• Polar skills training ✅
• Expedition Training ✅
• Crevasse Recognition and rescue training ✅
• Navigation Training  39-day full east to west crossing of Greenland ✅
• 2-week solo expedition, Hardangervidda, Norway ✅
• Tyre-pulling, running, strength training, mindfulness, kit routines practised ✅
• Funding secured ✅
• ……… Sign off from ALE (Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions) ✅

I am (pretty much) there with just a few weeks left before I fly to Antarctica. Phew! It’s only from looking back, that I can see just how far I have come.

Greenland – a country we could all locate on a map with relative ease, but a place that is otherwise a mystery to many. For those that choose to venture there, it is often a once-in-a-lifetime experience, the ultimate goal being to cross the Greenland ice sheet, the second largest body of ice on the planet.

I find myself writing this, surrounded by expedition gear, a day before leaving on a Polar training expedition in Finse, Norway. It’s fair to say that my life has never felt so busy and varied as the past 12 months since admitting to myself and the world that I would be embarking on a solo, unsupported expedition to the South Pole.