Call of the White (9 page)

Alecia and Kim had a lot in common but there was an obvious friction between them when they met. Kim was excited, which accentuated her garrulous tendency, and I could see Alecia becoming increasingly frustrated at not being able to speak. Kim seemed completely oblivious to the tension and gave Alecia a huge hug as we parted, stressing numerous times that they were in this together. As I walked away I wondered whether or not to be concerned about potential antagonism between them but realised there was little I could do. I would have to watch, and wait, and hope that they would work it out themselves.

The UK

Waking up in my own bed for the first time in three months, I didn't want to move. It felt as if I had no energy left. I knew there was an infinite list of things to be done but I couldn't seem to get my mind to focus on exactly what they were. I sat up in bed with a coffee to write a to-do list, but thinking about it all was too exhausting. I finished my coffee and slept for most of the rest of the day.

In the post that morning was a letter from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust welcoming me home. I was incredibly grateful to them for their belief in the project and the letter prompted me to start the report they had requested about my journey. I sat in bed with my laptop and focused completely on the report for the next three or four days. As I typed, the route ahead seemed to solidify itself into a plan of action. By the time the report was finished my enthusiasm to attack the growing to-do list had returned.

In the meantime, applications for the UK reserve position had closed. I was going to be the UK representative on the team but we also needed a reserve in case someone had to drop out at the last minute due to illness or injury. The original plan was to ask the unselected candidate from each country to be a reserve but it would be impossible to train so many people to the required standard. I decided on one reserve and, as the involvement of the UK was so critical to our funding, I resolved that the reserve should be from the UK. I'd received more than fifty applications from women in the UK, most of whom had a lot of previous experience. The reserve role was a difficult position to fill, requiring someone who would invest significant time and energy into a project that they might not, ultimately, take part in. Critical to the interviews would be to establish what their motivation would be.

I invited ten of the applicants for an interview but shortly afterwards received emails from two unselected applicants asking for reconsideration. After battling such requests in Singapore and New Zealand I gave in this time and added their names to the shortlist. I arranged to meet all the applicants in a cafe bar in a street alongside Charing Cross station in London. It was a place I had used to conduct team interviews for a previous all-female expedition three years before. Back then, the staff had thought I was on some kind of lesbian speed-date but this time they twigged straight away. ‘What are you holding interviews for?' the waitress asked as she served me a large latte. When I explained the details of the expedition, the bar staff became curious in the women that turned up, even pointing me out to those that arrived early. It was like having my own team of PAs. As I refilled my coffee from the bar they'd pass their judgement. ‘She didn't look up to it to me,' said one barman about one applicant.

‘Really? Why not?'

‘The way she came in,' he continued. ‘She seemed a bit hesitant and hung around the door. All the others have come right in straight away.'

I wasn't sure on the reliability of his selection technique but in this case he was probably right. The candidate had seemed a bit lukewarm about the whole expedition.

My last interview was with Helen, one of the women that I'd included at the last minute. She had an infectious good humour and the interview soon felt more like a gossipy natter with an old friend. She had already completed three guided polar expeditions but was eager for more. I took care to explain the limitations of the reserve role and the uncertainty involved. Her motivation, she said, was to gain more experience in the mechanics of putting an expedition together. Much later than I had intended, I left Helen and caught a train home. There had been two other main contenders but by the time the train pulled into my station, I knew that the choice had been obvious from the moment Helen walked into the cafe. I would be an idiot to turn her down.

In choosing Helen, my shortlist of 15 international candidates (two from each of the seven countries plus the reserve from the UK) was complete, and with it, the first stage of the selection. In total I had received applications from more than 800 women and had interviewed 72 of them, face to face, over the last 76 days. As I scanned through the list of selected candidates I was pleased with the variety of women represented. They ranged in age from 19-year-old Aniza to 43-year-old Helen. Among them were a teacher, a doctor, a satellite communications specialist, an engineer, an air hostess, an aerobics instructor, a civil servant, a personal assistant, a journalist and a mother of three. Some were single, some were married; some had significant outdoor experience, some had none whatsoever. All wanted to prove what they were capable of, not just as individuals, but as women. They all had different reasons for wanting to be a part of the team, from Reena who wanted to encourage more Indian women to seek a career in the outdoor industry, to Sophia who wanted to prove a miracle to her teenage daughter; but the immediate goal was the same for everyone: getting ourselves to the South Pole.

