Finished week 1 of a 2 week polar survival /expedition training course 🙂

I’ve learnt so much and feel a lot more confident about our 2,100km Polar Dogs Antarctica Expedition. Now I need to be able to do everything quickly and ideally without taking big mitts off in the -50°C Antarctica will throw at us.

What we’ve covered:

⛺ Tent setup in snow – not easy and it *only* got down to -21°C with windchill this week. I need to get this under 3 minutes to protect my hands and make sure the tent gets up ok when it’s windy
🕳️ We’ll be sleeping in snow holes (inside the outer tent) instead of an inner tent. I didn’t guess this one. Helps prevent moisture buildup which is what makes you cold. (And we’ve been sleeping in a super comfortable fully-catered heated hut until now!)
🍳 Cooking in tents and stove repair – we’ll have a backup stove but we’re so dependent on them we need to be able to fix them while out
🧭 Polar navigation with GPS and compass – we’ll be utterly reliant on both to stay on route and avoid crevasses
🍫 Expedition nutrition and the importance of getting the carb/ protein/ fat/ calorie balance right for a long crossing. Too many expeditions fail or suffer needlessly from getting this wrong
⛷️ XC ski technique. I need this.
🌨️ Polar meteorology
🪁 Ski kiting talk with world champion Thomas Sorensen, and we got to watch the pros practicing on the lake ice! They’re scarily fast!

Learning from the best

Here with Hannah McKeand, Guinness World Record holder for fastest solo unsupported journey to the South Pole (2006), most crossings to the South Pole (6), and she’s skied over 6,000 miles in Antarctica, more than any other human. So learning from the best 🙂

Today was packing our pulks and weighing everything we need for our 7 day expedition (heavy). Tomorrow we head out on it to put it all into practice 🙂

And have added requisite photo of the most beautiful husky here.