Last month, the internet lit up with incredible news—Yosemite National Park’s iconic Half Dome had been summited by a 93-year-old man named Everett Kalin from the East Bay.
But Los Gatos is home to its own nonagenarian adventurer, Ed Stahl, who was recently awarded the Guinness World Record for the Oldest Person to Visit the North Pole.
“It’s in an ocean,” Stahl said, relating the delicate dance the icebreaker captain had to perform to help him achieve the feat. “The ice moves around in the ocean, and so you can’t very well say you’re over the North Pole too often. They try to put the boat in the ice so it’ll carry it over the North Pole as it moves.”
Stahl has been fascinated by polar voyages since he was young.
After all, he was born in 1931. Less than a decade had passed since Ernest Shackleton’s fateful final expedition to chilly climes, ending the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
It had only been five years since the first scientifically-proven voyage to the North Pole was recorded by Roald Amundsen in the airship Norge.
It would be another 17 years until it can be categorically said men set foot at the site of the actual northern pole, as earlier claims by Frederick Cook, Robert Peary and others have come into question.
As a youth, Stahl was fascinated by the exploits of Shackleton.
“I could read his biography again, and again—and again,” he said. “If you haven’t read it you oughta.”
Stahl would end up making five Antarctic journeys over the decades.
He relished the sublime nature of striking out along Earth’s curvature via lines that had never before been traced by people.
“I realized what the explorers go through when they get into that area of just getting in a place where no other human being has ever been,” he said. “I just can’t really explain it.”
When you go with a group, you spread out so that everyone can have that same feeling, he added.
“Those were in the days when I managed to get into some of the first deals to the Antarctic,” he said, recalling how he built his business, Travel Advisors of Los Gatos at 56 N. Santa Cruz Ave, which was founded in 1961.
In 2014, Stahl joined the first non-icebreaker passenger ship to cruise through the Northwest Passage.
But one major goal still eluded him—a trip to the place on the globe that children are told Santa Claus makes his home.
So, when he learned Ponant’s liquefied natural gas-powered luxury liner Le Commandant-Charcot was planning to undertake the voyage, he couldn’t help but want to make the trip.
In the summer of 2022, after securing a letter from his doctor confirming his clean bill of health, Stahl set out with his longtime partner MarLyn Rasmussen to meet up with the Étienne Garcia-piloted vessel.
They flew from Paris to Spitsbergen, Norway, where their foray into Arctic waters began.
“It was a brand-new ship, a beautiful ship,” he said of the watercraft which boasts 123 suites, hot tubs, staterooms and private terraces. “That’s what we rode up on.”
Stahl was particularly impressed by the wildlife.
“We had all kind of reindeer; and we had polar bears—and you name it,” he said. “The captain was trying to get out of the way and the polar bears would come up…they were teaching their young how to feed.”
But Stahl says he wasn’t afraid of the powerful creatures.
“We had plenty of people watching out for us,” he said. “The crew put out a group around the boat.”
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Arctic ice has declined by more than two million square kilometers since 1979, meaning it’s now much less risky for tours to venture into ultra-frigid places.
When asked for his reflections on this, Stahl said just because the climate is changing that doesn’t mean there still aren’t risks—as sea ice continues to expand and contract.
“That is a very interesting thing,” he said. “It kind of comes and it goes.”
On Aug. 26, 2022, Captain Garcia managed to maneuver them directly over the North Pole.
“The captain was the most happy person that I’ve ever seen in my life,” Stahl said, adding that’s when they broke out the hors d’oeuvres. “We had a champagne party that wouldn’t quit.”
On the way home, Stahl and Rasmussen stopped by Iceland, where they saw volcanos and visited a blue grotto, which, according to legend, offers Fountain-of-Youth benefits.
‘THey need all kinds of information to prove that you are the oldest person.’
-Ed Stahl
“If you take a swim in it you increase your life expectancy by at least 20 years,” he said. “I went in very quickly once.”
When Stahl returned home, he embarked on a new challenge—navigating the paperwork involved in proving a Guinness World Record.
“That’s a pain in the butt,” he said of the hoops he had to jump through, including sharing witness statements and his birth certificate, as well as photo and video evidence. “They need all kinds of information about it to prove that you are the oldest person. And then they finally come to the conclusion that, yes, you are.”
His status as the oldest person to visit the North Pole was confirmed on Sept. 6, 2022 by the company’s Records Management Team.
“Dear Edward Stahl,” the letter began, “We are thrilled to inform you that your application for Oldest Person to Visit the North Pole has been successful and you are now the Guinness World Records Title Holder! …Congratulations, you are Officially Amazing!”
After his record-breaking excursion, Stahl says he’s enjoyed settling back into “very lovely” Los Gatos life.
And he says he isn’t ruling out a mission to outer space.
