My polar journey puts coronavirus isolation into perspective

I arrived on Novolazarevskaya base on the northern coast of Antarctica in a Russian plane, flown by an ex-USSR air force pilot and his crew. I was here to begin the longest non-mechanised polar journey ever done by man — 5,306 km to the summit of Dome Argus, the highest and coldest point of the Antarctic plateau. The next morning, I headed south towards the Somo Veken glacier with my drop-off team. Over 14 hours we climbed to 9,000 feet and passed between majestic mountains jagged and untouched. Eventually we stopped between two peaks. This was Thor’s Hammer, my start point. After we unloaded the sleds, the cars turned, headed north and were gone. The silence drilled into me, as did the intense cold (-28˚C). The two sensations partnered to raise fear as I put up my tent. I reminded myself that as a solo polar traveller, the wolves of ‘fear’ and ‘loneliness’ travel with me. It would do no good at all to feed them now. For a long time that night I tamed my wild mind, and at some point in the early hours I drifted into sleep. Looking back on my journey now, it puts the isolation of the coronavirus lockdown into perspective.

I made little progress on day one, but that was to be expected. I was not acclimatised yet to the altitude and, as the cold tore at me, I was still working out my systems and processes. No rush, no panic. The big problem was that the first major goal, the Pole of Inaccessibility, 1,700 km to the south-east, was upwind. This meant that my direction of travel was adding windchill to the already brutal air temperatures. Day two dawned after overnight temperatures that approached -45˚C. Once I started moving, I was copping -55˚C. I moved under kite power, the clever canvas pulling me upwind.