The decision was logical and justified but whereas months ago the danger had been hypothetical and distant, it now seemed real and immediate. I couldn’t shake off a feeling of dread, almost a sense of premonition. My fear, which had been mitigated by objective reasoning, now became emotionally driven. Saying goodbye to my parents as we prepared to leave reignited the fears that I had tried to rationalise out of my head. Dad is usually very matter of fact in his goodbyes but this time I noticed him staying close, putting his arm around me as we stood for photos and hugging me extra tight as he said farewell. He even blew a kiss as we drove off to the airport, in a way that he hasn’t done since I was little. Both parents told me they were proud but they seemed scared in a way that they hadn’t been for other trips – perhaps it was simply my own fear being reflected.
As we took off in the plane bound for Punta Arenas in Chile, I could see the white and red lights of the M25 stream away into the darkness. I pushed one fingertip against the glass of the window tracing the line of lights which I knew led back home to those I love. In that moment I wanted to be in one of those cars more than anything else in the world. Usually when I leave on a long expedition, the sadness of goodbye is tempered by the excitement of the adventure to come. This time it was different. Every fibre of my body seemed to be screaming at me to stay, to run home, not to leave – as if I was being pulled by a magnet. I told myself that the excitement would come – that as I threw myself into the plans and preparations this horrid homesickness would be squeezed out. In all other respects I felt ridiculously calm. Perhaps the reason crevasses filled my mind was because there was little else left that I could worry about; everything else had already been set in motion and there was nothing I could change, even if I’d wanted to.
Punta Arenas is a city with a population of over 150,000 but it retains the feel of a frontier town. Sandwiched between the coast and a sprawling hillside, it looks out towards the Strait of Magellan, providing a clear view of incoming storms that gather on the steely horizon. I had visited Punta once before, on my way out of Antarctica nearly a decade ago, and I remembered two things about it: the constant wind and the packs of stray dogs. As a face-full of dust was blown into my eyes and I warded a pack of dogs away from our stack of luggage on the street outside the hostel, I realised that nothing much had changed.
The hostel was a rundown backpacker haunt just like hundreds of others all over the city but it had a shabby homeliness about it and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. It was perfect. The hostel manager looked slightly bewildered as the team took over his kitchen, made themselves at home in the meeting room and filled the upstairs landing with clothing and equipment. I gathered the team together and between us we came up with an action plan for the following six days. Our biggest job was to prepare all the expedition rations. To save the cost of shipping large, weighty volumes of food from the UK we had decided to source what we could in Punta. In addition, any food we had brought with us was still in its original packaging to satisfy the Chilean customs regulations. This meant that the job of sorting the expedition food into individual daily rations had to be started from scratch in our hostel.
I had spent a long time over the previous months planning the rations in minute detail, right down to the last gram. There is a formula used by sports scientists that determines the amount of carbohydrates and protein a person will need, just from their body weight. Unfortunately, the size and shape of the members of our team varied widely from tiny Era, who weighed barely 50 kilograms, to Reena, who weighed over 70 kilograms. I was the heaviest in the team by far (as well as the tallest – I often felt like a freakish giant next to my teammates), so I decided to use my weight for all the calculations. This would mean that some of the girls would get at a least a third more carbohydrates and protein than they needed but, I reasoned, too much was better than too little.
As well as carbohydrates and proteins, I had to take into consideration our fat and calorie intake. With the weight in our sledges always my primary consideration, I had set a target of no more than 1 kilogram of food, per person, per day. The task of getting the necessary amounts of carbohydrate, protein, fat and calories into just 1 kilogram of food was time-consuming and frustrating. Trawling through the nutritional information on packets of hundreds of different foodstuffs, I’d find something that was extremely high in carbohydrates but had no fat or protein; or something that was high in protein and fat but which was extremely heavy. To make matters more complicated, I had to take into account the likes and dislikes of eight women who all ate very different food at home. Kim wanted banana chips and dried mango, Reena wouldn’t eat prawn crackers, Sophia didn’t want too much sweet food and, of course, I also had to make sure that nothing contained alcohol or meat products (unless I was sure they were halal) and especially not products from a cow (Reena’s request as a Hindu) or a pig (Era and Kim’s request).
