No Such Thing as Failure

by David Hempleman-Adams

  I’d initially intended to make my trip as pure as possible by navigating just using a sextant and the sun (no stars being visible during permanent daylight later in the trip), but the Canadian authorities made clear this was not an option and I would need to carry with me an Argos, what passed for the time as a lightweight satellite navigation system and would track my position. I collected this in Montreal having been flown there by one of my sponsors, the now-defunct Canadian Pacific Airlines, in first class seats at the end of January 1983. A stretch limousine then took us to one of the best hotels in the city and we hung around there for five days, picking up some last bits of clothing and food, as well as the rifle I would have to carry with me, and nicking their nice soft toilet rolls. Even then I knew it would be a while before I saw any comfort like that again.

  From there we flew to Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island. This was only a brief stopover, but getting out of the plane the bitingly cold wind gave me the first indication of what I would be facing. Maybe it wasn’t actually colder than the deep freezes I had spent time sitting inside back in England, a vain attempt to acclimatize myself, but it certainly felt so. From there it was on to Resolute, well inside the Arctic Circle and the last place approaching a town before the Pole. Back then it had about a thousand inhabitants, mostly civil servants, and we stayed in a small shack for two weeks further acclimatising to the freezing cold and checking my equipment. An attempt to celebrate our getting this far at least was stymied when we discovered that the bottles of champagne we’d brought with us had all frozen and shattered, a mistake I have never repeated. Apart from being much heavier than brandy I’ve actually come to consider carrying the drink rather unlucky and to tempt fate. We finally took a small plane to Eureka on Ellesmere Island, where just ten people inhabit a weather station by a long landing strip.

  We set up home in a small hut 2 miles away. It was –40°C outside, below freezing within. Steve and I were more used to these conditions, but our radio man Giorgio, or ‘Mac’ as we called him, took every opportunity to escape to the weather station for a bit of warmth. We were joined by a BBC crew who had been sent to film my departure, and the days that followed were full of mordant humour and practical jokes, an indication of their sophistication being the one where we removed the fur cover from a lavatory seat causing Mac to freeze solid to it the moment he sat down. Against this, all the time I kept thinking that I was about to head off alone into what for me was entirely the unknown.

  I very nearly never left Eureka. I woke up in our hut one morning and shouted out to Steve that it was his turn to get the tea ready. There was no answer from the next room so I attempted to climb out of my top bunk, but found I had no strength and slithered to the floor. I felt drugged. I crawled into Steve’s room and found him lying on the ground, his face blue and seemingly lifeless. I could smell gas. Barely able to move I managed to radio the weather station then shuffle outside on my knees carrying Steve like a baby, flinging us both down on the snow where we gasped for air. The medic at the weather station deduced we had been poisoned by carbon monoxide from the stove, and although I recovered quickly Steve had to be pumped full of oxygen and took two days to be on his feet again. I felt very guilty at almost leaving his young wife a widow, but Steve just didn’t want to be the one person delaying my trip.

  Finally, in the first week of March, we took a Twin Otter light aircraft to Cape Columbia for my departure. This was probably the bumpiest landing of my life, and I was convinced the engines would stall as the pilot circled to find a suitably large area of flat ice to get down on. I dawdled on the ice for half an hour with the BBC crew filming me, but I expect everyone knew I was very scared. Eventually after bear hugs all round they got back on the plane and I watched it disappear into the distance back to Eureka. The snowy sunset scene as I looked around me was beautiful, but it was desperately cold and I had never been anywhere so remote in my life. I felt as if nothing here might have changed for thousands of years, that the rest of the world could end and I would know nothing about it. Normally I crave peace and solitude, but here it frightened me. I was the most lonely man on the planet. I suddenly felt as if I had bitten off more than I could chew. It was too late to go anywhere that day, so I erected my tent and prepared myself for my first night alone in the High Arctic.

