Call of the White (11 page)

Arriving at Stansted airport it wasn't difficult to spot the photographer, Rob, and the film crew, Al and Elliott; they were standing next to a conspicuous mountain of luggage that I noted with anxiety. I had known Al for a while. He and his business partner, Elliott, were both climbers and had made filming in tough locations their speciality. Rob was a photographer who had worked with me on previous expeditions. With a theatrical background he could be alarmingly flamboyant at times but he was dependable, accommodating and took great photographs. As we greeted each other I made a mental effort to bite my lip about the luggage. They were here as a favour, taking time out of running their business to help me, so I was in no position to be annoyed.

Next to arrive was Helen, who had made the long journey down from her home in Derbyshire, closely followed by two of my volunteer trainers, Sarah and Mark. I had met Sarah during my very first overseas expedition. She was an expert on Greenland and now ran her own travel company, which specialised in polar holidays. Mark is one of those people that you feel you have known for years within minutes of meeting. He had been part of a team I had trained the year before when he had been a competitor in a race across the Canadian Arctic. This would be the first time Mark had taken on the role of instructor and although I knew he would be brilliant, I suspected that he was a little nervous.

The normal check-in procedure at the airport had broken down and instead, a young girl in a short skirt and heels stood on an airline counter using a handheld megaphone to yell out the next plane to leave from a list on her clipboard.

As we waited, I tried to reduce the weight of our luggage and condense the number of bags as much as possible. I threw heavy snow boots in front of the team and convinced them to wear them on the aircraft, putting their lighter footwear in the hold luggage instead. The snow boots were like oversized wellies with felt liners and thick rubber soles. Each boot weighed a kilogram.

With our plane already boarding, we were finally called forward to check in, with no time to argue over the excess baggage fee. It came to over £500. I handed over my credit card with tears in my eyes. It was money that the expedition didn't have and we were so short of cash that this kind of mistake would be crippling. We dashed through security as our gate was closing, Rob and Elliott removing the cumbersome snow boots to run in their socks. Red faced and gasping for breath, we reached the gate and handed over our boarding cards. Last in line was Elliott, and when he didn't arrive on the gangway I went back to the gate to look for him. Elliott was standing by the boarding desk, boots in hand. ‘It's my passport,' he stammered, looking as if he was about to burst into tears. ‘It expired in January.'

‘Sorry,' said the gate attendant, handing back the passport. ‘You can't travel and your bags will have to come off the plane too.'

Elliott and I looked at each other in panic. I had condensed lots of bags into just two or three while we waited to check in and as a result neither of us could remember exactly what kit had ended up in his bags. It was bad enough that we would be without Elliott, but now it looked unlikely that Al would have enough kit with him to do any filming at all on his own.

This was the first hour of the first day of our trip and already I'd had two major disasters; the excess baggage and Elliott's passport. Neither was my fault and yet somehow both threw my confidence. Was I completely incompetent after all?

Boarding the plane, I broke the news to Al just as Elliott rang his mobile. Elliott was on his way into London to try to get a new passport in time to get to Norway before it was all over. He'd had to buy a pair of shoes in the airport as the snow boots were the only footwear he had been left with. More seriously, the bag that had been returned from the plane contained most of the sound kit, leaving Al seriously depleted but he could still film using the sound from the camera. It wouldn't be great but it would be better than nothing.

Filming the expedition wasn't critical to the project, whereas the £500 sitting on my credit card to pay for the excess baggage made me feel physically sick. Where would I find the money to pay off the bill? I decided not to allow myself to dwell on it. This was only the first day of a complicated and pivotal training event and I had to focus completely on the fortnight ahead.

