The next day we flew out of Copenhagen and into Kangerlussuaq on the West coast of Greenland, our final destination before we began. Here we met up with the final two members of our team: Eric Philips – our guide from the North Pole – and Heath Jamieson, who was Frederique’s assistant, and would be hauling all the extra weight of the camera equipment and a lot of Frederique’s personal gear in his sled so that she could be more mobile.
There is sooooo much that goes on behind the scenes to even get to the starting point of these expeditions, including several tasks that had to be completed a few days before flying out to ensure everything is packed and ready to go. One of the biggest jobs is preparing the food bags, which are stuffed with calorie-dense meals and snacks. We all spent a whole day slicing and bagging salami and cheese, removing wrappers from muesli bars and chocolate (any unnecessary wrapping had to be dumped before we started or we’d just end up carrying excess weight in our sleds), and neatly packing everything into separate day bags – each one identical in its contents.
There were plenty of other last-minute adjustments and preparations to be made. We even needed to sew tiny neoprene nose guards to our ski goggles to give us extra protection from the sun. We also got some rope out and Eric reminded me how to tie a prusik knot (the type of friction hitch I’d been taught by Dean in New Zealand two years earlier) and use it to pull myself out of a crevasse.
We decided to hook ropes and harnesses onto a high fence surrounding the airport and were using them to haul ourselves up when a big angry Greenlandic man came hurtling towards us in his car and very agressively told us to get off the fence and find somewhere else to practise our skills. Apparently, airport security wasn’t too happy with a trio of Aussies appearing to climb the security fence. We really hadn’t thought that one through.
Our last task was to pack our sleds in the most efficient way possible, like not packing anything sharp near an air mattress (unless, of course, you want to sleep on the cold ice and snow). Much of the load seemed to be food and fuel (which we took in cardboard boxes) – heavy items like these, we put in the middle of the sled. Apart from that, we had packed a lot of the same gear as we had for the North Pole trip, like tents, our sleeping bags, and a stove and pot for melting snow. Clothing is kept to an absolute minimum – mostly just one of everything, but allowing for a few changes of socks and underwear. Eric confessed he had only packed two pairs of underwear. I, on the other hand, believed it was perfectly normal to pack 15 pairs.
We’d been in Kangerlussuaq for a few days, and John’s words about global warming were already proving undeniable. While prepping during the day, we spent a lot of our time working outside and had all been dressed only in track pants and t-shirts. It was so warm. I had expected the cold on the coast of Greenland to be biting already, but it wasn’t close.
The day we were due to start our 550-kilometre crossing, the sky was dark and, instead of snow, it was pouring rain, so we were forced to extend our stay on the coast until the weather cleared up enough for us to begin. We unpacked some of our gear and settled in for another night of comfort and warmth in a real bed.
The next morning the rain had mostly cleared and we were good to go. We got a lift with two other Danish teams, on a huge bus with special wheels designed for the rock and snow, to our start point at the edge of the glacier. I sat up the front next to the driver and he told me I was the youngest person he’d ever driven up to the glacier and he was going to write about me on his Facebook page.
Usually there would have been ice all the way to the drop-off point, but large portions had melted and exposed the dirt and rock below for a long way in the direction we were to start hauling sleds. The sleds aren’t particularly delicate, but there was no way we could strap them to our harnesses and drag them across the rough ground. It was all hands on deck so, one by one, four people per heavy, fully-loaded sled, we carried them up over steep, slippery surfaces and through slushy, muddy puddles of dirt and melting snow, with frequent rest stops, until we reached the edge of the retreating glacier a couple of kilometres from where we’d been dropped. Then we’d go back and get the next one and start the process all over again – five sleds in total, between 70 and 110 kilograms each. It was hot, sweaty work and quite unlike anything I’d expected to encounter on the second largest ice cap on the planet.
I wore a mitten on the hand that was gripping the rope at my corner of the sled, not because it was cold, but to stop the weight of the sled tearing the skin on my hand. We had to keep changing positions on each sled to give our hands and arms a rest. My clothes were soaked with sweat by the time we’d finished and the only footwear we had with us were big polar boots rated to –100ºC, so our feet were cooking and I had my first few blisters already.
If I needed any proof that Greenland was going to be a completely different experience from the North Pole, now was it. We had finally reached the edge of the ice, but the struggle over the rocks to get to the starting line of the ice cap had already put us well behind our daily goal. We were only carrying 30 days’ worth of food and fuel and we had just used up one of them.
Added to that, I was already feeling frustrated at the prospect of needing to re-establish new daily routines again. These expeditions are all about creating habits and having everything in a good place for easy access. The first few days of these trips for me were always the toughest and a struggle to recreate order out of chaos.
Once we were finally on the glacier and rigged up to our sleds, Eric delivered his pre-trip pep talk. We’d skied to the North Pole together, so he had already seen me in action, but I was inspired by his faith in me. It gave me confidence as I took my first steps on the ice towards the other coast.
SOME COOL
FACTS ABOUT . . .
Greenland
• Greenland is a massive island – it’s almost as big as Western Australia – that sits between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.
