I'm sorry, I have many more posts to put up and will likely do a projectile again at some point.
Firstly, I'd like to thank a few sponsors and people that have been detrimental to me completing this expedition successfully, without whom it surely would not have been a possible feat whether financially, physically or mentally:
BSES- for the training, organising and voluntary members that participated within my team (and not to mention massive discount at Cotswold)
Rab- for the special expedition discount on gear
Patagonia- for 40/50% discount they helped us out with
Montane- for all the gear and discount they gave me
Mountain Equipment- again for all the gear they've donated
Playstation- for sponsoring me a large amount of which I am eternally grateful for
Sean Kelly- for helping me with the PS sponsor and for being the most understanding boss in the world and for introducing me to David his lovely German friend that gave me photography tips.
Martin Hartley- the professional polar photographer and the top ten inspirational photographers of 2010 (and my personal inspiration) who tirelessly gave me photography tips and equipment advice specifically for the extreme environment in the arctic (www.martinhartley.com)
Jon Stratford- my personal training instructor at The Third Space for all the training he gave me.
My God children; Jamie and Alexia and their mother Jessica my great friend for keeping me going with their existance (and for understanding when I missed Alexia's first birthday of which I feel awful for but will make up for it now I'm back)
Vanessa and Lisa- for being there for me when times were tough and I had lost all hope, for telling things how they were and for making me laugh
I'm back now and had an incredible experience which I hope to share all of soon. But what next for me?
I love expedition life, the homey camaraderie feel and connection with the like-minded people you meet and to be honest I miss it... Yes, even not having the luxuries we take granted for everyday... A bit like loving the feel of a good old motor... I want to feel like I'm in control and feel it respond to me and that I'm driving it not like the luxuries we get from new motors nowadays where everything is automatically/electrically done for you... More chance of things going wrong too...more things to complain about. Simple is best!
I mentioned that I called our advanced base camp 'home' when I spotted its minute insignificance amongst the vastness of the landscape before me... What I'd neglected to mention was we had just bagged Fjellega summit and that I just had my only bout of vertigo on the trip... I had had Royal in my mind to search for the comfort I knew I could just reactively draw upon with just the thought of that old bear...Wherever Royal came with me I was home... It didn't matter where we were, it could be in the gutter or an empty room, a dark scary alleyway or a piece of simple fabric under the stars-I'd still be home. I've learnt that home doesn't have to be a materially physical place, just a mindset of where you are and who you are with...
For some people (or most people) home is the physical place they live, the family they left behind and they understandably miss that when they are away from it, for me home was where I took it... I had written that I'd let you know why I'm doing these things if I ever found out, I know now and it was to learn about myself and not let my life be shaped by what people expect your life to be, it's like aimlessly following the American dream, just because everyone wants it or had it, it doesn't mean you have to want it or have to be governed by it too...
Since coming back I've been living in my own bubble, everyone around me oblivious to what's out there, everyone talking about things that are minute in scale in comparison to the experiences I had endured... (and I'm not saying it was a difficult character building experience as some other things people do...but...) Does complaining about a slow train really help it be anymore faster, no. Does complaining about the rain or weather make it rain less or be any warmer, no. I love my bubble, please don't burst it!
Everyone is looking for something in life and for me I believe I had found it but lost it in a short space of time... What does one do when they've found what they are looking for but have lost it? Do they find something else to look for or do they keep looking and waiting on that same thing? I don't know the answer to that... I'm still waiting for a direction that may never come... I could be lost on the roofs of the world looking for what I'd found but at least i know that what I'm looking for exists and is possible and my hopes are all renewed from having it in my hands if only for a short time. I've learnt more about myself in that time than I had done in my whole life time and that's something to shout about and more importantly it had opened my eyes up for more, I'm a very grateful and lucky girl indeed and hope I can at least pass it on to people I meet.
Excuse the pun but it may seem like I'm living in the clouds... Maybe I am, but have you noticed how fast life is moving in front of you. Have you ever asked yourself if you're doing or have done what you want to? Or has life got in the way of that? I've just woken up and in my spare time I know what I want to be doing!
For now I've learnt a new found freedom of heights thanks to a few key people in my life recently and I'm going to do whatever it takes test my abilities to it's potential and see what I've been missing out! It's so weird how just a mere acknowledgment of my weakness and conquering it has led me to change my whole out look, I have an itch I can't satisfy now unless I somehow find my weakness again and if it means going higher and higher to look for it then so be it! Who'd have guess a weakness can actually be a joy!
North pole is still a dream away but added to this dream is now mountains...
