BB:
What have you been doing to prepare yourself for the cold and the expedition?
RS:
Cold? What do you mean? I’m from Scotland I don’t need to train for the cold! (Laughs) Seriously, Norway has been the destination. We spent some time there over the winter. We’re really focusing on emulating Shackleton and therefore visited the same training area he trained in, Finse, in Norway the same hotel his team stayed in and the same routes and land they trained on.
Fitness wise it’s daily gym work which is all pretty boring. We wear our hauling harnesses and attach the traces to a weight that is then suspended from a frame.
BB:
How much will your sledges weigh?
RS:
My sledge will weigh 70 kilos. Because of the differences in physiques there is no point in having everyone towing the same weight. So we set up the weight with the harness and then get on a treadmill. This emulates the physical effort in pulling the sledge. Kit wise, unlike many expeditions we’ll be embedding the film crew in the expedition; they are an integral part of the expedition. New Earth Films are filming the expedition and we have imbedded Kevin, the owner, to do the filming.. with the assistance of Seb. As Kevin (Ed- owner NEF) will be there to film us, we can’t have him burdened with traces; he has to be able to ski around us in order to take film and photos.
BB:
Whilst we are on the subject – what are you taking as far as rations are concerned, I take it it’s not sledging hoosh (Ed- this was a hot mush of pemmican, ships biscuit and sometimes sugar or dried fruit if there was any that was the staple of polar exploration 100 years ago) and Nut Food (not dissimilar to the French confection, nougat)?
RS:
Pemmican – bleargh! Have you ever tasted pemmican? It is seriously unpalatable, last winter when we were in Norway we visited Fram Heim which was a replica of Amundsen’s hut from the 1912 expedition. At the visit they brewed up some pemmican for us. I explained how disgusting it was and how I really didn’t want to try any. They asked me if I had tried it with ‘normal’ food. The reason is that if you really, really have to eat pemmican you can just about force it down but if you then eat something normal like a Mars Bar or a cracker you invariably start to retch because the normal food just highlights how horrible the Pemmican actually is! It’s seriously unpleasant, rank stuff.
98.