Truth be told, when I set off a month ago to climb in Antarctica I had no intention to head down to the 89th degree to ski the last degree to the South Pole.
Last time I was seen on Nordic skis was in a spatially challenged PE group at the Moscow U doing rather awkward laps around the campus under a stewardship of geriatric Baba Lena on vintage 1950s wooden skis. Not my idea of fun…
Blame it on late nights at the ALE camp with rather amazing Emma Kelty and Luke Robertson – each setting off on some 50 day solo unsupported Coast to Pole journeys – and following my Vinson ascent I could no longer resist a challenge of strapping on silly looking skis and heading down to the Pole on a rather pedestrian 8 day taster trip…
Day 1: A surreal drop off on ice at the 75W meridian following a 4 hour flight from the base at the Union Glacier. I feel like Robinson Crusoe left to fend for himself amidst …. well, inhospitable white nothingness. Glacial desert, very flat, very windy with a perfectly round horizon. 111km to go to an abstract geographical point amidst never ending daylight. Is there a point?!?
Day 2: Winds intensify to 50 knots an hour with temperatures of minus 40… We do one hour on, ten minutes off, 6 times over. I drag behind my polk with a weight of my body weight and I can no longer feel my cheeks. I crank up the most aggressive tunes I can find and grind my teeth. The wind is brutal and now blowing head-on. I think of all things I could have been doing instead of this…. I can’t glide and feel utterly useless… Gone is the feeling of lightness and efficiency I got accustomed to at high altitude… Hm, this is not my discipline. We stop for the night and set up a camp. My face is a mess with a perfectly formed Just Do It! swoosh windburn. My teammate Horacio, an Argentine would be Grand Slam finisher, suffers a more serious cold injury with a cheek swelling twice the size. We melt snow, eat dehydrated Pad Thai, take an elephant dose of ibuprofen and try to sleep with -20 inside the tent.
Day 2: Horacio’s wind burn gets worse and we call for a medical evacuation. Crushing reality for him… I go through every ounce of weight in my bag and get rid of some 20lbs of food and clothes… The evac plane takes off again, now with the 5 of us left behind. We eat, rest and try not to look in a mirror.
Day 3: We wake up to a gorgeous still morning. I tape half of my face with pink plaster and Compeed…. In days to come this will turn out to be a genius protection against cold and wind. Eat some dehydrated muesli… We start off. The sled is light. I glide. I find my rhythm. I notice that the guide’s body ahead of me is like a sun clock on piazza’s towers with shadow moving gradually from right to left throughout the day. You can tell the time… I listen to the crunch of snow instead of music and don’t notice the passage of time. We do 8 hours of skiing and the life feels good. Quick mental calculus and with this speed we can be at the pole in 3 days… Wow!
Day 4: Another beautiful day lifts the curse of bad fortune. I find myself lost in thoughts, levitating while skiing. Rob, our guide is brilliant. We are now a team. I think of my beautiful kids, my astonishingly understanding husband, my journey over the past year, amazing people I have met, my new world, my plans to set up GRIT&ROCK, a mountaineering program for young women, my dense climbing calendar for 2016 that now includes the other pole…
Day 5: I am enjoying the flow noticing beautiful reflections of light on sastrugi. A silent moving retreat continues. Like a mirage, tiny black dots appear on the horizon. A feeling of utter exaltation overwhelms my body….this is IT! An Amundsen-Scott Science Station. The South Pole. Never has a federal building elicited such a profound emotion 🙂 another 20km to go…
Day 6: The finish day. We wake up highly motivated and do 6 hours in a heartbeat. As we get closer to the constellation of Star Trek structures of the station, we feel overwhelmed by the multitude objects and sounds having spent 5 days amidst silence and emptiness. We line up next to each other and ski to the circumference of flags with a shiny metal ball resting on a Christmas candy pole. Welcome to the South Pole!
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