You can't climb the pole. Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation rules, you can't bring enough food to climb the pole. (Yes, I know, it's not a rocket. It really should be called Tsiolkovsky's logistics equation--it applies to any situation where you have to bring along your power source, whether it's a rocket or not.)
Really? I must be misunderstanding something then.
The Earth-Moon L1 point is ~63 km from the Moon. Let's say me and my gear weigh 200 lbs, and the Moon's gravity acceleration is 1.62 m/s^2. 63 km * 200 lbs * 1.62 m/s^2 gives a potential energy of only 2,213 kcal. The human body is only 18-26% efficient [0] at converting food into energy, so we're probably looking at around 10-13,000 calories. Depending on what you're eating, that's 4-10 lbs of food.
Obviously, I'm ignoring the time it would take to climb that far, but in terms of energy, it seems reasonable that a human could carry enough good with them, unless I'm gravely misunderstanding something.
I'm guess that assuming "potential energy" means "the energy needed to move X pounds to Y height at Z gravity" is incorrect.
