We will also soon be crossing the Lomonosov Ridge, which rises almost 4,000 feet from the 9,000 foot depth of the Canada Abyssal Plane that has stretched all the way here from the coasts of Canada and Alaska, before the seabed then plummets into the trough of the Pole Abyssal Plane almost directly beneath the Pole and the deepest part of the Ocean at 15,000 feet. The Lomonosov Ridge is the strongest influence on the water movements in the Ocean, and the colossal currents may mean we have to fight against drifting back 2 or more miles overnight from the direction in which we need to go. To compensate we increase the length of our walking day and manage a new record of just over 12 miles even with our heavy sledges, but it is hot work and we vent off all the zips on our jackets and trousers even though it is –49°C with the wind-chill. It is the first day my goggles ice-down due to the warmth, but because he walks without his face mask Rune catches some frostbite on his left earlobe.
Day forty-three is a huge relief, the wind having dropped so it at least seems warmer and there is no back-drift. We equalize the length of our sessions rather than starting with a longer one, making them an hour and twenty minutes each, which seems more manageable. Also we decide to stop for a more substantial lunch than just chocolate and hot juice, and find that gives us more energy through to the end of the day. We are thrilled to manage our best mileage yet again of 13 miles, but concerned still to be seeing the tracks of the Norwegian Express as they should be at the Pole already. On the radio that evening John tells us they have set the emergency code on their Argos beacon. Since they have no radio no one knows exactly why, but there is concern that reports in the Norwegian newspapers, from a pilot that recently flew over the Pole, say they have been stopped by a lead 10 miles wide and 2 miles across. If this is true, our chances of reaching the Pole may have gone, as such a stretch of open water will probably never freeze over now the sun is up twenty-four hours a day.
My back is hurting me desperately, not to mention my thighs and toes, and the huge amount of ibuprofen I am taking not only upsets my stomach and prevents me eating properly but is also making me physically sick, so I leave frequent pools of freezing vomit in my trail. We have to start notching up regular large distances now though, so I know I must do whatever it takes to get through this. The weather is good however, but the warmth makes me sweat and it is a constant balancing act between having my goggles soon ice over from my perspiration, or going without them and risking frostbite and snow blindness. I find my mind wandering, not just to the perhaps natural thought of whether I will get an upgrade to business class for my flight home, but to the more prosaic question of how my football team Swindon Town are faring. Rune frequently upbraids me for the general coarseness of my language, which genuinely seems to upset him. He is far more religious than me, although I admit I am praying for good weather and terrain, and he feels my constant swearing is disrespectful towards the awesome power of the natural world around us. Even if he can’t deny he has adopted many of my English expletives he says that doesn’t mean he considers me a good influence, and I vow to try a little harder.
Towards the end of the day we spot a tent about a mile away which we are certain must be that of the Norwegian Express. Since we know they are safe due to their Argos message, perhaps superstitiously we avoid them and press on as fast as we can. Rune is ruminating on how many days it might take us to reach the Pole from here, saying he will remove the skins from his skis to reduce friction and that now is not the time to try and conserve our health or energy, but I have always felt any Polar expedition is a marathon and not a sprint. We should set our sights on crossing the 88th Parallel tomorrow, and then concentrate on the final 120 miles, which Rune still feels we might achieve in ten days. The next night, despite terrible rubble most of the way, the increase in the length of our walking day to nine and a half hours sees us shoot past the Parallel and notch up 12 miles, and time is now of the essence as I am desperately worried about whether we can beat the open water that will inevitably come with the thaw. We hear on the radio that the members of the Norwegian Express have ultimately been defeated by all their skis disintegrating under the demands of travelling up to eighteen hours a day.
On Sunday 19 April, day forty-six, we take a break and stay in bed until 10.00 a.m., then spend the rest of the day drying out our clothes, repairing equipment and chatting. It seems warmer in the tent, but the thermometer says otherwise, still –34°C outside, so perhaps we are just getting fully acclimatized. Inevitably our conversation turns to what the other would do if one of us was injured and could not continue. From the start Rune had minimized the news he was receiving from home so any bad reports wouldn’t make him turn back, but I had always said that I would go back if Amelia’s condition had proved dangerous. In that event Rune would probably have come with me, but we feel near enough now to say that if either of us was injured the other would drag him to the Pole on his sledge. I tell Rune that if I needed a medical evacuation I wouldn’t let him on the plane, would break his fingers in the door if necessary. If nothing else could be done I believe that we are so far in that the other should continue alone, but Rune is typically modest, saying that this is my Grand Slam and it would be pointless him going on without me. That night we speak on the radio to a pilot who says the ice conditions to the Pole look good, but we both know what might appear fine from the air can be a jumbled mess at ground level. We’ll believe it when we see it.