• In fact, it’s the biggest island in the world (Australia is a continental landmass).
• There’s not a lot of green in Greenland – about 80 per cent of the landmass is covered in snow and ice.
• It’s believed Erik the Red, a Viking who was exiled from Iceland, settled here and called it Greenland in the hope the name would attract more settlers.
• Only about 56,000 people live in Greenland (17,000 in the capital, Nuuk), making it the least densely populated territory in the world. As a comparison, about the same number of people live in Wagga Wagga.
• Most of the people who live there are Kalaallit (Inuit for the indigenous people of Greenland).
• Greenland is an autonomous Danish territory, which means the country has its own democratically elected parliament.
• There are no roads anywhere on the island. Instead everyone gets around by plane, boat, helicopter, snowmobile or dog sled.*
7
A SLOW START
The terrain up the ice fall from the West coast of Greenland was as unbelievably challenging as it was beautiful. As far as the eye could see, there were rolling hills and valleys of ice.
At this point, we hadn’t even strapped on our skis. Instead, we had spent most of our time walking in crampons (metal spikes that attach to boots to grip the slippery ice), and it was not easy. To get up the hills, it was a slow grind of wedging the ski poles in the ice behind me, leaning my weight forward and into the poles, then using them to push myself upwards and make some ground, then repeating the same process until reaching the top. Once at the peak, I had to pull the sled over the edge then run fast enough to the bottom of the hill to outrun it and dodge its plunge, but not so fast that I ended up falling over. Surprisingly, I managed to coordinate and get it right the first time.
Sometimes we even had to work as a team to move individual sleds over steep sections. On these occasions, I was harnessed to my sled with Dad and Eric pushing and tugging at it to get it over the bigger hills at the same time as I was pulling it.
W
e used up an enormous amount of energy getting each of the five sleds up and over the terrain, sometimes one at a time, and the progress was often so slow I felt as if we were getting nowhere. Along the way, it grew so warm I was wearing only my thin thermal top and a cap to shield my face from the sun.
In between the rolling hills of the ice fall were the ice melts – big ponds of incredibly blue water – and we had to divert to track a course around them. It was like navigating a maze. Eric often decided to take less direct routes, searching for gentler slopes so that we could pull our own sleds over them without needing help from the rest of the team. Often he would ditch his sled and ski off to check a particular route, only to return and advise we had to backtrack to see if we could find a better way forward. Because we weren’t travelling in a straight line, we were covering a lot more distance than the 550 kilometres of the crossing as measured in a straight line on a map. This messed with my head and frustrated me.
It was really hard to get used to walking in my crampons, and it took me much longer to get my footing right than Eric and Dad, who had used crampons many times before. It was already a lot different from skiing across the frozen Arctic Ocean. On multiple occasions, my sled would tip over the top of a ridge and drag me down the slope with it. Sometimes, the sled ended up in a pool of water, but fortunately it floated on the surface – I would imagine myself getting pulled down by my sled and into the icy water.
It went on like this for days. Although we’d managed to find a reasonably flat spot to set up camp on our first night, the next day it was more of the same, like a game of snakes and ladders. It was a huge mental challenge to stay positive and not let the lack of progress defeat us, while also being aware that we were using excessive amounts of energy to cover small distances.
Occasionally, we were able to put on our skis, but that didn’t make things any easier. Any brief downhill sections were a relief, although now I had to remember to step sideways in my skis at the right time so the sled sliding behind me wouldn’t take me out. It became a work of art.
One of my biggest struggles from the North Pole had also come back to haunt me: my nose tends to dry out in the cold and I suffer a lot of nosebleeds. Anyone who has ever had them knows they are a pain and hard to stop. Plus, my neck had gotten very badly sunburned in the first couple of days and I had mild sunstroke – not what I was expecting to experience in a polar environment!
When we arrived at camp on the second night, we got out the GPS. With the weather as mild as it had been, we didn’t need to rush to get the tents up. So I spread out my foam mat on the ice, took a seat and spent some time bonding with the team. We had been skiing for two days and, as the crow flew, we’d covered only 4.56 kilometres of our route, but had also reached an altitude of 711 metres. Considering our pre-trip plan was to average about 20 kilometres each day for the whole trip, we had some serious catching up to do. On the other hand, we could never have expected to travel those distances in the type of terrain we’d been covering. Plus, the mushy snow from the warm weather made the sleds even heavier to drag. During the day, we’d passed another team who had set off at the same time as us but had stopped for the night quite a way back. It made me think we were doing okay. Luckily, Eric felt the same way and had no concerns about the slow going as yet.
By the end of day three we had only covered around 20 kilometres of the 550-kilometre route and I was physically and emotionally shattered. Dad and I had also been bickering in the tent, trying to establish routines as teammates, rather than father and daughter.
You experience a lot of complex emotions when you’re in this type of environment and under a large amount of physical and mental stress. There was no denying it would all become simpler once we’d got our days mapped out and our routines established again. We were still up to 27 days from the finish, but I’d already started counting down the days until we’d be heading home. At the same time, I felt blessed to be here in this magical place. As I said, all the feels become messed up and emotions are always changing.