The Passport Problem

I could hear my mobile ringing. By the time I had swum through the fog of unconsciousness and forced myself awake, my mobile had stopped and the house phone was ringing instead. It was Era from Brunei. I blinked at the clock; it was 2 a.m. ‘But what time should I have rung you?' she asked impatiently down the phone as I reported the time to her.

‘You said ten o'clock in the morning GMT.'

‘This is ten o'clock your time, not GMT. Brunei is eight hours ahead of GMT,' I attempted to explain, rubbing my eyes blearily.

‘So what time should I call? Ten o'clock GMT or ten my time?'

My head was still thick with sleep and the numbers swirled around my head without meaning. I couldn't concentrate. ‘Era, it's two in the morning for me. I can't talk about this now. This is definitely the wrong time. I will Skype you in roughly eight hours.'

It had been more than three months since I set off on my selection journey and the eclectic group of women I had chosen, but who had never met each other, were already socialising through messages on Facebook and the expedition website – but today was our first attempt at a conference call through the Internet. Spread over six different time zones, we couldn't find a time between us that would suit everyone, so instead I was due to speak to each country, one at a time, starting with New Zealand at 8 a.m. and ending with Jamaica at 10 p.m. I asked the group to work in GMT to make organising times easier but it wasn't a natural concept for everyone and we were having teething problems. The girls from New Zealand appeared online at 8 a.m. but there was nothing from the Singaporeans at 9 a.m. Aniza from Brunei popped up early but was cut off by one of the Indians. I spoke to one Cypriot but not the other and we were joined halfway through by Barbara from Ghana, who was early. By the time I had finished speaking to the Jamaicans at nearly midnight my brain was dribbling from my ears. It had been a big day and a complete shambles but I wasn't disheartened. This was the first attempt, and I was sure that we would get better at it. In fact it took us three or four attempts before we were able to have a complete conference call with everyone but at least I eventually stopped getting phone calls in the middle of the night.

Since returning from the selection journey, I had been busy planning the next phase; a two-week selection and training event in Norway for all 15 candidates. Many of the women had very little experience of subzero temperatures, and one or two had never even seen snow before, so my worry was that it was impossible for the majority of the team to have any real understanding of what an Antarctic expedition would be like. The journey to the South Pole would be a 900-kilometre ski across some of the most hostile terrain in the world and would take at least 40 days. It was one thing for the candidates to sit in an office in Ghana or Brunei telling me how keen they were to experience the challenges of Antarctica, but quite another to do it for real. I needed the women to be tired, cold and a little bit scared for a few days to truly appreciate what the expedition would involve. Luckily, I knew just the place to make this happen. The Hardangervidda is a high mountainous plateau in the heart of southern Norway. During the winter it's a rolling plain of snow, notorious for harsh weather and challenging conditions. It was the most Antarctic-like place I had ever seen outside of the polar circle. It had the same vastness that I remembered in Antarctica, vastness that would make even hardened polar travellers feel vulnerable. The Hardangervidda is almost completely uninhabited except for a few remote huts. My plan was to find a base on the Hardangervidda and to assemble a group of experienced volunteers to train the candidates. The training team would teach them everything they would need to know in Antarctica, from skiing and avoiding cold-weather injuries, to pitching tents and using a liquid-fuel stove.

