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The man who cycled across the frozen Arctic
(CNN) — Ben Page set up the shot.
He erected the tripod, attached the camera, pressed record.
Treading carefully to ensure his footprints in the snow were out of sight -- he got on his bike and cycled past the lens, eyes fixed on the vast untouched landscape ahead.
Page, aged 22 at the time, was in Yukon territory, the Canadian Arctic, on the most grueling section of a round-the-word cycle odyssey.
He had left the city of Whitehorse, and was roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away from Tuktoyaktuk, the end of the American continent.
To get there he would have to cycle for 30 days along roads and frozen rivers, contending with snow storms, bitter winds, and temperatures as low as minus 40 Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit).
Before starting his round-the-world trip at Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost point of the Americas, Page had barely picked up a camera.
But 15 months and more than 10,000 miles later, he found himself in northern Canada, filming the footage that would form an award-winning documentary, The Frozen Road.
Despite his film receiving distinguished recognition -- including best adventure film at the New York Wild Film Festival 2018 and best director at the Bilbao Mendi Film Festival -- Page confesses an his awkward relationship with the camera.
Its contrived, he tells CNN, of his definitive shot in the snow.
It edits nicely together, because its fluid.
But theres 10 minutes either side of that shot of me walking to and fro from the tripod..
Wanderlust.
It was a sense of adventure rather than a cinematic vision that sent him on his way.
Page had dreamed of traveling the world by bicycle, and in 2014, after graduating from Durham University with a degree in geography, he decided to make it reality.
I was 22, no mortgage, no girlfriend.
I had nothing keeping me and tying me at home.
So I set off, he says.
The adventure lasted three years, covering 40,000 miles (64,000km) and five continents: the Americas, Africa, Europe and Asia.
The Arctic was its pinnacle.
For Page, it was a mental challenge as much as it was a physical one.
God knows why we set ourselves these crazy challenges, but we do, he says.
Fear of frostbite.
Page climbing in the Richardson Mountains Courtesy of Ben Page.
Page is not the first to cycle the Arctic, and nor will he be the last.
There are commercial cycling tours available from Vancouver to Tuktoyaktuk.
Cycle Canada organizes a 35 day trip, covering 1,935 miles (3,135 kilometers), for just under $7,000.
But Pages journey was different.
There were no hot showers and electricity, nor was there the luxury of rest days.
Page rode alone in late winter, camping most nights, apart from the rare occasion he found a cabin in which to hide from the relentless wind.
He carefully rationed his food -- which cost about $4 a day -- and prayed that his calculations added up, despite the snowstorms that slowed him down.
Youve just got to get up and go, Page says.
Its not exactly steely courage or bravery, theres no option, so you just do it..
Cycle Canadas Bud Jorgenson would say the opposite -- that it requires a lot of bravery.
Jorgenson has cycled the route twice himself, but only in the summer.
He says he knows of only one other, besides Page, who has dared cycle so far north in the winter months.
But he only got as far as the Yukon-British Columbia border, and the cold got to him, Jorgenson says, explaining how the man had suffered from a severe case of frostbite.
From the UK, Page had barely experienced snow, let alone so much of it.
The coldest of winters in Britain suddenly seemed ludicrously mild.
Most days were at least minus 20 degrees Celsius, and these temperatures would drop drastically in strong winds and overnight.
Page grew a mustache of icicles, and still bears light scars from the frost nip on his cheeks.
Frozen face: Page regularly had a mustache of icicles.
Courtesy of Ben Page.
The cold made the smallest of decisions critical.
Simply taking off his gloves to film or fiddle with his bike risked exposing his fingers to frostbite.
The pain when his frozen hands started to thaw was excruciating, like nothing he had experienced before.
Id catch myself just shouting the air blue, Page says.
Theres no one around and you just go a bit mad.
Then Id catch myself and be like, Ben, steady now, steady, be careful..
Alone in the Arctic.
The isolation took its toll.
Page realized there was a fine line between solitude and loneliness -- or as he calls it, a constant duality..
A craving for solitude had driven the trip, Page loves the freedom of being alone.
But then there was the flipside.
There are the moments when things start going wrong, when fear starts creeping in, he says.
Those are the lonely moments.
When you realize that you have put yourself in this position.
No one really knows where you are -- and does anyone really care?.
The lowest of the lows was when Page found himself trapped on the Peel river, 40 miles away from the next point of civilization.
He had been following the Dempster highway, a gravel road that cuts across the Arctic, but cycling alongside hefty trucks had been tough.
When Page reached the small hamlet of Fort Macpherson, locals told him of an off-road route to the next village, along a frozen river.
But on the first night the harsh and unpredictable weather took a turn for the worst and he found himself trapped on the river by a snowstorm.
The only way out was to push his bike and his belongings along the river.
Fear, hunger and loneliness set in.
Risk of frostbite was a constant hazard while filming his journey.
Courtesy of Ben Page.
Page only had enough food left for one and a half days.
At night he could hear the howls of the wolves.
They dont typically attack humans, he says, but my fear was that it was six months into winter so they were really hungry and might make different judgment calls.
Page pushed for three days.
Then, just six miles from the village, he saw two snowmobiles emerge over the horizon.
The village had dispatched their search and rescue team, knowing there was a lone British cyclist somewhere in the wilderness who hadnt been seen since the storm.
Page caught their approach on camera, he saw a body bag dragged behind one of the buggies.
The danger of his situation dawned on him -- and the irony that he had filmed it all.
I felt like this is ridiculous.
Page says, If something bad happens and I get found here, theyll look through the camera and go, Well, this is why he didnt make it, he was too busy filming himself.
But the filming gave Page a purpose beyond the personal feat.
It engaged another side of his brain.
He explains how normally he just wants to get from A to B in the fastest way possible, but with the camera he had to slow down.