The weather turned overcast, making visibility difficult. When the land is flat and white and the clouds extend all the way to the horizon, it feels quite eerie – as if you are skiing into oblivion. The dark lenses in our glacier sunglasses and goggles didn’t help, but you couldn’t remove them without risking snow blindness, caused by the glare of the snow.
When out front in these conditions, I’d try to pick a feature or outcrop in the distance that was also on our bearing and just ski towards it. We also had an old-school compass and the GPS with us, so we could be sure we were heading in the right direction. Most of the time we skied single file and I just put my headphones in and zoned out. Eric, Fred and Heath often did the same. In the rush to get ready, with work commitments and last-minute running around, Dad had accidentally left his headphones at home, so he was forced to be alone with his thoughts – something he said he quite enjoyed.
Our pattern each day was to ski for an hour then have a quick drink, followed by another hour of skiing, then a snack break, then ski–drink–ski–lunch–ski–drink–ski–snack–ski–drink–ski–camp. That meant around eight hours of skiing in total daily.
Halfway through the day, we would stop and have some lunch. As we were enjoying our noodles and frozen salami on the third day, we spotted the other group – 11 of them – pass us in the distance.
Eric had done this trip only once before, using a kite, and that had been 22 years ago, beginning in the opposite direction. He said back then it had felt as though he and his team had the entire Greenland ice sheet to themselves. Now, he said, we should expect to see another team in the distance at least twice during our travels.
By the end of the day the temperature had dropped quite a lot, making it easier to keep pushing, but I was suffering from a few new aches and pains. I’d managed to fall over a few times and, because it was warm and I was skiing with my gloves off, I had a few cuts on my hands from landing on the sharp ice, and they were also really sunburned.
At the other end, my feet were feeling marginally better now that we were on the skis. The even better news was that we’d managed to cover 15 kilometres during the day, so we all felt we’d achieved a lot.
Each day out here had its own challenges. On day four, the GPS route Eric had been given by his friend, who had made the crossing many times before, suggested we take a route that included a dogleg because, supposedly, there was a crevasse field and a large section of open water on the direct path. But we couldn’t see anything that looked menacing on the horizon so we decided to take a risk and press on in a straight line.
We came across no crevasses and no large melts, so at the end of our usual day, we were feeling good and decided to keep going until we hit the 20-kilometre mark. It was a great milestone for all of us. We’d managed to cover our full target distance for the first time since leaving Kangerlussuaq, and mentally it was just what I needed.
The next few days varied from great to ordinary. Dad and I were getting along well now that we had settled into our evening and morning routines in the tent. The terrain was flat, though all uphill – but the ascent was gradual, at least, so I eventually got used to the slow grind. The surface regularly switched from soft (which is much harder to ski on and makes the sled feel heavier) to hard (which makes life a lot easier) as we moved along. I listened to music to help pass the long hours while skiing, and Heath taught me how to navigate using a compass, the position of the sun and my shadow. The days are long out on the ice and just about any distraction is welcome. Once a day, I took a turn at leading the team and it was my favourite time.
As we got higher on the plateau, the temperature cooled right down and a headwind picked up, so we were back in our big jackets. Hypothermia and frostbite are real threats when the wind is blowing straight at your face.
I made an interesting discovery in those early days of the trip, too. Apparently, we didn’t need to be as fanatical with our ice melting and water management as we
had been in the North Pole. Due to the warmer weather, we could melt enough ice in the evening for our needs the next day and leave it in the kettle without it freezing solid overnight. After day eight, when we managed to cover our goal of 20 kilometres in record time, I woke very dehydrated. While we were no longer sweating much, we were losing lots of moisture through our breath. We needed to be drinking at least three litres of water a day, as well as hot drinks in the morning and the evening. Any less, and it was easy to become dangerously dehydrated.
All the same niggles – the ones we’d all had trouble with crossing the North Pole – cropped up early. My right hip flexor tended to tighten up, particularly towards the end of each day, one of my knees was playing up, my face and hands were windburned, and both Dad and I had pretty large and growing blisters on our feet.
It was also a long way to the nearest shower. We were still about 470 kilometres from our destination, and I already felt incredibly grotty. A wet wipe might cut it when you’re camping out for a few nights, but when you start talking a few weeks they soon become inadequate. Something else new to me was the dead, flaky skin I was shedding (which I found out later is happening to everyone all the time, it’s just that it’s usually washed away when we shower and towel dry). When I changed clothes there was always a flurry of skin flakes in the tent. It was quite entertaining (at first).
As much as I was craving a shower, I was missing home-cooked meals even more – and, of course, missing home itself. A call to wish Mum a happy Mother’s Day lifted my mood. She told me loads of people were leaving messages on my Instagram, which I updated once a day via satellite phone. It was easy to forget people knew where we were and worried about how we were doing, so hearing there was so much support from friends and even from people I’d never met was real motivation.
My Polar Dream Page 6