My Polar Dream

by Jade Hameister

  In terms of the cold and the wind, the conditions were so much worse than those at the North Pole. Both that and crossing Greenland were great experiences and taught me how to struggle and deal with pain, but this had been by far the toughest leg of the Polar Hat-Trick.

  And we still had a long way to go.

  SOME COOL

  FACTS ABOUT . . .

  Saving the Planet

  These are some classic but simple things you can do every day to help protect the planet. If we all contributed, there’d be a huge reduction in pollution and wasted resources.

  • Turn off the lights every time you leave a room, and switch any appliances with standby power off completely.

  • Open windows and close blinds to cool your house rather than turning on air-conditioning. When it’s cold, put on woolly socks, grab a blanket or pull on a cardigan rather than turning on the heating.

  • Take public transport, ride your bike, consider car pooling and try to combine lots of errands into one trip to cut down how much your family uses its vehicles.

  • Only use the washing machine or dishwasher when there’s a full load. Always hang your clothes on the line rather than using a dryer.

  • Either plant vegetables to grow your own food or fill your garden with native plants, which require far less water than introduced species and attract insects and birds.

  • Opt for paperless billing and emailed bank statements wherever you can.

  • Buy a good reusable water bottle and coffee cup and use them all the time.

  • Try to banish all single-use items – whether they’re plastic takeaway containers, plastic straws or disposable razors – from your home.

  • Fix things rather than throwing them out, and donate any clothes or things you don’t use to charity.

  • Ensure you understand if your recycling is functioning properly.

  • Reduce food waste by having a menu plan and sticking to it each week, cooking with leftovers and freezing food before it goes off.

  • Eat less processed food.

  • Take shorter showers.

  • Always carry reusable shopping bags with you, so you’re never caught out having to use plastic ones at the supermarket. Invest in some reusable produce bags, too.

  14

  WELCOME TO 2018

  I am not a morning person. You have probably gathered that by now.

  The time it took for me to properly wake up and get ready for each day on the ice may have driven Dad a bit crazy. But you’d think that after 22 days, plus expeditions to the North Pole and across Greenland, he may have come to terms with it.

  I’d come to realise that nothing out there was going to be easy, and the days after Christmas didn’t prove me wrong. It started out badly enough. I was frozen through and sluggish. Energy seemed to have completely left my body. We had hit the uphill ascent over the shoulder of the Titan Dome, but I tried to tell myself we were on the downhill stretch as far as the whole journey was concerned.

  Eric said he thought I probably wasn’t managing to get enough calories into my body, which was inevitably slowing me down. Somehow, though, I ate quite a lot of food at lunch that day. I’d managed to stay quite warm, which helped a lot. I was able to hang on to my spoon properly, so I could get my noodles to my mouth, and now I was feeling great about everything. I seemed to be up and down, down and up, the emotional extremes mirroring the environment. No one else seemed to be experiencing such intense mood swings, but I was facing many of these mental and physical challenges for the first time, while many of the others had years of adventuring under their belts.

  At least now I had mastered the art of losing myself in the motion of skiing. You have so much time to yourself and with your own thoughts that if you let your brain get started you begin to overthink absolutely everything – something I was already guilty of. Zoning out is by far the better option. The longer I spent skiing the better I got at taking myself to another place, which made the time go so much faster.

  One thing I did out there a lot that I never do at home was checking in with myself: how I was feeling, what I needed to tell myself to keep my body moving, how I could best look after myself physically and emotionally. It’s so easy nowadays to get sucked into distractions like our phones and miss what is really going on around us and in our minds. It was a really good opportunity for me to learn something about myself.

  In the time I spent thinking, what amazed me most was that the part of Antarctica we were skiing across was very similar to where the early explorers, like Amundsen and Scott, had travelled more than a hundred years ago. They would have been battling the same cold and the same wind. They would have seen the same magical formations in the snow and the shimmering halos around the sun. The high-tech fabrics and gear we have access to today do make it a little more comfortable, though. And, of course, if something went wrong for us, as tricky as it may have been for a rescue operation to be mounted, it could happen. Back then they would have just had to deal with it themselves.

  We’d hit another milestone recently, which was great mentally and gave everyone in the group more motivation to keep skiing: we’d finally broken through the notoriously difficult band between 87º and 88ºS. Between those two degrees there is a circumpolar wind travelling from east to west that creates the sastrugi that had been incredibly painful to navigate. Now, the terrain was beginning to flatten out, which meant we’d be able to pick up the pace and cover more distance.

