A World Of Sponsorship Possibilities…

Friday, 30 May 2008 - Photo: Mark at the Duke of Edinburgh Awards

Recently I have been writing about my fear of the unknown – the terrain that we will face in Antarctica. So, last week I did something about it and travelled to Norway in search of sastrugi…

On Sunday 18th May I flew to Oslo with an old school friend and rowing team mate, Alan Ritchie. We got a train north to Otta, where we met our guide, Inge Solheim.

Inge has been to the North Pole seven times, Antarctica four times, crossed Greenland using equipment that Scott and Amundsen would have used 100 years ago and generally lives and works in snowscapes around the world. He also designed the tents we will be using this December in Antarctica and he is closely involved with the race logistics. So, just about the best person to train with!

When we arrived, Inge showed us to our guest house and he asked us to lay out our gear for the two day “mini-expedition”. We quickly got the message that he does not leave anything to chance and he wanted to check to see if we were missing anything. We were!

After the kit inspection we went for dinner in a local restaurant and during the meal I got a real sense of how Inge thinks. As we chatted about the great adventurers of the past, it became clear that Inge, and perhaps Norwegian adventurers in general, see preparation as the most valuable asset for any expedition. It is all about preparation and succeeding not heroism and bravado.

When Alan asked: “Do you think you can control everything?” Inge responded: “Nearly. And what you can’t control…that is the X-factor!” The “X-factor” is where the risk is. It is those things which are out of our control in adventure racing, as they are in life. Too often in the past I have been under pressure, not because of the X-factor but rather because of something that I could have controlled.

And so, the trip to Norway quickly became an exercise in controlling the things we can control in the four areas that I mentioned in previous blogs: Physical; Mental; Survival; and Terrain.

Physical: This trip was the first time that I had ever pulled a pulk whilst travelling on skis for long distances. This is not like normal marathon running. It is not even like running with a pack on your back. There are different forces on the body working different muscles, so the training will require as much hiking with a sledge or pulling a tire as I can manage. I think this is the area that I am best able to get right given my previous endurance race successes and failures!

Mental: All of the polar experts I have taken advice from have told me that the mental challenge is the hardest. Although most sports people talk about the mental aspect of their game, in Polar expeditions it also means loneliness. Not being able to see adds yet another layer to that. In Norway, we mostly travelled in a line, one behind the other. Often I was able to slot my skis into Alan’s tracks and keep going with no instruction. At other times the wind was strong and the cold meant that I had my hood up, my hat on and face mask up…no sight and no sound of people trapping me inside my head with only my thoughts to keep me company.

We will have to do this for 10 to 15 hours per day for 44 days to the South Pole. Added to the loneliness will be extreme physical pressure, increasing altitude, sleep deprivation and major weight loss. I suspect I will run out of thoughts, go mad or maybe solve some of the world’s problems.

However, taking the Norwegian advice, I am looking for technology that I can use blind; for example:
- An MP3 player that I can use. I will load books, music, comedy and who knows maybe I’ll get into poetry for once. We can charge the batteries with a small solar panel.
- A watch that I can use and does not run out of battery. A heavy duty talking watch would be good when on the move so I don’t have to take my gloves off. But in the tent at night, I will need a watch that I can feel the hands of, so that I don’t annoy my team-mates by using a talking watch to check the time in the middle of the night. I find it really mentally challenging when I do not know what the time is. When I first went blind it was really tough when I did not know if it was light or dark, time to get up or hours to go… That cannot happen in Antarctica.

Survival: Norway highlighted that survival is all about systems. At one extreme, it means following a system in camp that allows three people to live with each other comfortably in extreme conditions without cracking up and having to be air lifted out. At the other extreme the systems are designed to guard against frostbite, dehydration, hypothermia or worst of all death. Some issues came up for me to get control of:
- “Hand System”: I remember at the North Pole Marathon that my hands became dangerously cold at times. I thought it was mainly because my gloves were wrong, but in Norway it was clear that because I cannot see I have to keep taking my gloves off to feel the clips on my sledge harness or bag, to take the lid off my mug and rip open a powered drink packet or to do almost anything. This is okay in Norway, but it is something that could be dangerous in Antarctica. If I do not get the ‘hand system’ right this has the potential to take me and our team out of the race because of frostbite. Being blind does mean that touch is more important to me and I will have to find a system to allow me to feel what I need, without getting frostbite. As you can appreciate, with no sight I really value the other senses, so I will be doing everything I can to keep all feeling in my fingers and the rest of the senses intact!
- “Head System”: Not being able to see the people in front of me means that I use my hearing to give me the information that my eyes do not. However, at times in Norway it was so cold that I needed to have all my head gear on – hat, face mask, hood and sunglasses. With my ears covered I could not hear and I had to take my hood down. Luckily Norway was not dangerously cold and I could get away with doing that, but Antarctica will not allow for any compromises. There are a couple of options for getting around this and I will try to use both: First, a non-technical option, which is to design a hat/face mask/hood system with a hole for my ear to hear through, which I will need to test pre-December. Secondly, I need to find and test a two-way military radio. There is a type that sits on the throat and is voice activated. This way I will be able to communicate with one other person on the team even if we are cocooned.

Terrain: The sastrugi that I went to Norway to find had recently been covered in snow. This means that I have not yet been able to test my skiing skills on real sastrugi nor have I been able to explore how my team mates will communicate that terrain to me. I really need to find ice waves of sastrugi in the coming training sessions. However, on a positive note, having spent time on skis and even going over some artificial sastrugis created by a snow plough, my confidence is improving.

I actually find the snow so much more forgiving for me than any rock covered hill or mountain that I have been on. In the mountains I am usually in a rage (inside my head) by the time we have made it out of the car park, whereas I honestly cannot wait to get back onto the snow.

That the terrain is on my side, at least, is a relief, with now only six months to go…

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