Recently it had been discovered there was a lot of melting going on beneath the ice. It couldn’t be seen, but many scientists were redirecting their research to observe the occurrence. It could be having a huge effect, as it eats into the underneath of the ice, increasing the rate at which the ice flows off the continent.
Daniel also mentioned that people were beginning to question whether global warming was real because there had been ‘record sea ice coverage in Antarctica’. Unfortunately, no one really knows how thick that sea ice was in the past. There had been some recent research into the depth of the ice and it proved that although the coverage is greater, it didn’t contain the same volume of ice. Much like in the North Pole, there had also been greater variability in conditions, so things were changing, even if no one was entirely sure what was going on. To me, such huge changes in conditions reinforce why addressing climate change needs to be made a major priority for governments around the world.
When the briefing was over, Eric found a map of Antarctica on the wall of the office and we talked through our route one more time. After a day or so at Union Glacier camp, we would be flown to the edge of the coast on the Ross Ice Shelf at 85ºS. This area is designated as the ‘coast’ because if all the ice melted, we’d be standing on the actual geographic coastline. We would ski across a flat section for about four days and leave the Ross Ice Shelf to follow the Reedy Glacier through the Transantarctic Mountains for about 20 kilometres. From there we’d branch off up the Kansas Glacier and set our own route up to the Stanford Plateau. It would be the first new route to the South Pole by an all-Australian team, and I would be the youngest person ever to have skied a full-route expedition from the coast to the South Pole unsupported and unassisted. There are not many places on the planet’s land that someone can travel to and say no other person has ever been there, but we were hoping after this expedition, we could.
Eric showed us where the worst of the sastrugi – the ridges formed by wind that blows around the Pole in an east–west direction at 87º – would likely be, and estimated it would take us three or four days to get through them. We also worked out where we should be on Christmas Day. I’d always dreamed of a white Christmas – but I’d never imagined a Christmas this white!
Considering we’d been delayed on both of the previous two journeys, it was pretty exciting to think we’d be heading off a day before we’d actually planned. We were given a departure time of between 7 am and 7.30 am, so we had to get some sleep and wait for a phone call in the morning. Everything had to be packed up and our hotel bill settled because, once the call came to tell us we were going, we’d only have about 20 minutes before someone arrived to pick us up and take us to the airport. We had to be wearing all of our expedition gear, including our polar boots, to save weight on the plane. I knew I was going to be wearing them for 40 days on the ice – so a few more hours wouldn’t hurt. To compensate, the interior of the plane is only warmed to about 12ºC so that no one overheats.
It was almost time to leave and I couldn’t wait. It would be tough, but I just wanted to get out there. This was the third and final leg of the Hat-Trick. Fulfilling my dream hinged on getting to the South Pole. My mind was plagued by self-doubt, wondering whether I was good enough or strong enough or whether I would fail.
I tried to shake off any negative thoughts. I had to focus, I had to think about the 40 days and 600 kilometres I was about to endure in full-on conditions. I knew the suffering was going to be madness, and I would need to be absolutely, 100 per cent committed to make it all the way to the Pole.
SOUTH POLE VIA
KANSAS GLACIER
EQUIPMENT LIST
• Sled
• Sled harness
• Polar boots
• Frameless sunglasses with interchangeable lenses
• Goggles
• Climbing ropes, 40 m and 30 m long and 8 mm thick
• Sit harness
• Carabiners (one non-locking keylock and one locking keylock)
• Prusiks, which are loops of 5 mm rope for crevasse rescue
• Skis, bindings, skins
• Ski poles
• Crampons
• Ice screws
• Ice axe
• Warm down-insulated jacket
• Shell jacket and ruff
• Shell pants with braces
• Fleece jacket
• Oversized windproof puffer jacket to pull over all layers
• Thermal tops
• Fleece pants
• Thermal pants
• Ski shorts/skirt
• Underwear
• Fleece-lined polar hat, with ear coverage
• Insulated peak cap, with ear coverage
• Fleece hat for sleeping in tent
• Neoprene face mask
• Neck gaiter or buff
• Polar mittens
• Liner mittens to fit under polar mittens
• Lightweight liner gloves
• Ski gloves
• Vapour barrier socks
• Nylon liner socks
• Thick socks
• Tent with poles, plus two spare
• Tent stakes
• Tent brush, for cleaning snow from the tent floor
• Inflatable mattress
• Camp chair
• Foam seat, for rests
• Sleeping bag, –30°C minimum
• Tent boots
• Snow shovel
• Snow saw, for building snow walls
• Stove with base and shield
• Matches
• Fuel bottle
• Stove fuel, 150 mL per person per day (for 40 days)
• Kettle
• Snow bag
• Food and food boxes (for 40 days)
• Toilet paper
• 1 L thermos flask
• 1 L plastic drink bottle x 2
• Sports bottle
• Bottle parka
• Bowl
• Cup
• Spoon
• Serving spoon
• Pee bottle
• Ice brush
• Compass and harness
• GPS
• Maps and satellite images
• Marker pen
• Medical kit
• Fire blanket
• Personal medications
• Iridium phone and spare phone battery
• Iridium GO and spare GO battery
• Personal Locator Beacon
• Repair kit
• Whistle
• Solar panel
• Storage battery
• Charge cables
• Accessory cord
• Pocket knife/multi-tool
• Camera with spare camera batteries and charger
• AA/AAA batteries
• Watch/alarm
• Passport
• Personal toiletries
• Hand sanitiser
• Sunscreen
• Stuff sacs for packing clothes and food
• Book/Kindle
• Diary and pencil
• Reading glasses
• Ear plugs and eye patches
• Film equipment
My personal equipment list (extras)
• 20 pairs of undies
• Journal
• Letters from friends
• Mishka (the polar bear toy I carried on all my expeditions)
• Australian flag and boxing kangaroo flag
• Small purse full of good luck items (such as the necklace from Villa, the Mars Bar wrapper from Dad’s summit day on Everest and blessing band from Lama Geshe on my Everest trek)
• Christmas presents and decorations.