Handbags
and

Snow Boots

I arrived in Norway with the training team and film crew a day before the rest of the women. Peter, who had spent two days driving the Land Rover and trailer full of equipment all the way from the UK, collected us from the train station in the tiny village of Haugastøl on the edge of the Hardangervidda long after nightfall. With the entire training team crammed into the Land Rover we made the slow and twisting climb up onto the plateau. The headlights picked out deep drifts of snow piled up on either side of the narrow road but we could see little else in the darkness. After a long hour we pulled up next to a darkened hut, half buried in snow. This was Dyranut Fjellstova, a family-run hostel perched on the highest point of the plateau. The hut was usually closed for the winter months but the owner had been persuaded to let us use the place for a fortnight. We hadn't expected any special treatment but the owners had clearly taken the effort to prepare the place for us. The windows were unboarded, snowdrifts had
been cleared from the doorways and, the ultimate of thoughtful gestures, a simple meal had been left out. We fell on the food gratefully before pulling out our sleeping bags and finding somewhere in the hut to sleep.

The following morning I was the first to wake. I had been too tired to explore the building before going to bed but now, pulling on a thick jumper, I padded through the grey light of early morning to have a good look around. The hut was lined in pine to make it cosy and hung with stuffed animals and painted scenes of a green Hardangervidda that looked very different to the landscape visible through the windows. As well as a central dining room heated by a large, stone fireplace there was a fully equipped kitchen, a small office which became a meeting room for the training team, a bathroom and several bedrooms. Al took over the largest bedroom as a temporary editing studio.

The candidates would be staying in a long accommodation block with its own bathroom that was separated from the main hut by a few hundred metres of drifted snow. I grinned to myself in satisfaction; the size and layout of the hut couldn't have been more perfect if it had been built specifically with our group in mind.

The fire in the dining area still glowed from the previous evening. I pushed some extra logs into the grate and drew close as I wrapped my hands around a hot mug of coffee, gazing out of the wide windows at the monochrome landscape that surrounded us. The Hardangervidda was as wild as I remembered it. Apart from a 6-metre-high wooden troll perched on the hill opposite the hut (a whim of the owner), there was no other sign of civilisation as far as the eye could see. Clouds of snow blotted out the horizon so that it was impossible in places to tell where the heavy sky ended and the snow-covered hills began. Like a bowl of cream-covered fruit, the snow flowed seamlessly over every undulation and as the day went on, the light shifted over the smooth, flawless surface so that the brain had to work hard to get a sense of perspective. With no trees or buildings to give an inkling of scale, a small clump of snow a few metres away could look like a mountain in the distance and a tiny drift of snow could seem as tall as a neck-breaking escarpment.

I heard the others stir one by one and soon everyone was sitting around one of the long tables in the dining area with hot cups of tea, allocating themselves jobs for the day to prepare for the arrival of the candidates. By late afternoon I was in the Land Rover on my way to meet the group off the train from Oslo. Two more trainers, Jim and Jo, had met the women as they arrived at Oslo airport and accompanied them on the train. Jo had been a part of an all-woman team that I had put together to cross Greenland two years before. She was also a secondary school teacher and so was very good at herding temperamental groups and preparing for the unexpected. Jim was Sarah's husband: I had known him since we had both worked for the British Antarctic Survey nearly a decade earlier. Jim had sent a text to say that they had met the women and caught the right train but he hadn't given any information about how many women were with them. So as I nervously waited on the station platform with Peter, Rob and Al, I still didn't know exactly who would be getting off the train. Had Kim got her visa in time? Would Barbara be there? I paced up and down the platform, more impatient with each passing minute. I thought about how often I'd imagined this moment and how impossibly unattainable it had seemed at times as we had faced setback after setback. I squinted down the tracks, searching for the lights of an oncoming train. I couldn't stand still, partly due to the cold that was seeping through my jacket and partly through excitement.

