Chamonix Part 2 - the fall of Royal...

The next day I was almost reluctant to open the curtains, but i jumped at joy when staring back at me were the mountains blazed in glorious morning sunshine!!! I could hardly get changed quicker afriad the clouds will change their minds. They can't, we're on a mission and don't we know it! With my big plastic Scarper boots I started thumping down the streets of Chamonix towards the lifts, ...they were working and people were already starting to gather, no real big queues like I've experienced in other resorts but is that because of the end of the season, I don't know I didn't care...! The scene and the mountains didn't disappoint, I swear I must have been an inuit in my past life, I felt like home, I belonged!

I had something at the back of my mind coming here, I have vertigo and despite training for it i dreaded the ridge between Aiguille du Midi and Vallee Blanche and I suspected I buried this fear deeper than I had thought, because I hadn't thought of it until stepping off the cable car..., there are steep falls on either side and although we'll be roped up I still couldn't help but feel a little ill from the mere thought of it....we harnessed up and roped ourselves together and then we were off onto the ridge.... It may have been the thin air, the orange tint on my shades or the just the mere views....the views of towering over Chamonix and the rugged and snowy mountains, but I was fine, digging into the ridge with my crapons like I had a bone to pick with the place !

We spent our time there mountaineering and staring at awe at climbers at the top, it was exilarating. When it was time to go back up the ridge, everyone had gone and it was just us...I couldn't help but feel the vertigo creeping up behind me, ready to pounce. All I could do was look down at my feet and soldier on. It was freeezing as well and I started breathing heavily and loosing my balance, but my leaders voice beckoned me to go on..."C'mon Flo, 7 meters for you to go and then you're there...!". I'd made it and collapsed in a sorry heap whist trying to take my Crampons off.

I turned to find Royal to get my support, but alas he was nowhere to be seen, not in my front smock pocket where I normally had him, not in my rucksack zips.... I panicked... he was there was going across the ridge earlier. So in between my trip in the mountains here I had managed to loose Royal just as quickly as I had found him... I know he was just a bear, but when you start to associate emotions with something and you had relied on it you find it hard to do with out it especially when it was such a swift exit, no friendly goodbyes, no time to absorb the idea of a departure?.... heartbroken over a bear....I know.... but with roller coaster emotions for the last few months and the forever impending trip coming up, I had relied on Royal and he made it a smooth ride for me... (why I gave him his gender I don't know.... blue is for boys right?!)....

Chamonix will always have a place in my heart, even though the first trip didn't go to plan, I knew I had the willpower, courage and the support behind me then, this last visit to Chamonix was a success but ended with loosing what I still think will have got me through my expedition in April. Both visits balanced themselves out, but in my hearts of hearts I knew I preferred my first adventure in December...

Neverthless this trip was significant for me as it was the true beginning of my relationship with snow and the magnificent mountains , but it also marked the end of something else just as spectacular and beautiful... Royal will always be part of the snow and the mountains to me and I'd only have to look at them for any reminder of what he gave me, the strength and pillar he was! Missing him certainly doesn't keep me warm at nights, but out in the cold I know I will be able to count on him, cheering me on and giving me the warm motivation I need...

If anyone happens to come across a navy blue bear (possibly answers to the name of 'Royal') of such description with a tear on his right shoulder then please return him, or take good care of him, I'll be content to know that he'll be someone else's pillar rather than lost in abyss of the snow... (even if you make up a new navy blue bear and tear it's shoulder, I promise to turn a blind eye and pretend he was the original...!)

 

Chamonix Part 1 - the intro

Since the seed of this expedition was planted I had mostly looked forward to the training and a repeat trip to Chamonix was always on the cards.

Training has been a huge part of my life for past couple of years and I intend to keep in going long after the science programme in the Arctic is over and have it as part of my weekly routine. One crucial turning point for me was when I injured my ribs in Wales on Pembrokshire coastline a few months ago... I thought my dreams had been shattered right before me when I felt excruciating pain everytime I trained.