12
THE FIRST 10 DAYS
If there’s anything you learn from spending time on an expedition with a bunch of old blokes, it’s that you can’t be too precious about your pr
ivacy. By the end of this trip, I would have spent around 80 days out on the ice with them and the same number of nights sleeping in a tent with my dad. Add to that all the prep days in New Zealand, nights in hotels and hours on planes, and that’s a lot of time without the company of people my own age. I realised how much it had changed me when we landed at our starting point on the Reedy Glacier.
We’d taken off in a tiny ski plane bound for our first refuelling stop, about two and a half hours away, where we could take a pee. Because where we were heading was so remote, we were supposed to take a bit of a milk-run route, with two stops along the way to refuel at spots where ALE had left fuel drums on the ice. There was no toilet in the small plane and it was jammed full of our sleds, skis and us. I had been really careful not to drink much water, because the last thing I wanted to have to do was pee into a bottle through my funnel on the plane, less than a metre away from the rest of the team. (Heath and Ming had no issues in this department, as it turned out.) But the plans changed, as they often do on such trips, and after our first refuelling stop, we ended up flying straight through to our drop-off point. We were flying over the Kansas Glacier, which was part of the route we’d be skiing, and were only 10 minutes from landing, when I decided I had to pee – quite badly.
Ming had already told me that he wanted to get off the plane first and film me disembarking, then do a quick interview before we got started. But there was no time for mucking around. Ming and his camera would have to wait. As soon as the door was open, I was on it.
How quickly I had forgotten, though. Apparently there was a 40-knot wind (that’s about 75 kilometres an hour) and I was freezing cold already. As I was racing to find a spot, I was tossing up whether I should just drop my pants and go or use the pee funnel. In the end, there was no time for the funnel and I am almost 100 per cent sure the pilots would have got a total eyeful if they’d looked out the window.
We waved goodbye to the plane and as it disappeared into the blue it really hit me that we were now all alone . . . probably the humans most isolated from any other life form on the planet.
The day was already well over halfway through by the time we got ourselves and our sleds sorted out and Ming had all of the footage he needed for the Nat Geo documentary, but we still managed to ski for about four hours all up. The process of making the film always frustrated me to begin with – it was stop-start and I often had a camera in my face at the worst of moments. But I knew that in the end it was really important to be able to share this experience with as many people as possible. I was hoping it would make people care more about these precious and threatened environments. So I sucked it up.
We hadn’t been going for long, though, before the sun disappeared behind clouds, the wind picked up even more and the temperatures dropped dangerously – especially for the first day. I definitely felt it physically, especially during the breaks. My legs, back and neck were already aching from the skiing and my bum, thighs and hands had gone numb from the cold. Each expedition began like this, as though we’d gone right back to the beginning. Always in pain. Always trying to establish a rhythm for our days. But that was what the first 10 days on a long expedition are all about – getting used to the place again and establishing good routines. At least for the next few years, this was going to be the last trip I’d have to get used to, even though I certainly plan on future adventures.
We all set our watches back six hours after leaving Union Glacier and it played havoc with our sleep patterns. As the sun shines for 24 hours a day in Antarctica during summer, we could choose any time zone we wanted to operate on. We chose Alaska, as this would put the sun immediately behind us – and our shadows directly in front of us – at midday, making navigation using our shadows and the sun very simple.
On our first morning on the Ross Ice Shelf I woke up at 5.30 am to find Dad getting himself organised and slotting straight back into his polar routine. We’d only got back from Greenland five months previously, so I’d already decided that taking 10 days to find my way back into how things worked out here was far too long. Even physically it felt as though I’d been out on the ice just recently – muscle memory is amazing. It was a little (okay, a lot) harder mentally, though. It took a bit of time to wrap my head around where I was and to block out thoughts of what I might be missing at home: Mum and Kane, my dog, my friends, summer, the beach, good food, a hot shower, my own bed. Of course, 99 per cent of those things remain the same after a while away, but if you can truly block those thoughts out anyway and feel yourself in the moment, you begin to enjoy and appreciate the struggle.
