Riches Frigid Women

1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-908646-06-4
Verlag: Eye Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 0, 256 Seiten

Reihe: Eye Classics

In 1997, a group of twenty women set out to become the world's first all female expedition to the North Pole. Sue and Victoria were surprised to find themselves amongst them. En route to the most isolated and forbidding regions of the globe and facing the bitterest hardships, both were seeking a new beginning. For Sue these were the first steps following treatment for breast cancer. For Victoria, abandoning the security of her career was the sole way to test her self-belief. This is mother and daughter, Sue and Victoria's personal account of their trials and survival in the Arctic. Honest, shocking, but never too serious, Frigid Women is a celebration of the positive, 'anything is possible' attitude which can transform life's tribulations into its most rewarding experiences.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Riches, Sue

Riches, Victoria

Leseproben

THE REASONS WHY

SUE

I crawled through the tent doorway at midnight, in full sunlight, the shadows long, the ice crystals shimmering in the air, a stunning view in front of me, and wearing just a set of Damart thermal underwear, a pair of socks and my water bottle insulators as slippers and I wondered to myself, is this the Arctic as I had imagined it? Why was I even going through the door at this time of night? There are no loos in the Arctic.

Was it really as Apsley Cherry-Garrard described it in his book, : “Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised”? That description was enough to put anyone off!

Why did I want to go there? I have never had the burning desire to see the polar wastes since the age of six, or wanted to pull a sledge over rough sea ice that is likely to split open in front of you, or indeed to revel in temperatures of –40°C or less. I like my comforts, my electric blanket, warm fires and delicious food. So why go to the Arctic Ocean for a six-week holiday on ice?

For the answers to these questions we have to go back nearly two years….

VICTORIA

August 1995. Mid-summer in London. The tube was packed with workers and tourists all on their way somewhere and all in their own little world. As usual I was reading the paper, hanging onto the handrails and trying to avoid various smelly armpits all at the same time. Why was I here? I loved my job as a recruitment consultant for Angela Mortimer plc, but hated living in London. There must be more to life than this. Having come to the normal conclusion that I could not think of an alternative career which did not involve commuting, I went back to reading my paper.

Then I saw it:

“Adventurers are being sought for the first attempt by an all woman team to walk to the North Pole.”

For some reason this opening line caught my eye. This must have been fate; here was my alternative to commuting. I read on:

“Prospective candidates will have to pass an SAS based selection test before they will get anywhere near putting on a pair of ice boots. Applications are invited from women of any age, background and occupation, but they will have to prove fitness and commitment. They will have to put up with real pain and discomfort. They will wonder every ten steps what they are doing but they have the opportunity to take part in an epic endeavour.” It sounds corny but at that moment I knew that this was what I wanted to do. I felt on an absolute high.

I got to the office and tested various people’s reactions. The normal comment was:

“Are you crazy, stupid or just insane?”

However, I knew that I could do it and that this was to be a turning point in my life. Having spoken to the team members since, we all felt that same rush of adrenalin when we first heard or read about the expedition. As Geoff Somers, our trainer up at Resolute Bay, was to say to us:

“If someone asks you why you are doing it, they will never understand.”

As always that evening I rang Mum up for a chat and just in passing mentioned that I had seen an article in the and was thinking of applying to go on an expedition to the North Pole. Most mothers would probably have said “Yes dear,” and carried on with the conversation. However Mum is not most mothers. To this day we dispute what happened next: I say that Mum invited herself, and Mum says that I asked her along. The fact remains that Mum also applied to go on the expedition.

So what was this expedition, who was organising it and what was the aim? It all started in June 1995. Caroline Hamilton, a film financier, had an ambition to stand, literally, on top of the world. This dream originated when she sat at the edge of the Arctic Circle in Iceland watching the sun dip to the horizon at midnight and rise again a few minutes later. She had travelled extensively throughout the world and this one ambition eluded her, until she heard about the Polar Travel Company, a specialist travel and guide service for the polar regions headed up by Pen Hadow. Caroline asked Pen if she could make a journey ‘the explorer’s way’ to the North Pole – on foot. She wanted to make the journey within her normal holiday leave, her budget should not exceed £1,500 and any preparation should be in her free time.

