Challenges and motivation.

We have had time to think and chat over the past twenty-four hours. Normally, all we can manage is to keep going, plodding away, growing weary, melting snow, dropping in to bed, exhausted.

Before coming on this journey, we planned and tested equipment and prepared for what we thought would be the demands facing us. We thought we had covered all possibilities but look at my boots!

When Karen first contemplated staying outside in temperatures of -30C, it hardly seemed possible yet, little by little, she prepared and tested herself and she has achieved what was merely a dream two years ago. If you challenge and test yourself in small things you will find you can do almost anything you set yourself.

We have all faced challenges. Karen has her toileting tent but when the rest of us have to go outside the tent and bare our bottoms at -30C or -35C and then wipe ourselves clean with freezing snow in our bare hands, it takes some courage.

We are now facing another challenge, working out when to make the phone call to arrange our flights. If we call for the airlift too early and don’t make it, that would be disastrous. Again if we leave it too late, there may not be enough seats available. Life is full of such decisions needing to be made.

Motivation is important. The goal of reaching this camp kept us going through the darkest periods. More immediate goals were to make it to the next break after 50 minutes of skiing. We took it in small attainable steps.

I regret we didn’t spend enough time together to establish firm team relationships before setting out. There is no socialising in the evenings, no time to listen to one another’s grievances and resentments. Time or the lack of it has been a real challenge. Evenings are taken up with melting snow for water, in our separate tents, a time-consuming, tedious chore while worn out from the day’s exertions.

One lesson we all learned is that you need to have confidence in yourself before you set out on a challenge like this. Karen, being more mobile now, can pull up or go forward to ski beside each team member in turn and chat with everyone. I daren’t move out of the tracks left by the others because of the broken boots and the terrible state of my feet. I think we are all on a learning course here.

I hope the school children are coping well with their personal challenges. Just remember that what you need is to have faith in yourselves and set yourself achievable tasks and move on from there to greater things. Look after yourselves and thanks for all your encouraging messages.

Anna and Pasi, Karen, Andy, Harvey and Jacek send their love.

We don’t have a half-term break!