Meet the man who’s about to break another world record in the North Pole

Richard Parks’ hardest climb happened long before he first summited a mountain.

In 2009, the polar athlete, then 31, was a professional rugby player at the top of his game. The Welshman had lived and breathed the sport since he was 11, and his dreams weren’t just in reach—they were at hand.

Then, an injury and a career-ending surgery changed everything.

“[The] surgeon told me I'd never play rugby again,” he recalls. “It was just devastating. It was as if I fell off the edge of a cliff.”

There was the loss of a sport he loved and a life he’d imagined, of course, but also of his identity.  “Wales is a very proud, very small country. We're good at a lot of things, but we are a very proud rugby nation,” says Parks. “I had been Richard Parks the Rugby Player. And if I wasn't that person, who was I? And what value did I have?”

Weeks of depression followed. But he found inspiration close to home—on his own body, in fact—with a tattoo inked two years earlier that honored a phrase he’d heard at his grandmother’s funeral: “The horizon is only the limit of our sight.”  He also turned to a book that he’d been reading after his surgery: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, an autobiography by the British polar explorer and mountaineer Sir Ranulph Fiennes. The thought of exceeding personal limits and tackling new adventures connected with his professional-athlete mindset and set in motion a new goal: to climb the seven highest mountains in the world.

(Arctic obsession drove explorers to seek the North Pole.)

“I was looking for a way out of that dark place, and that was it,” he says. “I didn't want something easy, because I wanted the test. I needed a cognitive challenge. I needed an emotional challenge. I needed a physical challenge.”

Now, in the first episode of National Geographic’s series Pole to Pole with Will Smith—premiering January 13 on National Geographic and streaming the next day on Disney+ and Hulu—Parks welcomes the Academy Award-winning actor to Antarctica and introduces him to some of the most adventurous experiences of his life. It’s the latest undertaking for Parks—who, in addition to his adventuring, is a filmmaker, author, and father—in a life where record-breaking feats are nothing new.

An unbreakable drive

In 2011, just two years after his injury, Parks achieved his goal and became the first person to complete all seven summits and stand on both the North and South poles in the same calendar year. The feat is known as the Explorer’s Grand Slam, and he accomplished it in less than seven months.  

Three years later, he became the first person of color to ski solo, unsupported and unassisted, to the South Pole—an approximately 746-mile, 29-day journey from Hercules Inlet. 

It’s one of four Guinness World records he’s been awarded.  The others are for the greatest aggregate distance skied solo and unsupported in Antarctica; completing the most solo, unsupported journeys in Antarctica; and the fastest completion of the Explorer’s Grand Slam by a male. He’s equally proud that every expedition he has done includes a legacy component, whether working with university students to develop equipment or raising funds for charities.

(The untold story of the boldest polar expedition of modern times.)

“It was a type of therapy, and it continues to be a type of therapy,” says Parks of his expeditions. “I needed to gain control back in my life. And I found that in these expeditions. What started as a very personal journey for me evolved into this chapter of my life, which I love.”

Parks credits his parents—British-Jamaican mother, Lee, and Welsh dad, Derek—for the drive he found within himself to push on after his surgery. While neither were athletes, he says witnessing his parents step outside their comfort zones while he was growing up in Newport, Wales impacted him greatly.

“I saw them be adventurous, but it wasn't on a mountain or in Antarctica,” he says. “It was through life and work. And I'm incredibly grateful for that perspective and that lesson that they gave me. I've never been afraid of [working hard].”

Parks’ quest with Smith

In Pole to Pole, Parks meets Smith at the bottom of the planet. There, in the vast, desolate snow desert, pulling a sled loaded with about 44 pounds of gear amid temperatures that plummet to minus 22°F, altitudes that climb to 9,843 feet, and unpredictable weather patterns, Parks offers a lesson in exactly how tough Mother Nature can be.

Mother Nature didn’t care that Parks had an international movie star at his side and a film crew at the ready. The location dictates what can happen, he says—not the director.  

“Every time we had a weather window, whether it's in the middle of the night—because it's 24-hour daylight—we had to just jump on it,” he says. “And we pretty much did everything in one take.”

Antarctica holds most of the world’s fresh water, but it’s also the world’s largest desert; there is less rainfall there than in the Sahara. That means that snow can feel like sand, and carrying a fully loaded sled can feel like pulling someone in a heavy tub through mud flats. Parks says Smith was determined to have an authentic experience, which included spending almost two weeks on the ice and climbing a 300-foot ice wall in the middle of a “biblical” windstorm.

“Everything we threw at Will, he just grew,” says Parks. “He recognized that self-growth in the moment, and he wanted more. He is like a microcosm of what adventure means to me and what adventure can mean to people.”

Smith is now one of very few people to have ever arrived at the South Pole on skis. “It's a beautiful thing to witness somebody's growth, and to witness somebody's horizon moving,” says Parks.

A forthcoming journey

Parks’s next mission will be equally challenging. In 2027, he’ll re-trace Matthew Henson’s 1909 journey to discover the North Pole. The route from Ellesmere Island to the North Pole will be part of the forthcoming documentary Whiteout. Much like in Pole to Pole, his focus isn’t just on the destination, but also on the people he can take with him on the journey.

“It’s really important that we allow people to see themselves in [adventure],” says Parks, noting that it’s the best way for people to care about places they may never get to touch themselves. He says following his curiosity has led to unimagined opportunities for connection and reflection.

“I'd always perceived the end of my rugby career as the end of me. At the time, it was the worst period of my life, and I would never wish that on anyone. But it's also probably one of the best things to have ever happened to me,” says Parks.

“I often say that mountains saved my life. And I really, really mean that.”