Page 23 - AMA Summer 2023

sitting-on-our-hands phase in daysack order waiting for the message that our flight would go ahead. After three Airbnb extensions and three ‘last nights out’ the weather window came. It was happening! The waiting bit was done, now for the hurry up. Trying not to sweat whilst wearing our -40°C rated boots around Punta Arenas airport buying last coffees and soaking up the last of the airport WIFI with final goodbyes.
To come back a step, the aim of the expedition was medical research, to build on that done by the SPEAR 17 and ICE MAIDEN expeditions, looking at the
metabolic effects of polar travel. This building towards Defence’s larger goals on the soldier athlete and monitoring with wearables, alongside some NHS benefits too. The difference from the other expeditions was that the INSPIRE team were mixed sex, with a broader age range, and large by polar standards. For the scientists out there an N of 9 is small, but polar travel groups rarely exceed 6 and so we were on the larger end. And not to spoil the ending, with the two Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions (ALE) guides, we were the largest known team to have skied from the coast to pole. Also, our focus was
more on the science rather than the human endeavour of our forebears.
And that was it. After a few days in a base camp, we landed at a point on the Ronne Ice Shelf just off the edge of terra firma, as determined by satellites because the ice is still 1km thick. No danger from killer whales then! Then proceeded 46 days of pulling our pulkas, with all our worldly belongings, across the frozen continent to the bottom of the world.
To give an idea of the scale of Antarctica from one person’s perspective on foot, there was a whole lot of nothing out there.
Life in the chain gang
Christmas Day life
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