It’s Aggressive, Non-Emotional!

Friday, 25 July 2008

I woke to the shouts of, “Let’s go, let’s go, lets go!” Simon and Noel were out of their sleeping bags within seconds. As I extricated myself from the tent my heart rate began to race. It was 6:30 am and we were standing on a glacier in nothing but our shorts…

“Come on, don’t just stand there – get on with it!”; another barked instruction from Gary. “It’s about aggression…non-emotional…get in there.”

We ran over the ice and slowed at the edge of the glacial waters. Gary was still shouting at us. Our run had slowed to a walk and we began to sink into the icy pool cut in the glacier’s surface. Two and three steps and the water was rising. I was holding onto Simon and Noel for direction and one of them slipped as the icy layers broke below him. I don’t know which one fell first, as I was being something less than aggressive and non-emotional!

Another shout rained in. “Non-emotional!!” It was starting to make sense; we just had to go in. It was going to be cold, but we had committed to doing it so there wasn’t any point putting a pained expression on - just get on with it.

Moving at speed now, we entered the pool up to our chests in freezing ice filled water and dived, or perhaps more accurately belly flopped, in. I have very little memory of the next few moments but after going under the ice I know we had broken our hold on each other. As I resurfaced, I was up and running. I could hear Gary shouting at us and I headed straight for his voice. In fact, I was told afterwards that I exited the water and left Simon and Noel behind so quickly that people were wondering if I could suddenly see again.

The next order was delivered: “In the snow! Get down!…Aggression…heads in it and roll! Roll….that’s it roll in it…non-emotional!”

Snow helps to get rid of excess water and stops the body freezing – at least it slows the freezing process. I’m not totally convinced by this, but expect that the experts weren’t just making us do it for sadistic fun?!

Three, four, five revolutions in the snow and we were up and running. Hearts pumping, skin freezing, we bolted for the relative warmth of the tent. In the door, clothes off and stove on. We had passed our first survival test.

Last weekend was about learning how to survive if something goes wrong in Antarctica: what to do if we fall in an icy pool; how to deal with a medical emergency; how to stop our team-mates falling down a crevasse; how to self rescue from a crevasse; and how to pull a team-mate out.

As we skied across the glacier after our final emergency scenario, Gary’s words played over and over in my head. Being aggressive is about speed and being non-emotional is about thinking clearly. These are the things that will allow us to survive and thanks to Gary, Felicity, Phil, Simon and the two Toms we now have the skills that could save our lives.