After days of trial and error, I finally had a combination I was happy with that would fit all the requirements. For breakfast we would eat porridge with sugar and fortified milk powder and a hot chocolate. During the day we would each have a bag of snacks to munch on during our breaks. The bags would contain peanuts, sesame snaps, toffee popcorn, banana chips, chocolate and boiled sweets, and we had two sachets of high-carbohydrate sports drink to add to our water bottles. In the evening we would have a dehydrated meal, a protein drink, a hot chocolate, a soup and a packet of noodles to add to our meal.
Armed with lists of the foodstuffs we had not brought with us from the UK, the team split up and scouted the shops in the city, quickly clearing shelves of chocolate, peanuts and boiled sweets as if we were on a deranged trolley dash. Powdered soup presented a problem. The people of Punta, it appears, only like asparagus soup, as it was the only flavour we could find. Forty days of asparagus soup wasn’t ideal but at least everyone liked the flavour. The most elusive item was banana chips and we had all but given up when we were directed to a tiny, brightly painted shop opposite the large supermarket in town. The shop’s glass counters were divided into big bins of dried fruit, from figs to papayas, and every conceivable type of nut. Not only did the shop have banana chips but they had two varieties, sweet and salty. This sparked perhaps the most heated team discussion of the entire expedition. ‘What foolishness creates salty banana chips?’ exclaimed Kim. ‘It’s not a banana chip if it isn’t sweet.’
‘No,’ insisted Sophia. ‘We want salty. We have too much sweet stuff. Banana chips are salty.’
We were all called upon to give our verdict in the Great Banana Chip Debate, each team member tasting both varieties and stating their preference. It was clear that the only compromise was to have a mix of both but the exact proportion of sweet versus salty was haggled over with all the finesse of an international territorial dispute.
Back at the hostel, we had started a production line to prepare some 460 ration bags. Each of us took control of one ingredient. I was in charge of toffee popcorn along with Kim; Steph and Reena dealt with the peanuts, Kylie added boiled sweets, Helen took control of chocolate and Sophia the hotly debated banana chips. At first it was difficult not to eat as we worked but as the sickly smell of confectionary filled the hostel, sugar was the last thing we were craving.
While we worked, the ALE doctor called on us. I’d first met him at Santiago airport when he’d come over to introduce himself (dressed in our polar clothing we were easily spotted). The first thing he’d said to me was, ‘We see teams come down year after year and we watch them all make the same mistakes.’ He went on to list some of the most common errors and I was pleased that none of them applied to us, but his comment had put me on the defensive. I’d worked tirelessly for two years to get as much advice as I could, including from ALE, to make sure we were as prepared as possible and yet the doctor seemed to have already decided that we were just like all the others and that there was little hope for us. I realised that from ALE’s point of view our team represented something of a risk. Antarctica
is a dangerous place and I was bringing a team of novices with less than a year’s training to complete a journey that teams much more experienced and physically stronger than us had failed to complete safely. ALE were not responsible for us on the ice – we were a private expedition for which they were providing logistical support – but if we came to harm they would inevitably be called to account. For this reason they are stringent about which expeditions they transport to Antarctica and would be well within their right to refuse to take an expedition that they felt was unsafe or unprepared. I didn’t want to give ALE any reason to doubt us.
The doctor had called on us at the hostel to go through our first aid kits. Before he left he looked through the nutritional breakdown of our rations and was concerned. It is a standard rule of thumb that someone on a demanding polar expedition will need at least 4,500 calories a day, increasing to around 5,000 calories by the end of the journey. Our rations provided 4,300 calories at the start, increasing to around 4,600 calories for the second half of the expedition. I knew this was less than usual but then our team was significantly smaller, physically, than average. During our training in Norway and New Zealand it was clear that some team members were incapable of ingesting any more than this. Once the doctor had left I thought hard about our rations and whether they needed to be changed. I am always careful not to let my own ego or pride get in the way of making good decisions. In this case, even after objectively re-examining my calculations, I was still confident that our rations were the best they could be for our team.