Taking on so many new skills in a such a short time and sleeping out in tents in temperatures of around
–
20ºC would put the women under enormous pressure but this would give me a better idea of how they would cope as individuals in Antarctica and how they got on with each other. It was the relationships that worked well amongst the group that would ultimately determine who would be selected for the final team. This all-important selection would be made at the end of the first week, meaning that seven women would have to leave, while the remaining eight stayed behind for another week of training. I knew, even as I planned it, that splitting the group would be painful. I didn't want it to turn into a talent contest and I didn't want to be cruel but I comforted myself with a vow that I would ensure the selection was conducted as sensitively as possible.

One of my first priorities was to put together a budget. As well as the cost of the candidates' travel to the Hardangervidda, we would need food, accommodation and equipment. I estimated that I would need at least eight experienced volunteers to help me train the candidates and although they would give their time for free, it seemed only fair to pay for their travel and costs. I was confident that I could reduce many of the costs through sponsorship and perhaps by applying for some grant money but it was clear that, with all the money I had received from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust gone, we were going to need additional funds.

Right from the start I had stressed to the candidates that I would need their help raising money and so far they had thrown themselves at the task with enthusiasm. The Indian candidates elicited financial support from the Indian Mountaineering Foundation (IMF), while the Singaporean candidates received similar funding from the Singapore Sports Council (SSC). In contrast, the Jamaicans decided to hold a big party, called The Cold Front, to raise money through ticket sales. I warned about the danger of relying so completely on one event but they were so confident that I allowed myself to be won over. ‘The whole island will be there,' Kim reassured me. ‘This is Jamaica; everyone likes to party.'

When it was time for an update from the Ghanaians I wasn't surprised that it was only Barbara that answered the call. ‘Is Sheillah with you?' I asked.

‘I phoned her a minute ago,' said Barbara flatly. ‘She is on a bus on her way back from work, or something like that, and trying to get to an Internet cafe.' There was a pause before Barbara put into words what I had read between the lines for a while. ‘I'm afraid that I'm not getting the support I would like from Sheillah.'

It had been a problem almost from the start. Sheillah rarely joined a conference call with the team and hadn't once offered an explanation for her lack of communication. I understood that it might be difficult to be available but after the last missed call I had written her an email explaining that she had to keep in regular contact with the expedition so that I knew how she was progressing and so that she could interact with the rest of the team. I received a message back that was full of apologies and promises to be more active. That was the last I'd heard from her and I was running out of patience.

Barbara, on the other hand, had been working really hard but had been struck by two major setbacks. For the past six months the presidential elections in Ghana had paralysed the country; no one was interested in anything but politics. More ominously, several companies had accused her of being part of a big scam. They were suspicious that the expedition was a fraudulent way to extort money. ‘Even when I showed them the letters from you and the quotes from the Commonwealth secretary-general they said, “So what? Anyone can write a letter.” I don't know what I can do to convince them that this is genuine.'

Barbara seemed to be losing heart but I did my best to rally her morale. ‘Barbara, one way or another, I will get you to Norway.' What I didn't say was that I didn't have a clue how I was going to do it.

One of the Cypriot candidates, Stephanie, sent me to secure support from a family friend who had offices in London. He was a Cypriot oil baron and a geologist so I had packed several maps of Antarctica, hoping that, like most geologists, he would get excited at the first whiff of chart paper. ‘I'm here to see Dr Simonian,' I told the receptionist in the glass-fronted building. She looked puzzled. ‘Oh, you mean Kapo!' she exclaimed in sudden comprehension and smiled knowingly as she led me up to an office. I was introduced to a man who looked more like an indulgent uncle than a wealthy oil baron. He shook my hand warmly and we sat down at a large round table to talk. I launched into a presentation about the expedition but after a few minutes Kapo interrupted politely, ‘Do you have any maps of your route in Antarctica?' I felt triumphant as I pulled the folds of paper from my bag and spread them across the table. We spent the rest of the meeting poring over annotated nunataks and ice streams. The next day I got a call from Stephanie. Kapo and his company, Comtrack Services, had offered the expedition $10,000, the majority of the money we needed for Norway.

