When they reached their destination, McNair described the North Star directly above her and the constellations and planets whirling around it. McNair and Martin were constants throughout the entire trek. Each group spent 15 days skiing across an Arctic expanse before a Twin Otter landed where it could on the ice, taking one team which would then pass the baton on to the next team. Over 80 days and 670 kilometres, she and Martin led five separate teams of four “ordinary British women,” as McNair wrote, from the northern tip of Ellesmere Island to the top of the world. McNair documented the harrowing journey in her book On Thin Ice, sharing details of how she co-led the expedition to the Geographic North Pole. Luckily, all-including Riches’ boot-was saved. With a rope attaching her to solid ground, Martin ventured back out into the slushy waters to grab the pulks, which included essentials like their radio and tent. With one boot gone, Riches cradled her foot from the frigid winds to save it from frostbite, while Martin faced the waters yet again to retrieve the crew’s equipment. They lost skis, poles and their pulks along the way. Part of the team tried to go north around the crack, but that was when Riches slipped backwards and fell chest-deep into the slushy water, while two other members began to sink slowly.Īs the ice in the lead continued to slowly drift apart, the other women did what they could to wrest themselves back onto solid ice. But after McNair pulled herself up the bank and turned to help Martin up, the crack split ever further. Telling the crew to follow her tracks, she crossed the steady ice and then took off her skis to jump over a small crack and onto a high bank, where the ice was more secure. She tested it and found it manageable-at first. She hesitated, but told herself they had been over worse ice than that. Facing unsteady ice, McNair found a solid section to cross, which was covered in hard, slippery chunks. On Day 39, the team approached an open lead of black water they couldn’t go around. It was April 1997 and McNair and Denise Martin were leading the first all-women expedition to the North Pole. Halfway into a ski journey to one of the most remote places on the planet, Matty McNair watched helplessly as fellow expedition team member Sue Riches slowly sank into the slushy Arctic Ocean water.
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