Iceland - Antarctica Training

What a week!!! I’ve been lucky enough to meet and train with some of the amazing people that Kenny has worked with going to the Poles. I also got to know the most incredible female explorer, Felicity Aston.  Look her up here to get an idea of what some women are capable of....truely inspirational! Make sure you show your daughters, nothing is out of reach for them!

The red truck was my baby to play with for the week!!

My week started off at the Arctic Trucks factory, I was introduced to the trucks we were going to be using in Antarctica and we had a reminder lesson on basic climbing skills. Then the real fun began as we headed up to the glaciers to throw a truck down a crevasse!

Check out the 'monster truck' fueling stop, could you imagine seeing this at the local BP???

As for my week, it consisted of a lot of 'firsts'

The first time I saw glaciers ....beautiful!

The first time I looked down a crevasse ....nerve-wracking!

More importantly the first time I abseiled down a crevasse .... exhilarating!!

Top of crevasse

The idea was to practice rescue techniques should the worse happen and we lose a truck down a crevasse. The guys from Arctic Trucks had already been out and found a large crevasse to use, they were hoping that the truck would crash though the crevasse and maybe reveal a cathedral crevasse underneath as well as total the truck to give us a really good rescue scenario. 3 times we threw this damn truck down the crevasse and each time it ended upright on its wheels, looking like it had been driven in!!! NOT what we were hoping for!!! But it did give us a good laugh though.

Crash Attempt 1

Crash Attempt 2

Crash Attempt 3

Never known a truck fight so hard to live!! In the end the guys ended up just turning it over...hehehehe

We learnt how to abseil down safely and use specialized rescue equipment to cut people out of the car, quite an intense training session and hopefully the skills I learnt out here will never be needed!

After a long cold day we headed back down the glacier to a 'country cottage' to spend the night, the best part was a hot tub outside powered naturally but the hot springs in the area, the perfect way to end a busy day. Oh and a nice glass of red!!