Expeditions
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Greenland 2005
As a team of four climbers, we spent a month exploring the Watkins Mountains in eastern Greenland, making first ascents of twelve mountains in one area and then relocated on foot to Gunnbjørn Fjeld,
the highest mountain in Greenland, which we climbed to finish the adventure. Exploratory mountaineering in pristine wilderness is a fantastic experience, and the expedition was a great success thanks to detailed planning, prior training with the team in Scotland, a common sense of purpose, mutual trust and respect, good humour, flexibility, adaptability, and sufficient physical resilience to get to the top of one mountain after another. Two of us triggered a small slab avalanche when descending from one peak, luckily we came away from it unscathed and were able to keep climbing the next day. We used polar expedition sleds to move our equipment from one camp to another and travelled roped-up on skis.
The North Pole
This was my third time on a Last Degree Expedition to the North Pole. I guided a team from the Indian Navy, who I had already guided to the South Pole. In the photo I’m standing beside one of the Mil Mi-8 helicopters that the Russian logistics company used to drop-off and to pick-up teams in the North Pole area.
The key to staying warm, dry, and happy in the wet maritime environment of the frozen Arctic Ocean is to wear layers that transport moisture away from the skin, and to put a large down jacket on top of your other clothes whenever you stop. It is an extraordinary experience skiing over the low temperature obstacle course of jumbled floating ice, cracks, pressure ridges, and open water to reach the North Pole. When you get it makes a big impression on you to picture yourself at to 90° North, the axis of the Earth’s rotation, where all time zones converge and which only has one sunrise and sunset a year, because there are no markers, no flags, no buildings, just that bit of ice floating above four kilometres of water. In the twenty years I’ve been going to the Arctic Ocean it has changed considerably: the ice is much thinner, the season shorter and the multi-year sea ice almost gone.
