Page 22 - AMA Summer 2023

EXPEDITIONNEWS
EXERCISE DRAGON INSPIRE 2022
Henry Crosby
Antarctica beckoned for Standing Joint Force Headquarters as medical research under polar conditions motivated this team to the South Pole
For me Dragon Inspire started, as an adventure should, in short bursts of conver- sation whilst scrambling up Observatory Ridge on The Ben. I asked Nat if she had anything interesting coming up and she mentioned that she was skiing to the South Pole in December the next year to conduct medical research. My interest was piqued and at the next stance I simply said: “I’ll come”. I was pointed to the DIN and the process, and 18 months later we were lined up for the obligatory Heathrow departure photo festooned with ME duffle bags. Most of said bags arrived in Punta Arenas with us two days later, with the last one catching us up later after a short tour of South America.
Punta Arenas was a game of two halves. Firstly, there was the piling, counting, packing, spreadsheeting and repacking of food whilst trying to find CO2 to calibrate our mobile calorimeters and get the initial testing done. Then, packed, there was the
Just being sociable
22 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER