinely set out to discover something new and remarkable, many of these jollies have questionable environmental and cultural objectives shoehorned onto them.

By all means, walk up Mount Kilimanjaro, unsupported, backwards and blindfolded, while doing keep-ups with a golf ball, but do it for your own sense of achievement, not as some means of duping the public into believing you’re doing something new.

So is this really the age of the neo-Shackleton? I’m not convinced – it’s just easier and cheaper than ever to be an explorer these days. All you need is a bike, trainers or canoe, and a knack for rehashing pre-existing records on previously un-westernised rivers, mountains or deserts. And there’s nothing remotely new about that – we’ve been up to these tricks for centuries. Now, where did I put that golf ball?