The team was to go to the ALE office the next day to talk about our expedition. Steve Jones, my main contact at ALE, would be running the meeting and, although he had been a very supportive friend over the last year, I knew that he was now wearing his ALE hat. He would need to know every detail of our preparations, from kit to rations, in order to satisfy himself that we were ready. As I gathered papers and documents for the meeting, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was preparing for an exam. Steve would be exacting and thorough, and I needed to prove that my team was prepared.
We filed into the ALE office and were shown into a bright and airy lounge. The girls rapidly planted themselves on the inviting sofas lining the room, sprawling like teenagers, while Steve sat on a chair in the middle. He talked through every aspect of our expedition, from our expectations and training to the make and model of our stoves and satellite phones. Steve’s main area of concern seemed to be our plans to remove our human waste throughout the expedition. ALE already insisted that expeditions remove their human waste from within the last degree of latitude surrounding the South Pole, as this is where there is the greatest concentration of activity. No one had yet tried doing the same for the duration of an entire expedition from the edge of the continent to the pole. Steve expressed his doubts. ‘This is already a huge challenge, so I don’t see the sense in making it unnecessarily harder for yourselves.’ We had no idea how much waste we would accumulate and therefore how much extra weight this decision would add to our loads.
I tried to reassure Steve with the same logic I had used on myself. ‘If it gets too heavy we’ll just stop collecting it. If we only manage to remove our waste for part of the way before it gets too heavy, then surely that’s better than nothing and at least we will have learnt about the sort of weights involved. At the moment no one knows.’ Steve looked unimpressed. He clearly thought it was an act of foolishness on my part.
Seeing that I wasn’t willing to back down, he moved on to another area of concern. As a result of the team’s training in New Zealand, we had opted for one resupply of food and fuel to be left on the ice for us by plane. We would also be able to leave rubbish at this depot to be collected later in the season. ALE’s own guided expeditions have a second, additional resupply closer to the South Pole and Steve was keen for us to do the same. The decision to have any support at all had been difficult for me but a second resupply seemed like a step too far. We wouldn’t need it, I was sure of it. The discussions with Steve went on long into the afternoon. ALE warned me about the difficulties of travelling with a larger group, about the likelihood of the women spreading out. I listened carefully to their advice but as much as I was wary of being over-confident I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. I didn’t feel that I was being given much credit for knowing what I was doing. We had trained as a team and put systems in place to avoid such dangers. Separation was one of my worst fears and so we always travelled ski-tip to sledge-back, leaving no possibility for the team to spread out. I was confident in our team’s preparation and any departure from the accepted wisdom had been deliberate and careful.
With just days to go until our scheduled departure, we laid out all the equipment that was coming with us to Antarctica in the garage behind the hostel and streamlined wherever we could to reduce weight. I was determined that we would be as lightweight as possible and went through our equipment repeatedly to root out any unnecessary spares or luxury items. Rather than each team member having their own penknife, journal, pencil, GPS, compass, camera, moisturiser, supply of wet wipes and toothpaste, we shared these items as a team. Personal luxuries such as books, good luck mascots and Christmas paraphernalia were banned as were any well-meaning ‘surprise’ gifts for the team. Most of the women were happy to go along with my weight-saving rules but there was some resistance as I sifted through each team member’s personal items. Sophia and Reena had each packed two hats and were reluctant to leave one behind; Steph grumbled as I made her remove the wet wipes that were included with each of her sanitary towels and Kylie was disappointed when I asked her not to take the small Christmas presents that she had secretly brought for everyone. I felt like a killjoy but if I allowed Kylie to bring gifts then everyone would bring something for Christmas and before we knew it we’d have fake Christmas trees and frozen turkey slices being tucked away in our baggage, adding considerably to our loads.