My next mission is Mont Blanc, western Europe's highest peak! I can't quite believe only a mere 6 months ago I couldn't walk over Waterloo Bridge without feeling dizzy and now I'm planning on doing things I would never have dreamt of doing or even enjoy doing!!
Who knows perhaps my challenge after that should be the seven peaks... Highest point on each continent? Far fetched I know, but no man has achieved their dreams without taking his first steps and this August Mont Blanc summit is my first one...a small feat at 4810m I know but Mont Blanc has a special place in my heart and it wouldn't seem right if I didn't start with that one first... watch this space!
...and wish me luck x
Thursday 26 May 2011
Thursday 5 May 2011
The Sound of...Blue Steel
I looked across at my companions and felt a surge of warmth for them, a previously unknown kinship with these people, these strangers, Theo, the pipe smoking historian of Svalbard, who says has a butler called Jeffery... (Though Henry and I think he's actually his imaginary friend...), Henry the Cadet and Sandhurst trooper, and also known affectionately as my Bergen buddy (believe me you need one, if you think you can lift a 12kg+ backpack on your back numerous times a day...think again! It's not the weight it's the awkwardness of not trying to break or twist your back whilst swinging the darn thing over your shoulder!), finally Andrew the mountain leader (who seems born to be in the mountains, whilst the rest of us develops a nest of matted hair, chapped faces, and sharp pongs Andrew seems part of the element and will probably look the same no matter how long he stays out here), and also the anytime blue steel call uponer and outburster of sound of music sing-alongs...
All four of us from different backgrounds, yet all four of us brought together by this exped and just having completed the same summits... We noused it one (army term, used after mastering something), or ninja'd it...as the favourite term we used through our time here... (doing something with better efficiency than how it's meant to be done by the book - be it time or technique...).
After, the horseshoe victory we worked our route back down, where Theo found an unhappy Turtle which ran from him but miraculously turned into the happy pill it was meant to be way before reaching the bottom (the unhappy turtle is actually his helmet turned the wrong way on a slope and the happy
pill, well you can guess what that is...). We all childishly ran with him (the hiiiiiiiilllls are allive, with the soooound of....) and it felt great that we can express ourselves in ways I wouldn't dream of doing normally... The snow on a few parts of the mountain here was above my knee height in some places, so the trek back was more like climbing steep steps as getting out of them was more than annoying, after unroping I tried to navigate on neve, which is lovely hardened snow, hard to grip with crampons but lovely to the feel and at least guaranteed not having a hole chest height to climb out of at each step. A few deers (female?) topped some of the higher ranges as we made our way across the frozen wastelands, they seem unphased by our presence. Are we not intruding upon your land? Do you not mind that we stain your perfectly white canvased view with our bold colours and thunderous chants? We belonged, nature was telling us we belonged and it felt great!
The exhilaration of our success has rendered us exhausted, 9 hours in the field today and we still had to make it back to base camp! I suspect our plan to dig a snow cave to live in it for that night was out the window.
The rest of the two rope teams were already back having completed their objectives for the day.
I look at base camp, a place I had inadvertently called 'home' after viewing at it's insignificant size amongst the vastness of the arctic when on top of one of the peaks a few days ago. *Home*, something I haven't called anywhere for ages back in the UK... Strange how after a long hard day even a bit of plastic on snow can be known as 'home, to me. It's setting perfectly nested against the gentle rolling whiteness, like a big playground of wonderment, reminds me of being a kid again, so impossibly
tranquil and redolent of childhood innocence that I have misguided split feelings as on the other hand I couldn't quite equate them with my sweat ridden caked base layers and undismissable smell of yes-digestive biscuits ha - funny how laughing and crying at the same time... is laughable...
Yes, time for a shower! No, not that kind of shower. Yes when you're here for a certain amount of time, you tend to relate routines and objects out here to things back at home, as if to keep a bit of normality... A shower actually means wet wiping yourself. The kitchen area is the porch area of
the tent, the bathroom; a hole in the floor where our warm waste have melted the area till you can't see the bottom (nice), the garage; place to park our pulks etc etc... (some of myyyy favourite thingssss...)
Back to the shower; apart from Andrew, we were all faintly resembling the human beings we had been two weeks previously... no wet wipes will do, makes me pin for my cold shower I had resented all them days ago...
Hard to comprehend but full of admiration (and a little jealous) that some guys will be staying for a further 7 weeks! It will be Auf Wiedersehen from me soon, and I will be sad to leave this place, a place I unknowingly called home...
All four of us from different backgrounds, yet all four of us brought together by this exped and just having completed the same summits... We noused it one (army term, used after mastering something), or ninja'd it...as the favourite term we used through our time here... (doing something with better efficiency than how it's meant to be done by the book - be it time or technique...).
