KATHINKA GYLLENHAMMAR

“Kathinka impressed us from the first day she joined our team. Her no-fuss, no-bullshit attitude, mixed with total focus on the art of being a polar explorer, has been both refreshing and strengthening for our standards. She is the perfect teacher and companion – and she really loves to be out there!”

— Børge Ousland

Kathinka Gyllenhammar smiling with a companion in a snowy landscape

NORWEGIAN POLAR EXPLORER
• IPGA GUIDE • COACH

She's always been an outdoorsy girl. Started running sled dogs at 11. While other kids were busy with dance classes or piano lessons, she was out yelling “gee” and “haw” into the wind.

By 18, she had moved to Alaska, where she spent five years mushing dogs and working as a deckhand on commercial fishing boats. (Pro tip: nothing teaches you about character like untangling fishing lines in sideways snow.)

Eventually — her mother's words, not ours ;-) — she returned home to Norway and had two amazing daughters, all while still living a life full of adventure, just with small hiking boots tagging along in her wake.

Now they're grown up and off chasing their own dreams: the oldest, Amalie, is a musical-theatre star in the making, while the youngest, Emma, is aiming to become a polar explorer. And lucky Kathinka — she gets to come along for the ride!

2025 became the mother of all years. Most mothers might call our reasoning for that claim pure lunacy: 60 days in a tent with her youngest daughter, hauling 115kg sleds across the coldest, most windswept continent on Earth. 1,200km after the start, they became the first mother-daughter team to reach the Geographic South Pole alone and unsupported!

As if that weren't enough, they turned around and headed back — this time propelled by wind and kites.

It all ended with a bang. Unfortunately, not the bang such a beautiful and epic trip deserved: just 40km and barely two hours from the end of the journey and their pickup by plane, Kathinka's sled jammed solid in a sastrugi. With the kite pulling full force forward, it triggered a huge, catastrophic, life-threatening fall.

Emma's swift, perfectly executed handling, and stabilization of her mother — combined with ALE's excellent medical and logistical rescue — got Kathinka safely via Union Glacier to hospital in Punta Arenas. That she's back to full-force Kathinka today is amazing and wonderful.

If you want to hear their touching, groundbreaking story — and support their “this-cost-more-than-expected” expedition — follow this link.

These days, she lives on her own little farm up in Gausdal, about 40 minutes northwest of Lillehammer. There, she pretends real (read: urban) life doesn't exist. She looks after all of Ousland's equipment (big barn = lucky us) and uses every opportunity to get out there — or to make others better explorers.

Here's what she's dead set on having learned from all these years in the wild: always find the fun, celebrate the weird little wins (like dry socks!), and don't forget to laugh — even when your eyelashes are frozen together.

KATHINKA'S SECRET POLAR ADVICE :

"TRAIN YOURSELF

TO ONLY BREATHE THROUGH YOUR NOSE.

NO FOGGED-UP GOGGLES. NO WHINING.

JUST PURE POLAR BRILLIANCE"

Highlights

🇦🇶 2 x South Pole

🇦🇶 + South Pole just with Emma

🇨🇦 3 x Northwest Passage

🇬🇱 4 x Greenland - mostly Nansen rioute

🐻‍❄️ Svalbard several times

🇳🇴 Multiple crossings of Hardangervidda

🧊 Finnmarksvidda, of course!

and even

🇹🇿 Kilimanjaro!