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16.12.09
Did I say the right thing?
..."Did I say the right thing?"
Replay the scene in my head: There is a log fire in the grate and a gale outside. We are in Norway’s highest mountain hut in the middle of winter, February 2009. The road outside is closed to all traffic and we may have to stay here longer than planned. The women of the Kaspersky Lab Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition look at me with a mixture of expressions ranging from “I have no idea what you’re talking about” through to “Is he speaking English?”
I pick-up the rainbow coloured beach ball and start again “So latitude is how close to the pole you are – if you’re at zero then you’re on the equator. You need to get to 90 degrees, that’s the pole” I trace my fingers over the globe and some expressions of understanding come back to me from the girls. Progress quickens and later we take our yellow GPS units outside for some orienteering. A couple of days later the team are using them to navigate with ease between checkpoints 10km apart as they ski across the feature-less vidda.
They seem to have got the hang of the navigation techniques that will get them to the pole. May be I did say the right things after all. Only one puzzle remains, why does a snow bound mountain lodge have a beach ball amongst it’s inventory?
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Jim was a member of the team that trained the Kaspersky ladies. Along with his wife, Sarah, he runs arctic holiday company: The Polar People.
Photo by Robert Hollingworth