We find that we’ve drifted back a mile and a half during our rest day, but we needed it, the last one we will have before this final dash to the Pole. The terrain is dreadful all throughout the day with rubble and partially frozen leads, and we are also floating eastwards unusually quickly, all of which I am sure are due to the effects of the Lomonosov Ridge. For me it is a day of injuries: firstly I experience a heavy nosebleed for the first time in years, which makes me worry about the high blood pressure I was warned about before we set out, then my sledge once again rams into the small of my back making my damaged coccyx even worse. Finally and worst of all I slip on some blue ice and strain my thumb. It bends back to touch the side of my hand and for a while I worry it is broken, although I manage to keep skiing despite the intense pain. When Rune tends to it that evening with alternating warmth and ice the treatment works and the swelling subsides, but I am still worried I may have fractured it. We’ve achieved 13¾ miles however, despite the conditions, and at this rate we are only a week from the Pole.
My thumb keeps me awake during the night, which I could do without. We are both very fatigued, desperately needing all the rest we can get, and Rune tells me that he has been throwing-up all morning due to the food last night disagreeing with him. Our injuries and weakness as our weight has dropped mean we fall over far more easily in this dreadful terrain, and we constantly wonder if we will ever find the big pans of flat ice that we’ve been led to believe we should be encountering by now. In mid-afternoon when clambering over a pressure ridge I slip and fall partially into the water, my arm and shoulder submerged but my legs still on the ridge and snagged in rubble. When Rune eventually sees what has happened he unhesitatingly dives into the lead and treads water with his skis as he helps me out, before I finally do the same for him. It’s seeing something like this that makes me realize how truly incredible this young man is, unquestioningly doing something that most people would think might kill them. We have to walk hard all the rest of the day to drive the moisture from our sodden clothes, but when the sun comes out if feels beautifully warm and we have completed a distance similar to yesterday.
Our radio seems not to be working the next day, and despite taking it apart that evening I can find nothing wrong with it. We can only hope our Argos position will show we are still making progress, that John won’t panic and try to airlift us out. With another record distance of nearly 15 miles we can’t help starting to think seriously about the possibility of making it to the Pole. Now and the next day we have finally come to some small pans of flat ice, the wind has dropped and it gets war
mer as the day wears on, leading us to strip off several layers. We crave the warmth, yet fear the inevitable thaw that it must bring. Towards the end of the day we see two seals, which worries us as it can mean only one thing—open water—and in a few minutes we come to the largest lead we have seen in days, a huge stretch of broken ice. We don’t feel injury can thwart us now, but clear water certainly can, yet we manage to cross it and by evening also the 89th Parallel.
The next day, 51 of our trip, is a Friday, and we are faced with a dilemma. We both want to push on, could increase the length of our walking day, but Claire and Alicia are due to arrive in Resolute on Tuesday, intending to come and meet us at the Pole. If we get there early we will just be sitting around, or still having to walk every day to maintain our position there as the drift constantly takes us away from the Pole. Although part of each of us feels more confident of eventual success, I keep warning Rune not to be complacent as things can go wrong now as easily as at any other time on our journey. We are both madly fantasizing about the food we will have when we get home—beef sandwiches for me, a massive omelette for Rune—and our luck seems to hold up today, since although there is plenty of open water we always find good crossing points, but Rune’s navigation seems to be going astray. It is increasingly difficult as you near the Pole, and I’d found on my trip to the South Pole that my ski sticks could affect the magnetic variation on my compass which is nearly 180 degrees now. When I tactfully suggest this to Rune he first glowers at me then, after taking a solar reading, veers off at a right-angle to his previous direction.
We’re close enough now to start fretting about whether there will be a flat enough pan of ice near the Pole to land a plane, or whether a really large area of open water could be sitting there making the Pole impossible to reach at all. We’re maintaining the same sort of distances, and I am crossing leads now on the sort of spongy ice that I would absolutely have refused to risk just a few weeks ago. On Saturday afternoon the sun is suddenly hidden by thick cloud and we are soon in almost complete darkness, with the temperature plummeting back down to –36°C and the wind then picking up. We keep going but after managing 13 miles decide enough is enough and we should camp. We have a little more than 25 miles to go in a straight line—not that such a thing ever actually exists here.
I am very worried about what the weather will be on Sunday morning, and we start walking in bitter cold and a total white-out. To make matters worse the break-up of the ice is the most extreme we have seen so far, which just shouldn’t be happening as we are well past the Lomonosov Ridge. Then in the early afternoon the cloud starts to break and we can see the sun low in the sky, which lifts our spirits and makes navigation much easier. With the weather improving our luck also seems to change, and the leads we come across are either frozen or have simple crossings, and eventually our wishes come true as the landscape opens up to leave a clear vista westwards towards the northern horizon. It is almost as if the Pole is illuminated by a spotlight, tantalizingly close, leading us to add an extra forty minutes to our normal workload.
Late in the day we see the tracks of an Arctic fox, and even if that means polar bears could also be nearby it provides some comfort not to feel entirely alone here. I am frankly bored of this hellish landscape and my fifteen-year battle with this awful but strangely beautiful place. We both want to get back to civilization. A gale on the Monday leaves us thankful for our mileage the day before, and we make dreadful progress with our navigation confused and even the GPS proving misleading, as the lines of longitude converge the nearer we are to the Pole. I am particularly cold, having ripped a hole in the backside of my windproof trousers when I almost castrated myself with my left ski the evening before, but I can’t be bothered to mend it so close to the end. We’ve eventually had enough and camp that night some 2 miles from the Pole, although Rune is not pleased and feels we should keep going. I am partially motivated by a feeling that, since they have supported us for the last three years, we shouldn’t arrive at the Pole whilst the BBC crew that is coming to meet us are still in the air from England. At the same time, another part of me feels it is arrogance and courting disaster to stop when almost within touching distance of our goal.