At least now we could guarantee that Norway would go ahead. It was my job to make sure it was a success and for that, we needed a lot of equipment. I needed to provide 15 people with everything from clothing to skis, sledges to first aid kits. Day after day I would sit at my desk with a huge list and ring suppliers asking them to help.

I wouldn't have had the courage to ask for free products without the genuine belief that the project had something tangible to offer in return. Even so, making these calls grated against every fibre in my body. I hated it and would spend a minute or two steeling myself before dialling each new number. The rejections were often brutal and each one made making the next call even harder. I was fully aware that all of the companies I contacted probably received dozens of similar requests and I was under no illusion that for many small specialist suppliers, providing free products would be a significant investment. I wasn't frustrated by the negative replies but what did get annoying was the wavering. It seemed to be that the smaller the value of the product asked for, the harder I had to work to secure it. In return for 16 pairs of socks from a very large, mainstream company I spent days providing reams of information that the marketing team had requested about every aspect of the expedition, agreed to dozens of demands in return for the product and spent hours on the phone with them talking through each detail of the deal – and still the eventual answer was negative. It was exhausting. One marketing lady I spoke to was under so much pressure that her imminent breakdown was audible. She screeched down the phone at me, ‘I have no budget! I have no budget!' I decided not to try approaching her again, for fear of pushing her over the edge.

The Christmas holidays arrived but I found it hard to switch off. Norway had been scheduled to start during the last week in February, barely two months away, and there was still so much to be done. I reminded myself to celebrate all the successes we had had so far and to think about all the positives, but it felt like I was presiding over a house of cards; everything was dependent on something else, nothing was definite. If one piece fell, the whole thing would collapse. As a result I veered between wild excitement at the prospect of pulling everything together and a deep stomach-gripping dread at the spectre of it all falling apart. On New Year's Eve I sat watching other people's fireworks from the balcony of my flat, wrapped in a blanket, eating Stilton and drinking fizzy wine. I tried to think ahead to New Year's Day 2010. Would I be standing at the South Pole with seven others as planned? The thought died in my head. Something inside me wouldn't allow myself to look that far into the future. Instead it was focused on Norway. If I could just make Norway happen, then and only then, would I allow myself to look towards Antarctica.

I'd recently met with two ex-marines I had known for a number of years. They had decades of training in Arctic warfare and had seen dozens of hard men from tropical countries like Trinidad and Jamaica go through the process. ‘We are talking about tough guys, but they had real problems in the Arctic,' one explained. ‘It's not that they just didn't like the cold, they physically couldn't acclimatise. Some people have an allergic reaction to the cold and there is nothing you can do.' I'd heard opinions like this before and had dismissed them all as urban myth but these men knew what they were talking about and it made me pause. What if the girls simply couldn't acclimatise? I was creating a schedule for Norway that would provide a slow and gradual introduction to the climate – as gradual as it could be within the short week we had – but there was a real possibility that it wouldn't be enough. I myself had seen very strong, fit and experienced men from the UK arrive in the high Arctic after months of preparation and fundraising, only to ask to go home within days. It wasn't that they weren't able to cope physically but something in their brain was switching off, telling them they couldn't cope. The effect was known privately as Arctic Shock and it only seemed to happen in the first few days. I reasoned with myself that you didn't need to come from a tropical country to find -20°C demanding; even those from temperate regions like the UK would find it hard. The need to acclimatise would be essential wherever you came from. However, if I was wrong, it could be terminal for my project. If I wanted to get anywhere near Antarctica, Norway would need to be the proof that the women could acclimatise to the cold and learn the skills they would need to stay safe.

Our first team conference call of 2009 wasn't as promising as I would have liked. Money was the biggest problem. The media was full of frenzied reports about credit crunches, global banking meltdowns, recession and tightening economies. It had to be the worst time in 20 years to be looking for sponsorship and the entire team seemed demoralised. Era from Brunei was concerned about a letter that she had sent to the Bruneian authorities back in November asking for permission to fundraise for the expedition. The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport had told her that the letter had been lost. ‘I have a copy but the ministry won't accept a copy, it has to be the original,' she explained.