The Fourth and Final Desert

On November 22, the Canadian adventurer Len Stanmore began an endurance footrace called The Last Desert—a wild, seven-day, six-stage haul across part of Antarctica. It’s the kind of thing that can devastate even a fit 24-year-old, which is what makes Stanmore’s bid all the more impressive: He’s a 60-year-old retiree. The story of Stanmore’s transformation into a global explorer is an unlikely one. Before he started climbing mountains, he didn’t even particularly like the outdoors, although he was no stranger to physical exertion. One of his first jobs in his native Toronto was pumping gas for $2 an hour. When Stanmore was in his mid-twenties, he figured he’d never get anywhere if he didn’t go into business for himself, so he borrowed $5,000 from his parents and started his own telecom firm. In the beginning, the firm was just Stanmore and a...