I remember back in November we were training right outside Buckingham palace and the pain from doing a simple push up make me nauseous and whilst in plank position when i thought i couldn't do anymore, I spotted a tiny stuffed bear peaking at me from behind the grass, as sweat was watering the foliage around me I looked at it and it felt like he was willing me to go on, 'go on Flo, awesome effort Flo, keep going', i'm not sure where i found the will power from but I worked through my damaged ribs and completed the remainder of that session effortlessly. I kept the bear and named it Royal as it was found on Royal grounds and it's also a Rich Royal blue. Not much of a name for a bear but it was very fitting. I often wondered who Royal belonged to, where he's come from, what he's been through, with its well stuffed body it was perfect aside from a small tear on it's right shoulder, but to me Royal was perfect. I kept him as he was as his perfection and flaws were part of who he was to me...

Royal has been with me ever since that mid November evening and he has kept me going when I thought I couldn't give anymore, he was my crutch in everyway. In mid December my first trip to Chamonix, Royal came with me and it was was to be no different for this Chamonix trip too.

With my rucksacks packed and Royal within reach we left like early birds in the morning and caught a plane to Geneva, good old BA airmiles sorted me out...

Looking out at Geneva from the plane the little peaks of terrain everywhere reminded me of meringue tops, I knew I hungry for some sugar, not for the pitiful sandwich that was offered on the flight!

From Geneva an hour's drive took us into the heart of Chamonix...Ahhh Chamonix, I'm back again!  Not only does it harbour Mont Blanc the highest peak in Europe but it's also a natural hub for extreme sports all year round so it's a wonder why I've fallen for this place. A little over two hours from home and you're surrounded by natural delights...

The only downfall is the exchange rates for food and drinks (5euros for a beer!), but equipment shopping is worth taking a look at, and there are plenty of shops here! I'm a keen shopper for kit! Shopping for extreme wear over the borders of another country certainly makes me no different!

Our first day was, -you guessed it- shopping day! We made sure there was time for this and Chamonix didn't fail! It was my plan here to complete my kit list as there's a lot more choice here with brands and models you'd find hard to get in the UK. Back over here you get Cotswold, Snow and Rock, Ellis Brigham which contain a small selection of styles from different brands, in Chamonix you get whole shops dedicated to one brand!

Icebreaker was my first stop and my favourite kind of baselayer... There is nothing that compares to 100 % Merino wool against my skin and I wouldn't dream of using anything else (smelly Helly, er no thanks!)... The day rounded off nicely with gear complete and Fondue and beers downed in the evening!

My hotel room looked out onto the mountains but the next morning I awoke to find a blanket of cloud had descended and visibility was poor. We made it to the Aguille Du Midi lifts and the live monitors showed that the visibility doesn't get better at the top. I had to swallow my disappointment as we went into plan B, the Montenver Glacier. The hope was to get onto the glacier and do some glacial work but our cute train ride up there confirmed that the visibility was not dying down so the cable cars were stuck. We crossed our fingers and toes that they would reopen soon whilst we visted the crystal caves and small shop/cafe there. Plenty of skiers and mountaineerers were stuck there also.

Our prayers were answered when the cables started moving, woo! With our kit on our backs and a smile on our faces we took a short cable ride down. The ride proceeded with a 350 down to the natural ice caves, it was interesting to see what level the glacier was at certain years, it's levels have been lowered throughout the years and by a fast pace too. The first thing you'll notice when you get up here is the deafening sound of the glacier when it moves and cracks against it's own pressure firing off other areas with repeating cracks almost as if each crack is in a competition to beat the others... so addictive and hypnotising to hear. We got to the caves but the clouds were still so thick we were advise that it'd be too dangerous to proceed onto the glacier! Despite the disapointing start to our trip we put our chins up and made the most of the day by enjoying what we could.