  The next big milestone, and we expected to hit it very soon, was reaching the point where we were 200 kilometres from the South Pole. We were still climbing, though, and were at an elevation of about 2950 metres above sea level – actually higher than the South Pole itself. We could definitely feel the thinner air’s effect on our breathing and we were all struggling more than usual. However, we got a real fright when Eric started to suffer some of the real symptoms of altitude sickness. It’s a weird condition that can strike quickly – whether or not you are fit has little to do with whether you’ll suffer or not. At first, we didn’t even realise what was happening to Eric. I noticed him stopping and leaning forward with his chest over his ski poles, and I thought maybe his back was giving him some grief so he was just taking a quick break. But then he sat down on his sled, which he rarely did, even during breaks. He told me his heart had started to flutter, then he got heartburn and his body began to feel incredibly heavy. He’d had altitude sickness before and almost had to be evacuated from the plateau in 2013 when his lungs began filling up with fluid. Thankfully, he knew how to deal with it and took some medication that seemed to help a lot. Heath took the lead for a while so that Eric could take it a little easier. We still managed to cover 19 kilometres on another tough day.

  A couple of days later, having battled through more white-outs and the extreme cold, it was New Year’s Eve in the Antarctic. Normally, I’d have a pretty quiet day at home then go out with my friends in the evening. This year was very different. For a start, it was one of the toughest days I’d had. I couldn’t get myself moving in the first two sessions of the day and slowed down the whole group. I suspect that I was feeling the altitude a little bit too, because I was having trouble breathing and had a fairly intense headache. I was still having issues with the chill on my chest, too. I had completely forgotten what it felt like to be warm. There was no sympathy for me, though. Dad wanted to know what the matter was, and I was asked to decide whether I really wanted to finish this or not, because if we continued at the pace I’d been moving that morning, we would not make it to the Pole without running out of food and fuel. But giving up hadn’t even crossed my mind. We were nine days from the finish, and I was going to make it no matter what. Plus, I knew I was doing the best I could surrounded by four grown men who were more than double my age. I knew I had to do something about the negative self-talk that was invading my head whenever I was feeling a bit off, otherwise it was going to make the last few days hell when I should’ve been making the most out o
f being in this incredible landscape, even if it was hard to love sometimes.

  Heath decided to hang back with me and let the others ski ahead. He kept telling me that the best way to warm up was to get moving, to put one foot in front of the other. But in that moment, I was in Struggle Town. It was –50ºC with wind chill and I don’t think I’d ever been colder. I was genuinely worried that my hands were so cold I was going to lose fingers. Tears filled my eyes and for about 30 minutes I struggled to keep going. But, as soon as I started to speed up and push harder, I forgot about the pain through warming up. I became a completely different person – one who was much nicer to herself and the people around her.

  I didn’t get to speak to Mum that night. I wanted her to have a chance to chat to all my friends, so she could tell me in full the next day what they’d been up to for New Year’s Eve the night before. I really wanted to know; I didn’t want to miss out on anything. It didn’t at all feel like the start of a new year to me, and my friends, family and the Australian summer seemed a long way off yet.

  One annual family tradition Dad and I did continue was setting our goals for the coming year. It’s something he has always done and he had encouraged Kane and me to do it ourselves from quite an early age. We set goals under a range of different categories – everything from health and fitness, to school. We normally sit down and go through them with Dad when we’ve had a go ourselves, and also check back through the ones we’d made the previous year to see how we’d done. For me, 2018 was going to be about focusing on school and getting back on track, recovering and taking some time to figure out what was next in terms of adventure, spreading my messages about female empowerment and climate change, and meeting new people and learning from them. My goals were definitely smaller in some ways than they had been for a few years. This was the first time in ages I didn’t have a huge adventure goal and an expedition to work towards.

  Talk about a big night New Year’s Eve. To go crazy, we had some extra Pringles plus a freeze-dried dessert. Mine was a cinnamon rice pudding and it looked as though someone had vomited in my bowl, but it tasted pretty good. We were all asleep by 10 pm.

  My first task for 2018 was to lead the group during the first session of the day. Part way through the Greenland crossing the year before, when I was out the front leading the group, Heath had taught me how to navigate using the sun along with a compass. That morning, I was able to use the sun. For that time of day, I had to position myself at a 45-degree angle to my shadow, pick a distinctive point in the distance, like a piece of sastrugi, and ski towards it.

  Instead of our recent strategy of skiing for 2.5 kilometres to make each break, we decided to push on for an extra 100 metres. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it meant we finished the days earlier, which was always a good thing. However, I was to go at my own pace, since the first session was mine.

  It was tough going . . . not unusual. We were still moving directly into a strong, icy headwind, and the snow was particularly sticky, which made it harder to drag the sleds. But we managed to ski more than 17 kilometres during the day, which means the shocking conditions weren’t holding us back too much. We were getting so close to the end of the journey, I could feel it.

  That night, something incredibly odd happened. We were in the tent, having dinner, when we heard this deep, loud rumble coming towards us. Then there was a thump as the snow we were camped on dropped a couple of centimetres beneath and around us, then the rumble disappeared into the distance. I had no idea what was going on, but Eric soon came to tell us that we’d just experienced a snow quake. It’s basically the snow collapsing into an air pocket below it, triggered by the wind and melting ice, but it moves along at a couple of hundred metres per second. Eric said it was the biggest and loudest he had ever experienced, but it wasn’t anything to worry about despite me having a mini heart attack!