  Working in the extreme cold it took me three hours the next morning to have breakfast and load up. My sledge was only a little over 100lbs, but dragging it as I climbed up and over ridges and rubble almost killed me. There was no respite from it, and by the time I put up my tent that evening I had found only a few yards of flat ice. I’d hoped to average 11 miles a day, but that night I discovered I had travelled a single mile. I realised almost at once how naïve I had been and how totally unprepared I was for the conditions. After three days I had barely covered even 5 miles. Each day brought a new salutary lesson, such as when I cooked my boil-in-a-bag supper using first year ice from which the salt had not yet filtered through. I spat out the first mouthful, the meal ruined as mixed with pure salt water.

  After a week I was doing no better. That night I was woken by a sudden shaking as if in an earthquake, with a terrifying noise of first groaning now squealing, and I could hear running water getting louder so clearly closer to me. I got dressed and packed most of my things into my rucksack and onto my sledge in case I had to move quickly, then huddled in a corner of my tent in the dark swaddled in my sleeping bag. I was convinced I was going to die, swallowed up by the frozen ocean. It seemed like a very long night but eventually I must have slept, and when I woke in the morning I scrabbled outside to see what had happened. I had been camped on a flat pan of ice maybe half a mile in circumference, but during the night a pressure ridge had been formed by two plates of ice crashing together. This was no more than 50 yards away, and had it been under me I couldn’t have survived. I am not quite sure which was worse, the hours of sheer terror in the dark when I knew something terrible was happening but didn’t know exactly what, or actually seeing for certain how close I had come to death. Perhaps it is a cross somewhere between Russian roulette and a lottery, the way you know the incredible forces in the ice can at any time just smash you to pieces. You can’t have it in the forefront of your mind all the time, but the knowledge is always there somewhere in the background.

  After ten days I had crept up to managing 5 miles on average and was due for my first resupply. This brought not only essentials such as fuel and food but also much needed luxuries like chocolate chip cookies and even a newspaper, but I was very worried as this should have taken place much further north. We only had enough money for three drops, and I was seriously doubting my chance of reaching the Pole, having already surrendered any hope of beating the record in doing so. Everything was proving far harder than I had expected, not least going to sleep aching all over and knowing I had it all to do again the next day. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

  Then on day seventeen my Plessey radio died in the extreme cold. This was serious, since I had no way of contacting Eureka save for my Argos, which only had one emergency button to be used should I need to abort. To make matters worse, it had been agreed that if Eureka heard nothing from me for 48 hours they would come and pick me up. Sure enough, the next night a Twin Otter appeared and landed nearby, diverted from supplying Operation Caesar, a Canadian military exercise. The pilot had no spare radio, so decided to take me to the forward missile warning base at Alert on the Lincoln Sea, to which Steve and Mac flew out bringing a replacement. This place was so top secret then, back in the days of the Cold War, that I was even escorted to the lavatory by an armed guard. Since we could not diagnose the radio problem immediately—it turned out to be moisture that had entered the mouthpiece, and was counteracted by using a plastic bag—it seemed sensible that I should return to Eureka and try to do so there, before being delivered back to the exact place from where I had stopped. I was criticized for this at the time by one person, which hurt like hell and did upset me, but today I certa
inly think it was a valid criticism. You have to take such things on the chin, particularly from people who genuinely know what they are talking about, and I think I’ve generally been very lucky in how what I’ve done has been viewed by my peers.

  Once I was back walking on the ice again things did become slightly easier, with fewer ridges and slightly less rubble, and wider pans of flatter ice between them. On the odd day I actually managed to walk the 10 miles I’d needed to achieve from the start, but after three weeks I just did not see how I was ever going to get there. I was certainly beginning to behave strangely, talking to myself, which with no one else for many hundreds of miles perhaps anyone would start to do from the loneliness, but I now think I was experiencing something more extreme. Maybe what happened after thirty-two days walking was for the best, as it may have saved me from possible insanity.

