ON ICE

Ranulph Fiennes is sawing off the end of his own fingers with a fretsaw. 

It was all going so well. Well about as well as pulling a half-ton sledge across Antarctica at -40º can go. Nothing too much to worry about, just the usual chronic crotch rot, ultraviolet facial burns, gangrenous toes, frozen eyeballs and, of course, gradual and inevitable bodily deterioration, dehydration and starvation. All in a day’s work for Britain’s greatest living explorer.

And I’m right there with him, every agonising step of the way. The monotony, the merciless daily grind - this is a long book, with not an awful lot of pictures. I was going to bail out round about page 200, but it seemed a cowardly and defeatist thing to do - certainly not British.  So 250 pages further on and I’m hanging on in there, the endless routine of get up (if still alive), pack up, trudge forty miles, unpack (if still alive), set up camp, avoid freezing to death, get up (if still alive) and do the whole thing again.

Believe me, there is absolutely nothing easy about this. Even sledges don’t work properly at these temperatures.  The friction from the runners doesn’t melt the ice molecules beneath them so - guess what - they don’t slide.  ‘Ran’ (we’ve go to know each other pretty well) says it’s like pulling two six foot tall men tied together through sand dunes. You wonder why he bothers using sledges at all - why not pull a pack of picnic hampers. Or a carefully packed fridge freezer…

"I think Dorothy needs help,” observes my wife, looking out of the bedroom window at a neighbour across the road.  

But I’m still trekking across the Arctic. And believe me, it’s no ice rink. I’d always thought ice came in roughly two forms: the flat stuff you find on top of water, and the cubed stuff you put in it. But it turns out there’s a multitude of cunningly obstructive versions - the speed bumps of the arctic explorer. Only you don’t slow down to save the suspension. You slow down because you’re dead. Or about to be.

Let’s start with the floating stuff - good old reliable pack ice. Reliable except for two annoying little habits: a) crushing your ship and dropping it to the bottom of the sea or b) crushing your ship and keeping it there for several years while you and your crew go slowly insane and suck each other to death (which is as close as you can get to cannibalism when you’ve lost all your teeth to scurvy).

Then there’s ice floes - islands of pack ice which can serve as a handy taxi for getting you around the Arctic ocean. Albeit a taxi that can split at any second and deposit you at the bottom of said ocean. Oh, and a taxi you’re sharing with ravenous Polar Bears. True, they usually eat seals. But thing is you’ll never see one doing it. Because they always eat what’s on top of the ice first. And that’s you.

But it’s when you get to the solid stuff that your problems really begin. There’s the jagged peaks and craters of sastrugi ice, the arctic equivalent of sand dunes, as unnavigable as ‘concrete tank traps’. The huge snaking rivers of sponge-like shuga ice - creeping across the landscape like refrigerated larva flows. Then there’s fields of boulder ice, impenetrable war zones strewn with blocks the size of houses. And, worst of all, crevasses, hundred feet wide chasms criss-crossed with crumbling ice bridges…

“Jes, if you’re going to go, you need to go now. Dee’s there, and she’s wearing her dressing gown too."

"Okay, just a second."

And that was what did for him. An ice bridge collapsed, and his sledge pulled him like a lead weight down the ice cliff towards the dark water below. He managed to detach himself just in time, but the sledge went in, along with everything he needed to survive more than another few hours in that hellish place. There was nothing for it - he lunged into the water and managed to haul out the sledge, but his core temperature had fallen dangerously low, with irreversible frostbite rendering both his hands useless. In a desperate attempt to ward off hypothermia he managed to extract the stove from the sledge - now frozen solid - and light it … with his teeth. 

His life was saved, but he paid a dear price. Because now, several pages further on and safely back home, he is actually sawing off the tips of the fingers on his very own left hand to relieve the agony of the dying flesh. However many times you read that, it doesn’t get any better.

“Jes, put that bloody book down…”

“But it’s freezing out there!”

“Put your coat on, you’ll be alright.”

So on goes the expensive down coat (Montane) over the top of the inexpensive dressing gown (George) and on go the wellies (Home Bargains). It is cold out there, but the coat’s advanced insulation technology kicks in and as I arrive on Dorothy’s drive I’m feeling remarkably comfortable and self-assured, and wondering why we don’t wear dressing gowns more often while out and about in the winter months. Until I see that Dee actually is not wearing her dressing gown. Nor is Dorothy.  I’ve been set up, but it’s too late and I laugh it off, making a joke about what a fine morning it is for sporting the national dress of the Inuit. 

As the mirth subsides I turn my attention to the ice on the drive. Hmm, bottle I deduce. Very dangerous, particularly when underneath an obliquely positioned Ford Fiesta, which seems to have become wedged across the opening. Dorothy’s inside, gradually removing what little tread there is left on the front tyres, which are spinning uselessly and with a great deal of squealing. We line up behind the car and look like we’re pushing for a while, but as our wellies cannot achieve purchase on the deadly bottle the force we exert is approximately zero and it makes no contribution to the forward propulsion of the vehicle.

I stand back and reassess. South of the opening the ice field levels out into more or less undisturbed virginal white snow with a fetching sparkly crust.  I shall call it drive ice. I have a plan, and sketch it briefly in verbal form. As expected, Dorothy immediately surrenders the keys without even a thought for such trifles as insurance and liability. These are desperate times, and there is no room for sheepishness. I tuck in the dressing gown and take up position in the driving seat, my mind already racing through the precise calculations and manoeuvres needed to to extricate the vehicle from the ice and assume a southerly bearing.

Gradually, with much toing and froing, the car inches around until facing down hill, at which point I ease off the break, confident that the tyres will achieve purchase on the fissures and crevasses scarring the partially fractured bottle and virginal drive ice beyond. 

Thankfully my calculations prove correct, and the car maintains grip as it coasts onto the snowy plain bordering the front flower bed and finally attains the garage. I hear whooping and celebration behind, but I stay focussed on the task in hand. This isn’t over yet, because I’m going to drive the car all the way up the drive and onto the road. Completely unsupported, and without any contact whatsoever with the outside world.

I turn round, and begin back along the plain, effectively blinded by the sun as the frozen wipers whip back and forth in a fruitless attempt to remove the fine layer of semi-opaque hot kettle ice left from Dorothy’s earlier attempts to get the squirters working. I gather speed over the drive ice and a blizzard of bottle splinters ricochet off the chassis as I hit the incline and the perilous unbroken bottle. The steering goes light as a I begin to loose directional control, but thank God the car is still moving upward towards the main road.  

My God. The main road! There may be something coming, but I’ve come too far to turn back now. And anyway, Dee seems to have positioned herself in the middle of it and is waving her arms wildly in no specific direction. I take this as an indication there’s nothing coming, and press on over the crest of the drive, across the road and into the bank of frozen debris piled up at the other side (snowplough-driver-doesn’t-give-a-fuck ice).

And that’s it. Strangely, Dee and Dorothy don’t thank me as I pull myself out of the car and limp (for some reason) back home along the road.  

The prolonged physical stress and trauma have taken their toll, and my hands shake a little as I empty out the muesli. This morning I woke up a normal middle aged, middle class, middle-of-the-road kind of guy. Little knowing that by breakfast I would be a hero. You see, it’s there in us all. Like the seal, beluga or mighty sperm whale - just there beneath the ice, but sadly so few of us see it.  

“You going to take the kids out sledging after breakfast?”

“Oh come on, sledging’s for wimps. I’ve got a blog to write."

Cold by Ranulph Fiennes is published by Simon & Schuster UK (7 Nov 2013)


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