I knew that the girls all thought I was unnecessarily obsessed with weight and didn’t understand my seemingly pedantic, minimalist approach but I knew what it was like to pull a sledge for six weeks; I knew we would spend day after day thinking about what was in the sledge and agonise over whether every item was strictly necessary; to be desperate to identify anything, however small, that could be left behind just to reduce the weight, even if only infinitesimally. I knew that by the end of the expedition, they would understand my obsession.
Each evening, we spent a lot of time sewing. The upstairs landing resembled a sewing circle as we made ourselves comfortable round the electric fire surrounded by spare material, boxes of needles and rolls of thread. We each had almost identical clothing that needed to be colour-coded so that we knew which was ours and also had to be adapted for our own personal needs and preferences. Some cut extra holes in the balaclavas we used to cover our faces so that they could breathe more easily while others sewed pleats in the fabric so that it was a closer fit. Some made thumb-holes in the sleeves of their thermal tops to keep their wrists warm while others made ‘wristies’ from fleece scraps or old socks. We chatted as we sewed and although it was often the early hours before we all turned in, the sewing circle was the most relaxing part of our day.
I tried to make sure that we didn’t work ourselves into the ground, that everybody got enough sleep and enough to eat so that they arrived in Antarctica fit and rested rather than stressed and exhausted, but there was a nervous energy in the team that caused mistakes to be made, mistakes that we couldn’t afford. Kim came to see me in the hostel with a broken stove pump in her hand. She had been a little overenthusiastic when testing a stove and snapped part of the plastic pump, rendering our spare stove useless. I was exasperated at her carelessness but calmed myself with the thought that we could probably find a replacement in Punta. Shortly afterward Steph went into Punta wearing her windproof expedition smock and – within 100 yards of the hostel – had lost it.
‘I’m sorry, Felicity. I’ve looked everywhere but it’s gone,’ she apologised.
I was furious. There was no way she could ski to the South Pole without her windproof and we didn’t have spares. Each team member wore the same branded equipment so, even if we found a similar jacket in Punta, it would impact the branding of the team and our precious sponsorship. ‘Well, you can’t come to Antarctica without it,’ I snapped. ‘So you’d better get out there and find it.’
She spent the rest of the day despondently pacing the streets around the hostel looking for any sign of her bright red jacket. She asked in cafes and shops if anyone had seen it and found a man who thought he’d seen something red blowing towards the sea. I noticed the look of sympathy in the eyes of the rest of the team. They thought I was being unnecessarily harsh. Steph was clearly devastated and losing the smock had been a genuine mistake – but I saw it as a symptom of a worrying trend within the team.
Each member undoubtedly cared about our expedition and was undeniably trying hard, but something was missing. The team didn’t quite appreciate the seriousness of what we were about to do. To them it was still a game; it wasn’t real. I felt partly responsible for this attitude because in Norway we had looked after everyone as if it was a school trip. If someone lost an item, we found them a replacement; if they came to us with a problem, we solved it. In Antarctica I couldn’t look after everyone all of the time. The women would have to take responsibility for themselves.
As the light faded, I sent someone out to fetch Steph and bring her back to the hostel. When she arrived I gathered the team together in the breakfast room. I sighed inwardly, feeling like a headmistress. I talked about the consequences of the broken stove and the lost jacket, adding drama to emphasize the point. ‘I know you think I am being harsh but Antarctica will be far less forgiving if we make these kinds of mistakes during the expedition. In Antarctica there are no second chances. I know you feel terribly sorry now – but it is too late, the damage has already been done. I want you to remember how sorry you feel right now and use it to stop you making mistakes. Imagine how awful you would feel if you make a mistake in Antarctica that sends the expedition home, a mistake that stops us reaching the South Pole. Use that thought to scare yourself into being more careful and more conscientious than you have ever been in your life. Every time you are tempted to cut a corner or rush a job – and believe me, when you are cold and tired, you will be tempted – remember how awful you feel now and use it to make yourself go that extra mile. I need you all to feel sorry before you make a mistake, not after.’ There was a glum silence and I was tempted to lighten the mood, to focus on how well we were doing, but I fought the instinct. I needed this message to sink in.
Call of the White Page 16