  I was crossing the 85th Parallel, still many miles from the Pole, and struggling up a pressure ridge piled with blocks of rubble, straining to drag my sledge after me. I reached the top, some 15 feet above the flat ice around, when it just seemed to collapse. First one block started to move, then another, I lost my footing and fell. I hit the ground hard, on my side, and immediately doubled up in pain, completely winded. I crouched there for a few minutes, hoping it was no more than that, but I was in excruciating pain. It got no better, if anything worse, and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere soon, so fighting against the agony put up my tent, a task that took me two hours compared to my normal practised ten minutes. Bizarrely, perhaps remembering how once I’d been told that the most revealing pictures can be those you least want to take, I set up my camera and snapped myself sitting hunched forward on my sledge. I looked and felt utterly dejected, in fact wondering if this would be the last picture anyone ever saw of me alive.

  After three hours I knew I was finished and radioed Eureka to say I needed to be evacuated, was seriously injured. I was lying in a foetal position, painkillers taking no effect, as Steve relayed questions from a doctor down in Resolute. Was I coughing up blood, perhaps I had punctured a lung? Anything seemed both possible and likely. The nearest plane at Resolute was grounded by a storm for the next two days, and I would just have to hang on in there, but then the storm moved up to Eureka where they would need to refuel, delaying things still further, and carried on up to me. I was running out of food and fuel, terrified that my batteries would die and finding me would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. For four days the wind howled around me, and I was torn between desperately wishing they would set out and risk being unable to land, but also anxious about the £10,000 bill this might land me with, if I was ever in a position to receive it. After another storm hit Eureka it was eventually ten days before Steve managed to convince Operation Caesar to lend their plane, which was then only 60 miles away on their floating ice station. I was a wreck, still in immense pain and having lost a lot of weight, but it was a deeply emotional moment when I finally crawled out of my tent to see the Twin Otter land nearby. I was going to live.

  I really didn’t understand why the pilot was congratulating me and shaking my hand. I might be alive, but I felt a total failure. ‘You’ve spent forty-two days out here on your own and lived,’ he said. ‘That’s success to me.’ Maybe, I thought, and for the first time my mood lifted slightly. ‘I’ll be back,’ I remember muttering as we took off. I was flown up to Operation Caesar, then back down to Resolute, where a doctor diagnosed two cracked ribs, then I had to start taking calls from the press who wanted to know what it felt like to have failed so badly. ‘At least I’m a living failure,’ I repeated, as I had told myself before. It was good just to be warm again at last.

  We flew back to London, a stark indication of our changed status being that we were sent to the end of the queue for stand-by economy tickets on the half-empty plane. I mulled many things over on the flight, but had learned some harsh home truths. I had been utterly foolhardy and simply hadn’t had the right equipment or the polar experience to look after myself on the ice. With climbing I had built up knowledge and my skills slowly from the age of thirteen, to the point where I was proficient, but by going straight out to the North Pole I proved how completely incompetent I was there. It was a lesson in my pure naïvety. It was a warm May evening when we landed back at Stansted and it was wonderful to see Claire again, whose support I vitally needed over the next few days I vowed then that despite the living hell I’d experienced I would return to the Arctic, and one day make it to the North Pole.

  I was both physically and mentally drained when I got home. I knew I’d made mistakes, but the more I thought about it I came to the conclusion that many of them could never have been avoided, were simply due to the lack of experience anyone in my position must inevitably have. I’d already worked out many ways I could improve my equipment, but in the end I’d finally been beaten by the sort of injury that can happen at any time. I knew I’d have to get back on that horse sooner rather than later, but equally I wouldn’t be able to face failing in a second attempt on the Geographical Pole too soon.

  An alternative journey would be to the Magnetic North Pole, where all points on the compass converge. This moves over time, due to things like solar flares and fluctuations deep in the earth’s core, and in theory should be easier to achieve as it would be a shorter walk. To balance that, if I were to do it solo and entirely unsupported, it would be a genuine first. I’d be pulling a much heavier sledge, so physically it would be very tough, and the psychological pressures would also be great as I’d have nothing I could look forward to other than reaching my final goal. I went and discussed it over a few pints with my old PE teacher Mansel James, and he was very canny to suggest that what I was contemplating might actually prove tougher than another crack at the Geographical Pole. That made my mind up for me. I was going for the Magnetic North Pole.