The solution was surprisingly simple and completely original – a relay from Ward Hunt Island to the Pole. There would be five teams of four people (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and Echo), and each team would train for one week at Resolute Bay in the Northwest Territories in Canada before being flown onto the ice to relieve the previous team and continue north. Two female guides would accompany the expedition the whole way and in doing so would become the first women in the world to walk to the North Pole. Two women had been to the Pole before, Bancroft (USA) and Mako (Japan), but in larger expeditions with the assistance of dogs or snowmobiles, i.e. we would be the first ever female, human-powered expedition.

Suddenly everyone was asking me questions. Where is Ward Hunt Island? What is the difference between the Geographic and Magnetic North Poles? What wildlife will you see up there? As I realised I had not a clue about where I was intending to go, a serious amount of reading followed, and before long I could answer all the basic questions. There are in fact six ‘poles’, three in the Arctic and three in the Antarctic. The Geographic Pole is the one at the top/bottom of the world, where the axes of the world are. These are the poles that most explorers aim to reach. In the case of the North Pole it is on frozen sea ice and although its position remains constant, there is no actual pole as the ice is always moving. The South Pole is static, on land, and a permanent base marks the spot. The Magnetic Poles are where a compass points to and in the case of the Magnetic North Pole, it is actually about six hundred miles south-west of the Geographic North Pole. In other words, when you want to walk to the Geographic North Pole your compass needs to read 91°E – very confusing. A similar discrepancy applies in the south, but the Magnetic South Pole is in fact in the sea. There are also Geomagnetic North and South Poles – rarely seen as destinations by polar explorers.

For an expedition to the Geographic North Pole, there are two main places to set out from, Canada or Siberia. We chose to set out from Canada. The northernmost tip is called Ward Hunt Island, a tiny outcrop off Ellesmere Island, just under five hundred nautical miles from the North Pole. The nearest community is on Cornwallis Island which is another five hundred odd miles away; where all training takes place, and where ‘base camp’ is set up for most expeditions. This small community, Resolute Bay, was a place with which we were going to become very familiar. North of Resolute there is very little sign of human habitation. The Polaris mines are a short distance away and on Ellesmere Island there is Eureka, a weather station that is manned throughout the year by a hardy band of eight men, who tend to work three months on, one month off. Finally there is Alert, a US military base with very few personnel.

The final area where I had to brush up my knowledge was Arctic wildlife. The big question here was: polar bears or penguins? I soon learned that polar bears live in the Arctic, along with foxes, hares and various birds (which only really make an appearance in the low Arctic), and therefore by a process of elimination, penguins live at the South Pole. People always ask if we saw much wildlife and our answer invokes mixed emotions. Apart from the odd husky and two Arctic hares at Resolute, we saw nothing.

In some ways this was a blessing as we did not fancy being a polar bear’s breakfast. However, the Arctic is a paradise for wild animals and it seems such a shame to have gone so far and not seen a thing. This is unfortunately true for most expeditions and the reason is very simple: most animals live in the low Arctic as that is where most of the food is. Once we were on the ice, if we had seen a polar bear as far north as we were, we would have been in trouble as we would have been the only food around for many miles! We did carry a rifle, but because polar bears are a protected species, you would only kill one in an absolute emergency.

People always ask me why I wanted to go to the North Pole, as it is a pretty drastic way to change your life. I have spent many hours thinking of a suitable answer and the only one I can come up with is that I was brought up to believe that . As a child I had a wonderful existence with my holidays spent either at home in the Midlands or in Perthshire on my grandparents’ farm. My two brothers and I spent hours just playing outdoors or climbing various hills and mountains. This is where my love of the outdoors stems from. I am not a fanatical walker or climber, but just love the peace and solitude that exists away from the towns and cities.

My friends have always said that I do too much, and if anyone was going to the North Pole it would have been me. However I am convinced that anyone can go as long as they believe in themselves. It is hell at times, no doubt about it, but if you have a positive attitude you can get through the bad times. I was lucky to have been brought up...