The tracks began to fizz and I took a step back from the edge of the platform watching the approaching headlights. The train slid along the station, slowing down enough for me to glance into the windows of each carriage as it passed. I searched for a cluster of women, for a face that was familiar, but spotted nothing. The train stopped and people spilled out of the doors. I looked up and down the platform, looking for anyone I knew, but there was no sign of them. I started walking alongside the train, feeling the concern in my stomach. There was a flash of cameras behind me and I turned to see a gaggle of well-wrapped bodies huddled by a doorway at the far end of the train. They were here! I ran over to the girls and began hugging my way through the group.

At first it was hard to recognise who was who; all I could see were broad smiles under big hats, fur-lined hoods and woolly scarves. There was Lina and Mel, now Alecia and Athina. Kim, she had made it! And Barbara! Everyone was here. The group looked hopelessly out of place as they began dragging wheeled suitcases across the snow-covered platform, handbags still firmly in place in the crooks of their arms. As the suitcases were manhandled onto the roof of the Land Rover, I hung back from the group and took a minute to soak in the moment. Here they were, a group of women from all over the world come together in a remote corner of Norway in the dead of winter. It wasn't the South Pole, but right then it felt like an equal achievement.

‘They are an awesome bunch of ladies,' Jo muttered, coming to join me. ‘You've chosen well.' I couldn't help smiling in agreement. Barbara looked great after four months of training while Aniza from Brunei and Reena from India chatted animatedly to each other and Charmaine jumped onto the roof of the Land Rover to help secure all the luggage. All of them looked completely at ease, as if they had already known each other for years.

The Hardangervidda had prepared its own very special welcome for the women. A storm was brewing up on the plateau and so the only road that snaked up to our hut from the valley was closed. Peter disappeared to talk to the snowplough drivers who make regular journeys across the Hardangervidda to keep the road clear of snowdrifts. They agreed to take us as far as the hut in convoy but some of the women would have to ride in the cabs of the snowploughs. One snowplough with three of the women in the cab led the way, the Land Rover followed and a second snowplough brought up the rear with another three women in the cab; the Norwegian drivers looked surprised but delighted as these exotic women and their handbags made themselves comfortable. The snowploughs are huge machines the size of a large lorry; squat and powerful with vicious-looking blades taller than a man welded to the front. The blades cut through the snowdrifts that were already forming on the road, flinging plumes of snow into the darkness. We followed in the Land Rover a few metres behind the lead plough, but even so it wasn't long before the blizzard had completely obscured it from view. All we could see were the flashing lights on the snowplough staining the snow orange so that, from the front of the Land Rover, it looked like we were driving into a broiling ball of fire. It was a dramatic sight and I realised an anxious silence had fallen over everyone inside the vehicle. I turned to look at the faces in the back. Aniza was closest to me, her eyes wide in horror and her mouth hanging open in shock. It was the first time she had ever seen snow.

Arriving at the hut we ushered the group inside quickly, helping them as they stumbled in the deep drifts and fought to keep the blowing snow out of their faces. Even the training team were pleased to finally shut the door against the blizzard outside and enjoy the warmth of the fire. As the candidates tucked into the casual meal Sarah and Mark had prepared I gave them all a brief overview of the week ahead. We had a lot to cover so I warned them all about early starts and late nights but stressed that the trainers would support them every step of the way. I knew how scary the Hardangervidda could be and I was slightly worried about how the women would react when the morning revealed exactly how isolated we were. The short journey from Land Rover to hut had been enough to make one or two women a little nervous but I suspected that, more than the conditions, it was the selection that everyone knew was coming at the end of the week that was the most daunting. ‘This is a selection but it is not a competition,' I told the group. ‘It's not about who is the fittest or the fastest, it's about creating the best mix of people, so the best thing you can do is just to be yourself. I know it's hard but try to forget about the selection and just enjoy being here.'