I wake at 5.00 a.m. on Tuesday 28 April, day fifty-five of our journey and exactly a year to the day since we were lifted off the ice at the miserable end of our last expedition. We’re late starting, in heavy wind and an almost total white-out, so navigating by the sun will be impossible. Rune has switched on the Argos beacon and puts it in his rucksack so it will record our track right to the Pole, and we both clip on radio microphones to record our feelings. After walking for an hour we take out the GPS to check our position, but although it normally takes about thirty seconds for this to appear on the LCD screen in five minutes there is still nothing. Nor does Rune’s spare GPS work either. I’d warmed the batteries that morning for these last few miles, so what can be wrong? Here at the Pole the GPS should pick up more satellites than anywhere else, but it is getting no signal at all. Could the satellites be turned off? The last time that happened was during the first Gulf War, and tensions in the Middle East had been mounting again when we set off. It dawns on me horribly that we have heard nothing from the outside world for almost a week, and anything could have occurred. Nuclear war could have destroyed civilization for all we would know about it.
I frantically try to think what we could be doing wrong or different to before, and then it occurs to me that we are both wearing the radio microphones. Perhaps they are affecting the signals. I switch mine off and walk away from Rune, and suddenly a series of dots appear on the GPS screen as the satellites are detected. Thank God, we are a mile closer to the Pole, and will be able to find it after all. An hour later we are just over a mile away, and the next time we check barely half a mile. I’m marking our position on a small-scale plotting chart, which is the only way we will be absolutely sure we get there. Now it is only 300 yards, and we have our first disagreement when Rune insists I should go ahead, which I refuse. We walk together, side by side, with the GPS in my hand as we count down the last 100 feet, and at 2.00 p.m. we decide we are as close as we can reasonably get within the accuracy limitations of the system. We’ve made it, at last, and my fifteen-year odyssey is finally over.
We hug each other furiously, and Rune sees me cry just as he did the year before. He quotes Amundsen’s famous words on reaching the Pole ahead of Scott, ‘Polen er naad. Alt vel’—‘the Pole is reached. All well.’ Then we repeat what we have said every night of the expedition when we pitched camp. ‘God save your Queen,’ says Rune to me, saluting. ‘God save your King,’ I reply. We’re getting dangerously cold so set up our tent for a late lunch and with the intention of doing absolutely nothing else for the rest of the day, but while he is getting the stove ready I hear a shout from Rune. He has taken one last reading, and it suggests that we have drifted even closer. Our tent is perhaps no more than 10 feet from the Pole as the whole world revolves beneath us. We film the GPS screen and settle down to our brandy and cigars.
It was only the next morning that our radio miraculously started to work again, and we heard a friendly voice that turned out to be that of the person guarding the fuel cache at 86 degrees, awaiting the planes that would be coming to pick us up. Rune felt very firmly that we’d done enough walking, but I desperately wanted to be as near to the Pole as possible when I met Claire and Alicia, as well as the BBC and ITN journalists and Robert Uhlig of the Daily Telegraph. We spent a ghastly seventeen hours walking overnight to find a landing strip that the pilots would feel they could put down upon, and our tiredness could almost have done for us both at the very end. I feared for a moment I’d lost Rune when he suddenly disappeared beneath the water before he finally resurfaced spitting ice-cubes, but eventually we managed to rendezvous with the planes and I was hugging my family and friends again, drinking champagne and filming interviews.
When we finally took off for the long flight back to Eureka I felt I could no lon
ger speak, withdrew into myself and could only stare out of the window. The ice looked so beautiful from above, but we flew over so much open water I knew that we would never have made it if we’d had to cross those last two degrees even a week later. I am so glad to be going home, to civilization and the comforts that we’ve been without for so long, but it is only when I leave the Arctic behind that I realize how much I will miss it once I have gone.
Returning to the North Pole on that third attempt I was a far more mature animal than previously, and I wasn’t sure then if I actually wanted to try any more solo expeditions. On that second trip with Rune, even if we were supported, we felt it was a greater achievement than our unsupported but failed attempt, and it saw Rune become then the seventh Norwegian to reach the North Pole and me only the fourth Briton, or actually the first using just their own skis rather than dog teams or snow mobiles. We needed to get there, and if two resupplies were the only way to do so then that was the lesser evil. Would we have made it the first time without our sledge problem and helping the kid? I think we would, we’d done the first third, the hardest part. But the Holy Grail for me was the Grand Slam. A couple of other people were trying for it, so I thought if I don’t get this out of the way now I’m never going to do it. That was the real pressure I felt, in finally reaching the North Pole at my third and what I felt must be my final attempt. Global warming will only make it harder, if not impossible, for others to continue doing so in the future.
No Such Thing as Failure Page 16