Our early wake-up on day two revealed blue sky and sunshine. It was all the more enjoyable for having hit some bad weather in those few hours on the ice the afternoon before.
On our first full day, we came across the first of what would be many crevasse fields. But it was only a small area, so I needed to trust Eric’s expertise in avoiding the worst of them and remember that we’d all been trained in how to get out of them and how to rescue anyone else who fell in. In Greenland, and now on this expedition, I could always tell when Dad recognised crevasse danger from all his years in the mountains, as he would slow down and slot in immediately behind me without saying anything. I knew he was getting himself ready to move quickly if I fell in.
I felt so good for most of the day that I even led the group for a while before lunch. I loved being in the lead, setting footprints where no one had before.
In the next few days, the weather turned foul, and a howling wind woke me at 4.30 on the third morning. The tent was being battered and I could hear the snow against the walls outside. I stuck my head out of the upwind vestibule and saw that my entire sled was buried under a mound of white. I was going to have to dig it out before we went anywhere.
Things didn’t improve. The entire day consisted of slogging into the whipping headwind as we took a path towards the mountains. I wore my neoprene face mask (the same material as a wetsuit) and within hours it had grotesque icicles growing where my moist, warm breath had frozen.
We were aiming for the pass between two nunataks (isolated peaks poking out of the ice and snow). It looked close, though up a really steep slope, but the perception was warped. The slope wasn’t nearly as steep when we were going up it (good), but it was actually 21 kilometres away (bad).
Even the breaks were incredibly uncomfortable. I’d pull the mask away from my mouth to take a sip of water or eat some of my snacks and, because it was damp from the moisture on my breath, it would freeze against my neck when I put it back on. It was exhausting battling the constant wind, but I needed to get my head in the game. We were still a way off the plateau and I knew from what Eric had told me that the weather would be much worse up there.
My food cravings had already started to kick in. I’m not sure why. Who wouldn’t be thrilled at the thought of frozen salami chunks, cheese and two-minute noodles for a month and a half? These are the things I craved at various points of the day in no particular order:
• roast chicken
• a Royale Brothers burger
• Mum’s banana bread
• white chocolate and strawberry ice-cream
• a smoked salmon, cream cheese, caper and onion wrap like the one I had on the plane
• the same burger and giant Sprite I had when I finished the North Pole trek
• smashed avocado and goat’s cheese on sourdough toast
• eggs and bacon
• Mexican food – anything really, but tacos would be ace
• Vietnamese spicy salad.
Almost everything on that list would have been just around the corner if I was at home, but in Antarctica it was a fantasy.
We set up camp that night between the two nunataks not far off the pass, with the mountains in the distance. We had already covered 47 kilometres since farewelling our pilots and were hoping to reach the Reedy Glacier the next day.
When I called Mum that night she told me everyone back home was exc
ited and very supportive of what I was doing. It was great to hear and it always helped. But I knew that in the end, whether or not I completed this journey was entirely up to me.
I had thought both the North Pole and Greenland were beautiful environments, but Antarctica was something else. I’d seen lots of photos of it, of course, but actually being in the middle of it – feeling the intensity of the cold, being engulfed by the silence and gazing at the mountains – made me feel so alive. And so small.
We cleared the pass first thing in the morning to emerge into an expansive white plain surrounded by mountains. Again, it was deceptive. Once we got close to the ice, it was more of a blue than white colour. We had to negotiate quite a lot of blue ice, which is very slippery, and while this was great for dragging sleds over (they became almost weightless), the skins underneath our skis were useless in terms of trying to create friction so we could plant our feet to move forward. Instead, we would slip around going nowhere. We had to take off our skis and swap them for crampons, which had metal spikes to dig into the blue ice.
The silence out there was beautiful, though. Except for the swish of our ski-pants fabric and the creaking of the heavy sleds against the ice, it was completely still. Maybe sound doesn’t travel as far there; perhaps it’s muffled by the snow. I guess the noises we hear or don’t hear at home are just the background to our lives. But I loved the absence of it.
I was feeling strangely positive about everything. I had quickly established my routine and was facing any difficulties I encountered as calmly and positively as I could. Even when I was struggling physically, I’d tell myself that this was my last expedition and there was no place I’d rather be, despite ongoing issues with the whole toilet situation.
Mont, the Australian company that supplied all my expedition clothing, including the custom pink polar shell I’d worn on all the expeditions, had also created a custom down skirt for me that was a bit like a sleeping bag for my waist. It was an idea I had come up with to attempt to keep the tops of my legs and my bum covered on really cold days, but also when I dropped my pants to go to the toilet. Mont had gone to a lot of trouble to try to make my idea a reality, including various discarded prototypes.
My Polar Dream Page 10