LIFE IN THE FREEZER
The tales of explorers trigger excitement and awe in most of us. They’re stories of people leaving behind the safety of the known and comfortable to forge routes across extreme and remote lands while facing unimaginable hardships. Polar travel seems particularly awesome. Endless kilometres of ice and snow. Tents blasted by gale-force winds. Fur-trimmed hoods and icicles frosted onto beards. Facing off with polar bears …
It all seems so thrilling.
So when the opportunity arose to embark on a ‘polar’ adventure of my own, I jumped at the chance. Better yet, I’d be accompanied by a real explorer. Eric Philips is a proper dude. He was the first Australian, along with Jon Muir, to walk to both the North and South Poles. He’s crossed every major ice cap, and is considered worldwide as a leading expert on polar travel. He shares his knowledge, too. Under the banner of Icetrek Expeditions, he takes adventurers to the globe’s most bitter, most frigid corners: Greenland, Svalbard, Antarctica, the Arctic. Some of those he guides are experienced adventurers who rely on his polar know-how to help them achieve new routes or other ambitious objectives. Others are wannabes like me who just wonder what it’s like to step into a polar traveller’s boots for a bit.
Mind you, I’m not going