  Since Steve Vincent had now settled down with Cathy and had a good job in the City, I asked John Burgess, a bluff Yorkshireman, to come out as my base camp operator. He taught at Taunton Technical College, but also made rucksacks on the side, which was how I met him when he supplied me with one for my journey to the Pole. He leapt at the chance of an Arctic trip, and we set off in February 1984, a year more or less after I had left for the Pole the year before. Claire was still studying for her degree and was relatively happy to let me go, secure in the knowledge that I’d convinced her this was a far safer trip. This time I’d kept quiet in advance about what I was planning to do, and we flew out of Stansted economy class with less than 250lbs of equipment compared to eight times that the year before. Two days later, we were in Resolute.

  Unlike the two months it had taken previously this time I was ready to leave in five days, having ensured every piece of my equipment from my rifle to my Argos satellite was double-checked, the latter being vital to prove I’d reached the Magnetic Pole. I was seen off from Resolute Bay by a Mountie, inappropriately dressed at –40°C in the traditional costume of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and then I was walking off across the iced-over beach and onto the frozen ocean. I felt confident, in that I was as well-prepared as I could possibly be, and knew I would not be facing the pressure ridges and tons of ice rubble of the year before, but I was also anxious about whether my navigation skills would be up to scratch, as this would be far more complicated than simply heading in a straight line. If so, I’d be the first man ever to do this solo and unsupported, as even if Inuits had hunted in the area they would undoubtedly have been in groups.

  My mileage over the first few days was not too bad, and although at nearly 200lbs my sledge was roughly double the weight of the year before I seemed to be coping well with this hard work. I knew I had about 280 miles to cover entirely by myself, and as well as skirting the coast of some islands and traversing others I would also have to cross stretches of frozen ocean, where there were bound to be polynyas. These are areas of open water surrounded by thick ice, and since they attract seals coming up to breathe they are also the natural haunt of polar b
ears who come there to feed. On my sixth night I’d been rounding a headland at the tip of Cornwallis Island, preparing to head across a bay, when fast-moving clouds confirmed an expected approaching storm and I pitched camp and battened down the hatches hoping to sleep through it.

  I woke about 2.00 a.m. to the sound of howling wind outside, but I knew it wasn’t that which had disturbed me. I could distinctly hear the noise of pawing and scratching, and when I sat bolt upright I could clearly see the shape of a nose pressing through the tent’s flysheet. I grabbed my rifle and started to scream as loudly as I could, then fired off a shot into the ground. I hoped to God this would scare the bear off, but none of it was entirely voluntary as I was genuinely terrified. The noise of scratching immediately ceased, and it seemed as if the bear might have run off. I swallowed hard and plucked up the courage to crawl out of my tent, even though I knew I might see nothing as the white-out conditions of the storm were smothering the twenty-four hour sunlight.

  Far from having run away though the bear was still there, standing some 25 yards away and staring straight at me. I fired another warning shot into the ice and the bear seemed undecided as to what it should do, beginning to turn away and starting to move out of my vision, before swivelling round and plodding methodically towards me, looming into my clear vision, its pace then turning into a canter. I knew it was attacking me and I had to defend myself in the only way I could. I’d been warned what I must do in such an eventuality, in order to get the best possible shot: breathe slowly, exhale when squeezing the trigger, and aim for the body rather than head as a bullet could easily ricochet off a bear’s dense skull. At this point all the advice I’d been given went straight out of the window. I started screaming ‘you bastard’, and let fly a spray of bullets. I was hardly aiming, but I hit the bear about 20 yards away. He stopped for a moment then kept coming, swaying slightly before crashing to the ground, and I pumped two more bullets into him.