Bay of Plenty Olympian Mike Dawson. Photo / Antarctic Heritage Trust
Few people can boast about eating pavlova on Christmas Day in Antarctica but Mike Dawson can.
The two-time Olympian has just returned from a 1000km journey skiing across the continent to the South Pole with all their gear, an expedition arranged by the Antarctic Heritage Trust.
The journey was to celebrate 150 years since the birth of Roald Amundsen who in 1911 became the first person to reach the geographic South Pole.
Tauranga-born Dawson represented New Zealand at the canoe slalom at the London and Rio Olympic games and while he is known for his extreme kayaking achievements, this was a challenge like no other.
Setting off from Ronne Ice Shelf on November 18, the team of five, including Auckland firefighter and medical first responder Laura Andrews, guide Bengt Rotmo, Norwegian intelligence analyst Marthe Brendefur and leader Nigel Waton, arrived at the pole 50 days later.
A typical routine was skiing for an hour at a time for up to 12 hours a day and camping on the ice overnight.
“The biggest challenge was just looking after yourself,” Dawson says.
“Looking after your feet and looking after your mind - top two inches, bottom two inches - making sure that you can get up every day and keep walking and that comes down to keeping your feet healthy.
“And obviously, the mental challenge of just being out in this hostile place day in and day out was a massive one. So just keeping, you know, like keeping track of your headspace.”
Dawson thought their coldest day was their last heading into the pole, which he thought was about -37C but there were other days where the windchill pushed that down into the -40s.
Temperatures dropped to their lowest on the Antarctic Plateau where they were skiing at heights of 2800m above sea level at times whereas by the coast the temperatures weren’t as bad.
“It’s amazing how much you adapt but you get into your tent after a big day and by that stage, you’ve got no fat left in your body and you just like shivering a little bit to warm up.”
After waiting 10 days in South America for suitable conditions to land on a glacier where a logistics hub was based, the team flew there before taking another plane for a few hours towards the edge of the continent.
“Once you leave that logistics hub and you’re flying to the start you’re just looking out the plane window and it’s a wide-open vast wasteland,” Dawson says.
“It’s like what is a big white desert and you get get a bit nervous about how far there is to go and what’s out there. Once you leave and head out to the coast, it’s wide open and flat, and then you make your way towards the South Pole.
“You feel like you’re, you’re crossing America for the first time or something like that in the early days. It’s a very cool feeling.”
Brendefur celebrated her 31st birthday during the trip and surprised the team with cheesecake she brought along, meanwhile, Andrews brought out some pavlova to celebrate Christmas Day.
“I feel like I let the team down,” Dawson joked.
Dawson got to experience a day of snow which doesn’t happen often in Antarctica and it was “almost warm”.
It is also great to spend so much time away and be able to disconnect from social media and the “noise of life” which is “really fulfilling”.
Dawson says it is a place “of huge contrast”.
“It will be beautiful blue skies and sunny yet if you take your gloves off, you’re going to get frostbitten and sunburnt at the same time. It’s just a really crazy place where you’ve always got to be on your guard.
“It seems very relaxed until something goes a little bit wrong, you know, like having your hands out for too long.”
Dawson said the trip gave him a “huge amount of perspective on the magnitude” of the undertaking the early polar explorers went through.
“We had all the latest gear, communication ability, rescue ability; people have been there before us and while it was really hard and overwhelming at times that you still had some comfort in knowing all of that and having all that gear at your disposal.
“You compare that to the guys [who] went there in the early 1900s with no idea what they were getting into and no weather reports. The gear was amazing at the time but it’s nothing compared to what we have and they were going there and back.
“It makes you realise how easy we have it compared to what they went through.”
The joint New Zealand-Norwegian expedition, in partnership with Ousland Explorers and with logistics and support from Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions, was guided by Norwegian polar guide Rotmo and led by trust executive director Watson.
It was the trust’s sixth Inspiring Explorers Expedition following a crossing of South Georgia in 2015, an ascent of Mount Scott in Antarctica in 2017, a successful crossing of the Greenland ice cap in 2018, and kayaking expeditions on the Antarctic Peninsula in 2019 and 2020.
The Antarctic Heritage Trust is a New Zealand-based not-for-profit with a vision of inspiring explorers.
It cares for the expedition base huts and 20,000 artefacts left behind by early Antarctic explorers, including Captain Robert Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Sir Edmund Hillary and Carsten Borchgrevink.
Dawson is full of praise for the trust.
“It’s a massive undertaking and to have everyone arrive at the end, the whole team safe and sound with no major issues was a credit to those guys.”
He said he was taking some time to put his feet up but there would be other adventures on the horizon.
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