A return to the Arctic Ocean is on the cards for March this year; a second chance for me to pull off the North Pole speed record that I tried to set last spring. It's a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless, and I have a vast amount to pull off in the next month in order to make this expedition happen, not least conjuring a significant chunk of the expedition's budget from thin air (at a time when cash isn't easy to come by, and I'm still repaying debts from the last expedition).
But in grappling with the big things, it's easy to forget that it was the smallest of things that derailed my plans last year: a slim steel plate in one of my ski bindings that broke in two. For the best part of a year I've been trying to figure out how to prevent it happening again. Salomon weren't all that helpful, and perhaps understandably; this was the first time they'd heard of anyone breaking one of these bindings -they're designed for backcountry skiing, not dragging a sled through the smashed-up surface of a frozen ocean- and they'd be daft to guarantee them for the abuse I put them through. For a while I considered swallowing my pride, mollifying my stubborn streak and switching to an older boot and binding, but I'm happy to report that I now have some fearsomely vast intellects focusing on preventing it happening again. Penso call themselves 'a product development consultancy that thinks differently'. Andy and I now call them 'legends'. We visited earlier this month to discuss the binding conundrum, half-expecting a bloke in a flat cap to knock us up a new one by hand from an offcut kicking around the workshop floor.
Instead we witnessed, grinning at each other in disbelief, a team of experts (including at least one Professor) spending hours on the problem, producing complex stress-testing computer simulations and wheeling in composites experts that helped make everything from supercars to Olympic track bikes. I've always been a geek when it comes to my equipment, so you can imagine my glee when this email attachment turned up yesterday.
I'll keep you posted as it all comes together. Right now, it seems like the binding isn't the only thing that's being stress-tested, but I have a sneaky feeling I can make this expedition happen. More soon.
— Filed under North Pole 2009
From The North Pole, Robert Peary's account of his 1909 expedition (published in its entirety as a free Project Gutenburg ebook):
"The consequent delay of a year, was a serious blow to me. It meant that I must attack the problem one year older; it placed the initiation of the expedition further in the future, with all the possible contingencies that might occur within a year; and it meant the bitterness of hope deferred.
Yet, when I gathered myself together and faced the situation squarely, I realized that the project was something too big to die; that it never, in the great scheme of things, would be allowed to fall through. This feeling carried me past many a dead center of fatigue and utter ignorance as to where the rest of the money for the expedition was to be obtained. The end of the winter and the beginning of the spring of 1908 were marked by more than one blue day for everybody concerned in the success of the expedition.
But the money still came hard. It was the subject of my every waking thought; and even in sleep it would not let me rest, but followed with mocking and elusive dreams. It was a dogged, dull, desperate time, with the hopes of my whole life rising and falling day by day."
Anyone who's been following Al's prolific blogging will know the story already, but it's high time I announced it here and gave you a little back-story: we're postponing SOUTH by another year, and Al and I will leave for Antarctica in late October 2009. The principle reason is that we don't have the funding in place. Six months ago I was sure that Ernst & Young, the title sponsor for my North Pole speed record attempt this spring, would extend their support. But they pulled out at around the time the word "downturn" started cropping up in the news and I watched my dream slipping out of reach, racing ahead of me to the horizon I've dreamt of for so long.
I've chosen a peculiar career. The Norwegian übermensch of the polar expedition world, Børge Ousland, has been in this game for 22 years, yet has embarked on just nine major polar journeys. If a tennis player knew their career would span a mere nine games or an artist were told they could only exhibit nine works in a lifetime, the pressure to get it right would be immense. And there's the rub. To accomplish anything new; to break new ground, you've got to risk getting it wrong.
I got it wrong this spring, and the impact of my defeat in the Arctic this year has taken a while to appreciate. The silver lining of having to postpone SOUTH is that it gives me a chance to return to the Arctic and finish the job. Al and I were planning a training camp at Mark Twight's Gym Jones in Utah this summer (which in turn has been postponed – I'm planning to go in December now) and Mark sent me a perfectly-timed morale-boosting note a few weeks back. I hope he won't mind me reproducing it here:
"To have been shut down by gear failure up north when you were so invested, and clearly moving with the necessary speed, is an ugly outcome to live with every day. I understand this. Revisiting that challenge while the knowledge and lessons learned are still fresh, when you know well what needs to be done beforehand, when you have the confidence born from having been equal to the task yourself, makes better sense than letting it slide with the intent of coming back to it later.
In 1998 Steve House and I few on to Denali to try the (Czech) Slovak Direct. We got acclimated by tagging the top via an easier route. Then we did some reconnaissance of the actual climb and realized our tactics were unsound: we needed a third to share the work. So it didn't happen that year. Life got in the way the following year but we both kept our attention on the route, figured out the team (we had actually hoped to go as a foursome but Rolo bailed last minute), formulated tactics, dealt with gear, etc. And we trained for that specific task. All that to say that we kept the fire burning brightly, without distraction and it was one of several reasons we were able to do the route in "exactly" the way we wanted in 2000."
More soon.
— Filed under Inspiration, North Pole 2008, North Pole 2009, SOUTH