  Our last milestone was during the next day, when we crossed the final degree of latitude (89ºS) on our way to 90ºS. Each degree is separated by 112 kilometres, so we were almost there. We might now come across some other teams, most of which skiied the last degree, but it would have been pretty easy to tell them apart from us. We’d been out here for 30 whole days now without a shower and wearing the same clothes – so we’d be the scrawny, shattered, stinky ones.

  Our last few days were like many of the 30 before them. The sun was shining but the conditions continued to test us. We were covering good ground, but some nights I’d crawl into the vestibule of the tent and just sit on my knees shaking with the cold, almost unable to hold my head upright. I was really looking forward to sleeping in my own warm bed when I got home, with a proper pillow.

  The only new part of our routine for this last week was the requirement to poo into a bag and carry it with us to the Pole. It’s compulsory for anyone within the final degree of the South Pole to do this. If carrying your own waste around in a bag sounds bad to you, get this: to save on weight in the sled, Eric had decided to bring only enough bags for every second day of this last leg, so we had to use each bag twice. If he had told me that when we were packing the sleds, I’m pretty sure I would have volunteered to carry the extra few bags in my sled to save us all the indignity.

  Day 36 was our final full day out on the ice. The weather must have known this was a special day for us because when I crawled out of the tent, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, there was little wind for the first time I could remember and it was only about –30ºC.

  We climbed a small rise in the morning and after the second session, in the distance, we could see a tiny black line on the horizon: the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. I didn’t really believe that’s what it was until I got a little closer and the other guys confirmed it. Directly ahead of me was the end of three crazy years. There had been times in the past few years when I’d really wondered if I would ever get to this point. Eric had said he’d never encountered such brutal conditions in Antarctica in all his 25 years guiding polar expeditions. Now, we were so close I could start picking out different features. Later in the day we even saw a Russian military plane land and take off again.

  That night, we had to camp at a waypoint nine kilometres from the South Pole. It’s really just a sign that says POLE TURN 1 on the ice road with a few coloured flags attached to it. Teams coming in from this side of the station (most come from the opposite side) have to wait for clearance to enter towards the Pole, just in case there are any aircraft coming in. We’d been asked to follow the road to the Pole, but we didn’t want to jeopardise the unsupported status of our expedition. We’d managed to go the whole journey without outside assistance and didn’t want to travel even for a short distance on a road made by another vehicle, so we skied off to one side of it.

  It felt so weird to put up the tents, turn on the stoves, heat the water and get dinner ready for the last time. This chapter of my life was about to end and it was only just now really sinking in.

  Eric called the final day of the expedition ‘Pole Day’. We’d decided to wake up early and get going. By the time we got out of the tents I was feeling all sorts of emotions: chuffed to be so close to achieving such a huge goal, excited to think we’d be heading home in the next few days, but also sad; I knew I’d miss this cold, windy place that had caused me so much pain and suffering but had really opened my eyes to its exquisite beauty. Antarctica was now a part of me.

  I wasn’t convinced that this was to be my last-ever day in a polar environment, though. Dad reckoned he’d seen enough snow and ice to last a lifetime, and Eric was fairly convinced that, after 25 years of guiding, this would be his last long-distance trip in the polar regions. In that time, he’d completed four coast-to-Pole journeys (including ours), which is definitely not something that many people can claim.

  Dad and I tied a boxing kangaroo flag to the back of my sled and off we went, skiing beside the road for the final kilometres. We’d decided to tackle them in four shorter sessions and I was out the front for most of the way. I was s
o keen to get there. In the distance, we saw someone on a skidoo going about their business at the station, which was an incredibly weird sight after seeing no other sign of life for a month. The smell of fumes from the station was also obvious and so strong for us after only breathing in pure air for weeks.

  We tried to stick together, but it was difficult with Ming directing me as he tried to capture everything he wanted for the film. We could see the Pole but our progress was so stop-start that the moment was kind of lost. To begin with, reaching the Pole was slightly underwhelming. I had to stand beneath the flags of all the countries that are signatories to the Antarctic Treaty and wait for Ming to frame everything just right. I was told I had to ski in around the flags and cut in towards the Pole next to the Australian flag rather than just going for it.

  Once I got the all clear, I could ski right up to it and touch the glass ball on top of a barber’s pole marking the Geographic South Pole. It was surreal, like I wasn’t even really there. Like I was watching from above and unsure what to do next. It went incredibly quickly. I started to tear up – emotions were high, but it was all tempered by having to follow directions from Ming. Not even 30 seconds after I’d first reached the Pole, I had to go back to the flags and do it all again to make sure we got the shot Ming was after. It was hard to process what was happening – there was so much going through my head. We had made it. But knowing that almost made me kind of numb as well, especially having to record everything on camera. It probably made me feel a little removed from the enormity of what was happening and where I was. Maybe that would come later, when I had a chance to really think about the journey in my own time.