The first requirement to be accepted for a South Pole or Antarctica crossing by ALE is to have done sufficient polar survival training. Most people do this in the form of a polar survival training course.

Ben had already done his polar survival training course in 2014 in Arctic Canada, plus had lots of experience from his Greenland, Canada and South Pole crossings. I (Erica) spent two weeks on my polar survival training course in February 2026 in Finse, Norway, with ALE’s Guinness World Record-holding polar guide Hannah McKeand.

Learning from the best

Hannah McKeand holds the Guinness World Record for the fastest solo unsupported journey to the South Pole (2006) and for the most crossings to the South Pole (6). She has skied over 6,000 miles in Antarctica, more than any other human. She founded Polar Expedition Training and has over 14 years of experience in the polar world.

Hannah’s goal is to share not only her ideas about polar travel, but the broad range of options available to you on almost every topic and decision. She left me feeling much more confident and prepared about our Antarctica crossing. Hannah had come highly recommended, so I was confident I was learning from the best.

Why Finse

The village of Finse sits at the highest point on the Bergen Railway between Oslo and Bergen, 1,222 metres above sea level. It is reachable only by train, by bicycle or on foot and overlooks the Hardangerjøkulen glacier. Finse has long been associated with preparation for polar expeditions. Ernest Shackleton trained at Finse before he set out on his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

Week one was based at Finse, with mornings spent in the classroom going through everything we would need to know, afternoons mostly outdoors putting what we had learned into practice, including some tips on cross-country skiing, setting up a tent and cooking in snow, and navigation, and lectures in the evenings. We were taught throughout by Hannah and her assistant Andy. We slept in the comfort of a hut with central heating and two meals a day, learning everything we would need for a polar expedition.

What we learnt on polar survival training

• Clothing — the correct use of layers, the different types of clothing and materials, hands and face management, footwear, temperature control, boots and bindings, skis, skins.
• Pulks — different types, runner technology, packing and weight distribution, covers and bags, trace options, harnesses.
• Tents — different styles, what to look for, preparing tents for polar use before you go out on your expedition, and how to set it up in snow and strong winds so that it stays safe.
• Camping and living — orientation of camps, erecting and protecting camps in extreme conditions, bear security (thankfully we won’t need this in Antarctica), making a practical working space, power, efficiency, sleeping, insulation, field repairs.
• Cooking — safety for cooking inside a tent, carbon monoxide management, stoves, managing moisture, and fuel efficiency.
• Food and eating — nutritional and calorific intake and breakdown to ensure you eat enough and the right balance of fats, proteins and carbohydrates to maintain energy, warmth and strength, hydration, weight loss, and managing hunger.
• Health and hygiene — staying healthy, basic first aid, preventing and dealing with cold injury, emotional preparation and management, medical kits, pain management, remote medical advice.
• Training and physical preparation.
• Travelling in a polar environment — how long to ski at a time and how long to break for, efficiency, managing pace, working as a team, geographic threats, judging and travelling on sea ice.
• Navigation — route planning, navigational theory, GPS, compass use, natural navigation resources, whiteouts, working together.
• Weather — an overview of weather systems in the main polar regions, and managing difficult conditions.
• Environmental issues — environmental ethics, the Antarctic Treaty and the rules that govern our behaviour there, the lack of regulation elsewhere.
• Arctic differences — bears, water, pulks, terrain, navigation.
• Access and permitting — access and permitting issues and options.
• Comms, power and electronics — satellite phones, solar charging, batteries, InReach, options for blogging, cameras, sched calls and communication.
• Risks, emergencies and evacuation — expedition risk assessment and creating an emergency plan, insurance, evacuation options and issues in the different polar environments, international search and rescue agreements, appointing a remote emergency coordinator, firearms.

The main skills I came away with

• Tent setup in snow. Not easy, and it only got down to -21°C with windchill this week. I need to get this under three minutes to protect my hands and make sure the tent gets up ok when it’s windy.
• Sleeping in snow holes (inside the outer tent) instead of an inner tent. I didn’t guess this one. It helps prevent the moisture buildup which is what makes you cold.
• Cooking in tents, and stove repair. We’ll have a backup stove, but we’re so dependent on them that 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.
• Navigating in a whiteout. More practice needed.
• Expedition nutrition and the importance of getting the carb, protein, fat and calorie balance right for a long crossing. Too many expeditions fail or suffer needlessly from getting this wrong.
• Preparing food and breaking it up so we can eat quickly in breaks and on the go if needed, and how to melt water.
• What to wear, what not to wear, and not to wear too much.
• Cross-country ski technique. I need this.
• Polar meteorology.

Week 2: the training expedition

The second week was putting all of it into practice on a seven-day training expedition across the Hardanger Plateau, led by Hannah and her assistant Andy. We started by packing our pulks and weighing everything we needed for the seven days. Mine came to 37kg.

The first couple of nights it took us quite a while to set up our tents and get into our snow melting and boiling routines, and to melt snow to make breakfast, eat and pack up our camps to start the day. By the end of the week, we could get the tents up in minutes (probably still high single digits) and had shaved about an hour off our morning starts. (By the end of my subsequent week of training expedition with Ben, setting up the tent is now down to much lower single digit minutes; the extra week of practice and routine with Ben, who thankfully knows what he’s doing, made us much more efficient.)

The hardest parts were breaking trail through thick fresh snow. In the worst sections, even on skis we’d sink down to our knees with every step. And dragging a 37kg sled up the steep bits is hard, so we learnt how to zigzag and sidestep up hills. In Antarctica, our sleds will be around 80kg.

But I did it. I now feel so much more confident and prepared and excited for our upcoming training expeditions and our Antarctica crossing.

I still have Ben and Hannah’s words ringing in my ears — “if you sweat you die” and “be bold, start cold”.

Ben’s polar survival training: Iqaluit, Arctic Canada, 2014–2015

For his first polar training back in 2014, Ben spent three weeks skiing and camping with the McNair family of legendary polar explorers in Iqaluit, up in Arctic Canada, on Baffin Island.

From the start of the programme, Ben and the team camped out on the sea ice in -40°C (quite a difference from the +30°C of São Paulo where he was living at the time) and they spent the time practicing ski techniques, pulling pulks, navigation, testing different clothing and layering systems, swimming in Arctic waters (an essential skill to know for North Pole expeditions!), and even a week with kite skiing.

Following this, Ben and his then wife, Natalia, put their training into practice with their own mini-expedition, a two-week, 300km ski journey through the Auyuittuq National Park in Canada, a spectacular wilderness area of the country dominated by tremendous peaks named after Norse gods. The conditions were as harsh as one could expect for the end of the Arctic winter, with gale force winds and brutally cold temperatures.

Seven months later and the two embarked on an epic 2,000km cycle and ski journey across Canada from south to north in the middle of winter, from the US border south of Winnipeg up to the north of the Hudson Bay. Coldest temperatures experienced: -53°C; wildlife seen: caribou, Arctic foxes, moose and… a pack of wolves! Thankfully, no polar bears, despite going through the middle of polar bear territory on the Hudson Bay sea ice.

Ben has since put that training into practice on his solo journey to the South Pole, and on his crossings of Greenland and Canada.