　

　

The Mental & The Physical

Preparing for this expedition is more than hard and I can only go on past expedition
biogs to mentally prepare for it. They say that 80% of this kind of expedition is all in the mind and only 20% of it is physical. My expedition leader Andrew Rees Stoke advised us to mentally train by endurance fitness, what ever it is you do, do it for a long amount of time... Okay I thought, I've done that it before... I did the Walk the Walk Moonwalk for Charity 3 years in a row. That's walking 26.2 miles (yes the .2 bit was the killer) over the course of 7 and a half hours! Yes charity, but surely there's less painful ways of raising money for a good cause?! Is it the buzz of getting together with like-minded people all with the same goals? Yes that's always something to look forward to, but I do that everyday in my job...

Each time (during the event) I vowed I'd never do the painfully gruelling deed again, but each year I feel drawn to it and I pondered at why I do it again and again. And the big question here is WHY? Why the arctic, why now!? These are the questions I often hear thrown as me by my friends and colleague who all must by now think I'm utterly insane.

They say your mind forgets pain easily, especially if you're of the female variety (something to do with reproduction and the need to give birth again...?!), so perhaps I'm falling into the human nature trap of forgetting long suffering physical and mental endurance, or perhaps I have never really put my body and mind through enough to really and truly know what I've let myself in for... Scary stuff!

I finally came to the conclusion that I'm addicted to putting myself through extremities and seeing how far I can push myself, but for some reason I'm not willing to admit this to anyone let alone myself... There is nothing better than completing your goals and more so if it was particularly soul destroying whilst doing it... The mental feat needed to combat pain or back breaking brutalness is definitely a challenge and is something I need to work on, I look upon it as character building so it's all good...

If during this adventure I find the answer (or a better answer) of why I'm doing this, I will be sure to share it!

As for physical preparation, I felt like I was on my own until I coincidentally come across the official trainer for the Catlin Arctic Survey Team! What is better than learning from the same trainer that trains a world leading Arctic team? Nothing comes closer!

I initially had no motivation to carry out the countless fitness programmes I had painfully dug up specifically for polar training, I spent energy researching the topic more than I had actually training for it and it was a constant droning worry that I will not be fit enough to do it. Not only will this mean I can't enjoy what I'm experiencing as much but the thought that I'd be dragging my team down or putting them in danger is more than enough to give me a good kick up the backside to put 100% in being prepared for this expedition.

My week to week training have pretty much been the same for the last 5 months and these are broken up into long weekends away training with my team and some solo ones too.

Weekly training includes, core and strength stability training (circuit and pilates), hypoxic training, swimming and rock climbing. The latter is more for my pleasure but I've been told this will help too.

Only one more month to go! For the past 5 months I've been increasing my activities and any spare time I have you'll mostly find me training (this is meant to be a subtle/cowardly way of apologising to friends and family that I have neglected these last few months...sorry...!), whether it's after work or weekends, early morning or late at night...

The changes I have seen are small to myself but people have often commented on how much I've improved, I guess fitness and improving on a technique is not essentially physically measureable and especially if I'm doing the activities daily, it's hard for me to see any change at all...

The training trips I've attended and been on are always so fruitful, I can't possibly imagine wanting to miss them. The one in Derbyshire was a gem and integral part of my training, actually meeting the people in my team was key, especially if worrying about whether we'd all get along or not. Luckily as you'll see in my other blog we all do and now I'm even more so looking forward to getting to know them better during our expedition...

So as I draw a close to this blog, I'd like to round off by thanking everyone that have played a crucial part in getting me where I am today. My mental and physically goal is always being challenged and I'm constantly surrounded by key people that whether they know it or not have given me the infectious courage and motivation to carry on that little bit further. When I'm on the ice surrounded by the vast lifeless tundra and when I hit a snag I will always look back to how grateful I am right now... Whether it's 'snow cones', or that extra 'awesome effort Flo!', it's the little things that will keep me going...!