After, the horseshoe victory we worked our route back down, where Theo found an unhappy Turtle which ran from him but miraculously turned into the happy pill it was meant to be way before reaching the bottom (the unhappy turtle is actually his helmet turned the wrong way on a slope and the happy
pill, well you can guess what that is...). We all childishly ran with him (the hiiiiiiiilllls are allive, with the soooound of....) and it felt great that we can express ourselves in ways I wouldn't dream of doing normally... The snow on a few parts of the mountain here was above my knee height in some places, so the trek back was more like climbing steep steps as getting out of them was more than annoying, after unroping I tried to navigate on neve, which is lovely hardened snow, hard to grip with crampons but lovely to the feel and at least guaranteed not having a hole chest height to climb out of at each step. A few deers (female?) topped some of the higher ranges as we made our way across the frozen wastelands, they seem unphased by our presence. Are we not intruding upon your land? Do you not mind that we stain your perfectly white canvased view with our bold colours and thunderous chants? We belonged, nature was telling us we belonged and it felt great!
The exhilaration of our success has rendered us exhausted, 9 hours in the field today and we still had to make it back to base camp! I suspect our plan to dig a snow cave to live in it for that night was out the window.
The rest of the two rope teams were already back having completed their objectives for the day.
I look at base camp, a place I had inadvertently called 'home' after viewing at it's insignificant size amongst the vastness of the arctic when on top of one of the peaks a few days ago. *Home*, something I haven't called anywhere for ages back in the UK... Strange how after a long hard day even a bit of plastic on snow can be known as 'home, to me. It's setting perfectly nested against the gentle rolling whiteness, like a big playground of wonderment, reminds me of being a kid again, so impossibly
tranquil and redolent of childhood innocence that I have misguided split feelings as on the other hand I couldn't quite equate them with my sweat ridden caked base layers and undismissable smell of yes-digestive biscuits ha - funny how laughing and crying at the same time... is laughable...
Yes, time for a shower! No, not that kind of shower. Yes when you're here for a certain amount of time, you tend to relate routines and objects out here to things back at home, as if to keep a bit of normality... A shower actually means wet wiping yourself. The kitchen area is the porch area of
the tent, the bathroom; a hole in the floor where our warm waste have melted the area till you can't see the bottom (nice), the garage; place to park our pulks etc etc... (some of myyyy favourite thingssss...)
Back to the shower; apart from Andrew, we were all faintly resembling the human beings we had been two weeks previously... no wet wipes will do, makes me pin for my cold shower I had resented all them days ago...
Hard to comprehend but full of admiration (and a little jealous) that some guys will be staying for a further 7 weeks! It will be Auf Wiedersehen from me soon, and I will be sad to leave this place, a place I unknowingly called home...
Tuesday 3 May 2011
Prologue - a snippet
I woke up today to the familiar sound of the next tents stove firing up...my daily alarm! I felt no pain, or was it that I felt pain everywhere that I could not pinpont an exact location of pain? We had been pulking over distances and I'm beginning to think the ski's are permanently attached to my feet. That was yesterday, today is today...
It wasn't an objective, just a landmark... Our work had been done and we're attempting to bag 3 summits today on Hallwylfillet range. The three summits form a 6k horseshoe ridge and our team of four were on our last summit.
Gone was the familiar comfort of my PT's motivating shouts, gone were the small bridges and low mountains I had trained on, memories of those seemed a life time ago and certainly a world away. Instead I'm left to my own voice in my head and my own search for courage and determination.
'Go Flo, you can do it'... Where did that come from?! It was me! I was hallucinating...? I was finally cracking bonkers...? Or somehow somewhere I had drawn on the ability to recreate the comfort I had so strongly depended on back home? I had desperately wished for it and finally on the most challenging task to date on this exped-I had found it...(At least I hope the latter is the reason and not the former two!).
I've hidden my 'fear of my returning vertigo' very well from my team and I'm proud of myself for all the feats we have conquered thus far... Pride, not something I often feel for myself, I made a mental note of doing this more if I made it out of here intact!
The ridge had drops of around 1000m either side and I could see some sections of the ridge were as narrow as 5m wide with massive cornices on either side. We knew they were massive from where the sun was and how the dark culprits of shadow lingered below the edges of the ridge. So the margin of safety ground we can set foot on is small as you can imagine. The potential for fun was incredible, the potential for fuck-up-immense...
We were about to master a technical section - a sheer drop down to the last section of the ridge before the final summit. For ridges if one should fall the normal procedure is for the other person to do a leap of faith THE OPPOSITE way off the ridge from the faller... Errr helllo... Purposely throwing myself off a ridge...? Fun!!
