Page 20 - 2009 AMA Summer

Two hours and many bad jokes later we were frozen, there was no sign of the weather clearing and we headed back.
Our final day on the ice shelf took us to Break Wind Gap, where we dragged our pulks on ropes up onto the watershed and peeped over the top to see Fortuna Bay; the anticipation of seeing the view over the next ridge was always really quite exciting. We now had our first steep descent with pulks on skis; it was carnage, those with pulks with fixed shafts had a great advan- tage but were pushed swiftly down the slope and had to do enormous turns, those with pulks with straps and no shafts found that their chariots went faster than they did! We all somehow survived the journey unscathed and arrived at the stony beach on the edge of Fortuna Bay surrounded by the Antarctic wildlife. Fur Seals snarled at us, Elephant Seals did what they do best – nothing (unless there is a fight!) and King Penguins paraded past our tents all night, moving up the valley to their colony – it was marvelous. On our final day we abandoned our pulks and tents (our yacht came into the Bay to collect them), and we walked around along the water’s edge, crossing a freezing Glacial Stream in our bare legs, ooh la la it was nippy! At the top of the final ridge we saw Stromness Whaling Station in the distance. Pretty soon we had arrived to toast Sir Ernest and with an even greater respect for his accomplishment and those of his companions; we are indeed very proud to have completed his traverse
Additional information:
There were 7 of us who completed the Traverse, 5 team members accompa- nied by Stephen Venables (the first Brit to climb Mount Everest without oxygen) who we had taken along as an experienced mountaineer and Skip Novak of sailing fame, who is also an experience mountaineer, Skip owned the Pelagic Australis and had done the traverse twice
before. In addition the yacht had a crew of 4 professional sailors.
We were very lucky with the weather, which made the Traverse relatively straight for- ward and afforded us beautiful views. Anyone wishing to do this route should give themselves enough time to wait for good conditions. We went South in October which is Spring in South Georgia, the snow then still had a good cover over the crevasses which greatly aided our pas- sage, although there was an obvious hid- den danger. Any later and the trip would have been much harder.
South Georgia is truly beautiful and we made the most of our days either side of the Traverse to do additional walks and watch amazing wildlife. For such a trip including travelling time you need at least a month.
To get myself ready for the trip as well as my own personal training, I attended 3 Joint Services courses; Advance Ski Proficiency and Tour Leader Training, Winter Mountaineering Proficiency and Alpine Mountaineering Proficiency,
all were excellent and exact- ly what I needed – all thoroughly recom-
mended.
This was a civilian expedition for which I was given permission by the Army to join. It was great, but I was pleasantly surprised at the contrast between this and military expeditions I had been on. The military are very good at training, administration, organisation, leadership and communica- tion and surprisingly, take fewer risks. I was also shocked at the cost of the trip and it brought home to me just how lucky we are to be able to go on military expeditions all over the world costing next to nothing – it’s a real privilege – make the most of it.
We never got up Mount Nicholls, but I learnt on getting home that it had already been climbed!
The whole trip was a marvelous once in a life time experience and I was so glad I had said yes when I got that initial email.
Lieutenant Colonel Ingrid Hall raised over £1400 for ‘Help for Heros’ from
this expedition.
18 ARMY MOUNTAINEER