A Distant Dream... becoming real

When I was a wee lass I used to sit hours on end hanging out my window wondering and questioning, questioning and wondering... What are we doing here? Why am I conscious of my existence? What's the rest of the universe like?

The feeling of amazement was constantly so strong, I truly believed we were special. The stars - oh the stars! I could never get bored of the stars, how I tracked them night upon night until dawn broke and I'd fall asleep still hanging out my window.

It may sound like I lived in the middle of nowhere where skies are always clear but in fact I grew up in central london in a council estate that of which I could see stamford bridge football stadium from my window (was fun trying to see how lagged the TV was compared with the actual cheering just across the stadium).

My constant curiosity of the universe and the stars made me determined that it was what I wanted to do when I grew up, be an explorer, an astrophysicist to be precise...

My hero was a astronomer called Carl Sagan, even as a young child he connected with our minds and that's what I loved about him.  His one piece I discovered coincided with a pivotal point in my childhood and changed the way I've looked at our planet and ourselves for good. 

It's called the Pale Blue Dot. Sagan was part of the team that sent up Casini a space probe sent to research Saturn, it's rings and moons, he turned the camera back to Earth from Saturn and caught a what seemed like insignificant photo at the time. 

"Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every siant and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam..."

When technology came into place (yes I'm that old!!) the first thing I did was to search for his clip on the Pale Blue Dot.  It's one thing reading his words, to hear it from the legend himslef is a different thing.   

When I'm stressed or frustrated, I just find this video (or his book) and all what I felt would seems so insignificant...

It made me realise and more determined to be an explorer but explorer of our own world firstly... Don't get me wrong, the universe and cosmos still plays a strong part in my interests, and recently Professor Brian Cox has rekindled my love and facination for it but becoming an astrophysicist was never solely going to get me into space. I am a true believer of multiple lives, so space travel will have to be another lifetime

Explorer? I didn't quite make it, life got in the way sooner than I had planned and I had to grow up real fast (how or why is for another blog!), then the perception of how we should live our life got in the way... (funny how that happens huh?).  Other interests loomed up in the meantime, like the love of photography from my teenage years, I love to express my feelings visually and my trusty point and shoot saw to that!  

2008 saw me off with an entry Olympus DSLR and am now the proud owner of a Canon (yes you Nikon lovers can go shove one hehe).  I'm an amatuer but my passion is pushing me to find out what type of photography it is I like... I love people watching so most of my work have involved people and their surroundings or people and events. 

So how is this all leading to the arctic!? Mid-life crisis some may say or simply the realisation that I didn't want to be regretful on my deathbed, thinking, all I've done is sat my arse down in an office job and not done what I'd like to do is more like it (okay okay it maybe a little bit mid life crisis but one would not like to admit that!).

Don't get me wrong, I'm very lucky that I have a job I'm passionate about, not many people have that and I wouldn't give it up for all the toffee in the world (if I did I'd be a very big girl...!)... But it's because I love my job so much I didn't think I'd be able to go away weeks on end satisfying my itch to explore...

However it's true when they say, you won't know if you don't ask... I asked and I found out I have the most understanding boss and company in the world...(thanks Sean!).   Not only am I able to do what I've planned over the next two years, but I can also keep my job... Win! Win!

Over the next two years I plan on combining photography with exploring my goals.  I don't want it to be easy either.  I don't see the fun in commercial trips...anyone can do that! I want to feel like I've helped the community, the environment in some ways. 

I've been following the British School of Exploring Society for years since starting university and have loved their work so I have joined them and will be starting my adventures in the Arctic come April 2011.  The whole expedition team is part of a conservation project and each year BSES writes a paper on the studies they ahve carried out each year.  I'm priviledged to have been accepted as part of the 2011 team!  Three other projects are on my list after this one, another Arctic Study in 2012, marine conservation in Madagascar and study of Snow Leopards in the Altai Mountains (Central Asia).

So here begins my adventures for the next couple of years!  Please feel free to follow me, I promise, photos and no dull moments.  Any suggestions please post away!