However for this ridge we decided on ice axe arrests...We were all roped together before the ascent and all masters in practising the ice axe arrests should any one fall. Doing it for real I hope we'll never do but
it was constantly at the front of my mind, drop and stab your axe in! Drop and stab your axe...raaawr - can I feel anymore savage and ferral than I already am after being in the white wilderness for the last two weeks?
My PT when coaching me of getting over my vertigo told me to concentrate on something else I enjoy, like photography, my camera was my pillar and safety net, something to look through and hold onto to should my vertigo jump me from behind... It's been with me everywhere here and will continue to be as long as need it.
I looked out at the view...the view... am I beginning to take it for granted now being out here for so many days? No! I don't think I'll ever acclimatise to this magnificent existence (nor would I want to if it was down to choice), I know this now...no photographer can do this place justice... The eyes are simply not enough to absorb the full extent of what it's like out here, you have to feel it, you have to share it with companions and their sun blushed faces, you have to feel deserving for it, it can't just be dropped on your lap(...top) as a photograph... That's only a minute fraction of the experience... It's a shame as the photographer I'm troubled I can't relay all the thoughts and feelings experienced here, for one they are uncontrollable, I can hardly contain them like a jack in the box... If I knew my companions better I'd be bursting out with shouts of amazement and awe, but I refrained from looking completely unhinged (I hope I succeeded...). I can only show you what I see... It's truly *not* enough...sorry to disappoint...
Time to ninja this ridge...
It wasn't an objective, just a landmark... Our work had been done and we're attempting to bag 3 summits today on Hallwylfillet range. The three summits form a 6k horseshoe ridge and our team of four were on our last summit.
Gone was the familiar comfort of my PT's motivating shouts, gone were the small bridges and low mountains I had trained on, memories of those seemed a life time ago and certainly a world away. Instead I'm left to my own voice in my head and my own search for courage and determination.
'Go Flo, you can do it'... Where did that come from?! It was me! I was hallucinating...? I was finally cracking bonkers...? Or somehow somewhere I had drawn on the ability to recreate the comfort I had so strongly depended on back home? I had desperately wished for it and finally on the most challenging task to date on this exped-I had found it...(At least I hope the latter is the reason and not the former two!).
I've hidden my 'fear of my returning vertigo' very well from my team and I'm proud of myself for all the feats we have conquered thus far... Pride, not something I often feel for myself, I made a mental note of doing this more if I made it out of here intact!
The ridge had drops of around 1000m either side and I could see some sections of the ridge were as narrow as 5m wide with massive cornices on either side. We knew they were massive from where the sun was and how the dark culprits of shadow lingered below the edges of the ridge. So the margin of safety ground we can set foot on is small as you can imagine. The potential for fun was incredible, the potential for fuck-up-immense...
We were about to master a technical section - a sheer drop down to the last section of the ridge before the final summit. For ridges if one should fall the normal procedure is for the other person to do a leap of faith THE OPPOSITE way off the ridge from the faller... Errr helllo... Purposely throwing myself off a ridge...? Fun!!
However for this ridge we decided on ice axe arrests...We were all roped together before the ascent and all masters in practising the ice axe arrests should any one fall. Doing it for real I hope we'll never do but
it was constantly at the front of my mind, drop and stab your axe in! Drop and stab your axe...raaawr - can I feel anymore savage and ferral than I already am after being in the white wilderness for the last two weeks?
My PT when coaching me of getting over my vertigo told me to concentrate on something else I enjoy, like photography, my camera was my pillar and safety net, something to look through and hold onto to should my vertigo jump me from behind... It's been with me everywhere here and will continue to be as long as need it.
I looked out at the view...the view... am I beginning to take it for granted now being out here for so many days? No! I don't think I'll ever acclimatise to this magnificent existence (nor would I want to if it was down to choice), I know this now...no photographer can do this place justice... The eyes are simply not enough to absorb the full extent of what it's like out here, you have to feel it, you have to share it with companions and their sun blushed faces, you have to feel deserving for it, it can't just be dropped on your lap(...top) as a photograph... That's only a minute fraction of the experience... It's a shame as the photographer I'm troubled I can't relay all the thoughts and feelings experienced here, for one they are uncontrollable, I can hardly contain them like a jack in the box... If I knew my companions better I'd be bursting out with shouts of amazement and awe, but I refrained from looking completely unhinged (I hope I succeeded...). I can only show you what I see... It's truly *not* enough...sorry to disappoint...
Time to ninja this ridge...
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