The next morning I couldn't help laughing as we watched the candidates emerge from the accommodation block and struggle through the snowdrifts to the hut. They all wore the big down jackets and snow boots they had been issued the night before but several still clutched their handbags as they fought against the wind-driven snow. A few stopped midway to gape at their surroundings, incredulous, before putting their heads down in grim determination to continue. I think for some, the 50-metre walk to the hut that first morning was a mini-expedition in itself. After breakfast we gathered everyone in the lecture room with a comforting fire blazing. The very first lecture was about cold weather injuries. Having this lecture so early on risked scaring the women but I couldn't chance the group spending any significant length of time outside without them first being aware of how dangerous the cold can be. We drew on the experiences of all the trainers to explain injuries such as frostbite, hypothermia and snow blindness, as well as the less obvious – but more common – dangers of blisters, bad hygiene and dehydration. It is ironic that one of the greatest dangers in the cold is to overheat. Sweating through exertion or wearing too many layers leaves skin and clothing damp. The moisture freezes in the cold, which can lead to potentially serious frostbite or hypothermia. The candidates had to learn to fight the natural instinct, when faced with subzero temperatures, to wear excessive layers. They also needed to realise the importance of keeping their socks and gloves dry to protect their fingers and toes from injury. The trainers would be making sure the girls had spare gloves and socks, checking the ones they were wearing were dry and that the group were drying their kit properly every evening but the trainers wouldn't be able to see everything. The girls needed to learn to be responsible for keeping themselves safe if they were going to go to Antarctica.

Lecture over, the chairs were pushed to one side and the men ordered to leave as the girls were issued the rest of the clothing they would need for the training. The room was soon full of half-naked women squirming into thermal long johns and windproof salopettes. I had tried to match the sizes of the clothing with the measurements the candidates had sent me by email but women very rarely fall into clear categories of small, medium and large – and this group was no exception.

With everyone dressed in their new kit, complete with goggles, gloves and snow boots, we all trouped outside into the snow. Two of the candidates had not seen snow before arriving in Norway; most of the others had had no more than brief glimpses on holidays to the States or a freak snowfall that hadn't settled – certainly nothing like the amount of snow that smothered the Hardangervidda around us and continued to fall from the sky in big fat flakes. I got them all building snowmen in groups and had to laugh as I overheard Alecia from Jamaica getting frustrated. ‘The snow won't stick together!' she ranted as yet another fistful of white powder fell from her hands. She noticed me watching her. ‘I'm trying to make a head for the snowman but it keeps falling apart,' she told me. ‘This is surprisingly difficult.'

After snowmen came the art of snow angels. Many of the girls paused before falling backward into the snow as instructed, unsure that purposely floundering in ice-cold powder could possibly provide any semblance of fun but, one by one, the whole group was soon flapping in the snowdrifts, pointing and laughing like children at the angel-like impressions they left behind. Finally, the training session erupted into the inevitable snowball fight, the women throwing snow into each other's faces and making unsuccessful chases, their getaways hampered by heavy snow boots and deep snow. Eventually the group were ushered back into the hut, red-faced with exertion and so overheated that steam rose from them like warm breath on a cold morning. They had learnt their first lesson about how easy it was to get too hot, even at
–
20ºC.

Later that evening Elliott arrived, having made a miraculous last-minute dash from London with his new passport. He looked a bit dazed as he entered a hut full of more than 20 excitable, noisy women but soon settled in, disappearing with Al to fill their makeshift editing studio with more wires and boxes of magic.

The next day it was time to get the candidates on skis. After a quick lecture in the hut from Jim about bindings and the theory of how to ski, we all went outside to put theory into practice. We were using cross-country skis, which are narrower than typical downhill versions. Cross-country skis are designed for walking, so although the toe of the foot is fixed, the heel is left free. The bindings on the skis were simple plastic affairs designed to be used with the well-insulated snow boots that the girls were wearing. The problem was that most of the candidates had tiny feet, whereas the boots were larger sizes. Many of the girls found their feet swimming in excess space, which made it even harder when they came to strap on the skis. In Alecia's case, I saw her feet come out of the boots completely a couple of times so that she was standing in the snow in her socks – clearly not ideal.