Paul Schurke

Paul Schurke, founder of Wintergreen Dogsledding Lodge, has guided and participated in a number of Polar and high-Arctic expeditions. He jump started his polar career in 1986 by travelling to the North Pole on the first confirmed trek to the top of the world without resupply. Deemed a “landmark in polar exploration”, this epic journey resulted in a National Geographic cover story, a television special and a best-selling book, North to the Pole written by Paul and Wil Steger.

A few years later Paul Schurke and Russian colleague Dmitry Shparo lead the Bering Bridge Expedition from Siberia to Alaska to help reconnect arctic cultures long separated by the Cold War. The US-Soviet border in the Bering Strait firmly closed and known as the “Ice Curtain” for most of this century was reopened by this expeditions. Presidents Bush (Sr.) and Gorbachev congratulate the Bering Bridge team for its role in the process.

In 1993 Paul co-led with Rick Sweitzer a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to the North Pole. Two years later he and Rick headed that way again with a team that includes Admiral Robert Peary’s great grandsons. Paul’s fifth North Pole trek helped raise a million dollars for Great Aspirations, a family-focused education charity founded by team member Doug Hall. Team members on this expedition included Corky Pererson who, at age 70, became the oldest American to reach the North Pole on foot.

Paul pioneered the first-ever eco-trek to the Russian arctic ’s premier wildlife refuge Wrangel Island. Extremely isolated and, by arctic standards, unusually lush, Wrangel is home to some of the arctic ’s greatest concentrations of musk oxen, caribou, polar fox, snow geese, snowy owl, walrus and polar bear.

In 2001 Paul led a dogsledding expedition across northwestern Greenland with the Inuit descendants of North Pole discoverers Robert Peary and Matthew Henson. The trek is documented by the National Geographic TV film "Ice Rider."

Most recently Paul teamed up with Annie Aggens and Rick Sweitzer to guide a two degree expedition to the North Pole in 2006. It was on this expedition that Paul penned the petition for ICECAAP that was signed by dozens of explorers and adventurers including the Prince of Monaco.

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