My Polar Dream Read online

  ABOUT MY POLAR DREAM

  Fourteen-year-old Jade Hameister had a dream: to complete the Polar Hat Trick.

  In 2016, she skied to the North Pole.

  In 2017, she completed the Greenland Crossing.

  In 2018, she arrived at the South Pole.

  This is the story of an adventurer who never gave up - who set herself incredible challenges beyond her years and experience.

  An adventurer who endured extremes of cold and blizzards; treacherous terrain where one wrong step could be fatal; struggled through sastrugi, ice rubble and emotional lows to achieve an extraordinary goal.

  Along the way, she made a sandwich for online trolls, inspired young people, and made international headlines.

  At sixteen, Jade Hameister became the youngest person in history to complete the Polar Hat Trick.

  Jade is:

  • The youngest person to ski from the coast of Antarctica to South Pole unsupported and unassisted

  • The first Australian woman in history to ski coast to Pole unsupported and unassisted

  • The first woman to set a new route to the South Pole

  • The youngest to ski to both Poles

  • The youngest to complete the Polar Hat Trick.

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  ABOUT MY POLAR DREAM

  DEDICATION

  LETTER

  PROLOGUE: THAT SANDWICH

  HOW IT ALL BEGAN

  Chapter 1 Born to be Brave

  Chapter 2 Big Dreams

  THE NORTH POLE

  EXPEDITION 1

  Chapter 3 False Starts and Midnight Emergencies

  Some Cool Facts About . . . The North Pole

  Chapter 4 Going North

  Climate Change in Earth’s Polar Regions

  Chapter 5 Part One Complete

  That TEDx Talk

  GREENLAND CROSSING

  EXPEDITION 2

  Chapter 6 Greenland’s Warm Welcome

  Some Cool Facts About . . . Greenland

  Chapter 7 A Slow Start

  Chapter 8 Blizzard Days

  Chapter 9 The New Normal

  Chapter 10 The Blur Between

  THE SOUTH POLE

  EXPEDITION 3

  Chapter 11 Prepping in Punta

  South Pole via Kansas Glacier Equipment List

  Chapter 12 The First 10 Days

  Some Cool Facts About . . . Antarctica

  Chapter 13 Dreaming of a White Christmas

  Some Cool Facts About . . . Saving the Planet

  Chapter 14 Welcome to 2018

  Chapter 15 The End of This Chapter

  Acknowledgements

  Picture Section

  About Jade Hameister

  Praise for Jade Hameister

  Copyright page

  To my beautiful family, Paul, Vanessa,

  and Kane, for supporting my dreams.

  The past couple of years have been filled with crazy new experiences – experiences that have transformed me and my soul. New pins on my map, new smells, new tastes, new friends, new cultures and a new mindset. I’ve pushed myself past what I once thought were my boundaries and challenged what other people once thought was possible for young women. I’ve set world records, been to places where no human has ever set foot before and fully immersed myself in the here and now of each new challenge. I’ve chased moments that I can’t explain. Moments with emotions and adrenaline highs, where I felt on top of the world or in the depths of despair. Moments that can’t ever be replicated or relived. I’ve constantly been in good company and surrounded myself with humans who make me a better version of the person I was yesterday. A lot of people tell me I’m crazy and ask me why I would do something so insane. But I think the real question is, why would I not do something I’m so insane about? I think you’re crazy not to chase your wildest dreams. Crazy to live a safe life with no risk and to not do the things that set your soul on fire. The best stories are the unexpected, unplanned ones. This constant passion and fire inside of me that drives me to want to explore and experience the unknown is my why. These are the things I live for. The moments that make me feel alive. Thank you for allowing me to share my journeys with you.

  PROLOGUE

  THAT SANDWICH

  For the last three years, I have dedicated my spare time to achieving my dream of the Polar Hat-Trick – skiing to the North Pole, crossing Greenland coast to coast and skiing from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole.

  When I’d returned home from reaching the North Pole, at 14 years old, TEDx approached me with the opportunity to deliver a talk discussing a ‘big idea worth sharing’. It was a life-changing experience and I was a combination of excited and nervous.

  My TEDx talk – which was about trying to shift the focus for young women from how we appear to the possibilities of what we can do – was then uploaded to YouTube so that it was free for anyone around the world to watch. It was incredible to have this platform to share a message so important to me with so many young people, but what I hadn’t really wrapped my head around was the possible online trolling in response to my talk. The majority of responses it received were of support and encouragement, but there were some negative comments, too – most of them demeaning to women.

  Make me a sandwich.

  Good on you, sweetie. Maybe you could find a successful husband and make him a sandwich.

  Sorry little lady – you were designed to be a homemaker, have babies and take care of them. Not to trot around in snow to prove a point. ACCEPT YOUR ROLE AND PLAY IT.

  Make me a sandwich.

  Every time someone posted a positive comment, these trolls would respond with: ‘Make me a sandwich.’

  My first reaction was just to laugh, but deep down I was also kind of annoyed. The people who make these sexist comments and bully online are doing it, usually anonymously, from behind the safety of a keyboard. Not only are they insecure, but they’re dinosaurs – the world has moved on and they’ve been left behind.

  Later, when we were on our way to the South Pole, occasionally we would joke about these comments on my talk. When we finally arrived at the Pole we spent the day cleaning out our sleds and getting ready for our flight back to Union Glacier the next morning. Dad was pretty tired, so after dinner he went back to our tent to call Mum and I stayed up with the rest of the team and a few other adventurers watching Back to the Future. It was then that I decided to carry out a joke – make a sandwich and walk the kilometre from camp back to the Pole and take a photo to post to my Instagram account. Heath and Ming also agreed to come with me and take the photo.

  It was around 11 pm when I went back to the tent to tell Dad what we were planning to do (it is 24-hour daylight in Antarctica in summer, so there were no issues there). He told me it was a stupid idea, and that I should just zip myself into my sleeping bag and get some recovery rest. When I told him I was going to do it anyway, he asked me not to wake him up when I got back in the tent.

  I posted the photo that night along with the words, ‘. . . for all those men who commented “make me a sandwich” on my TEDx talk . . . I made you a sandwich (ham & cheese), now ski 37 days and 600 km to the South Pole and you can eat it xx’.

  At the time, I had about 3000 Instagram followers and I only wanted to take the sandwich picture mainly for a bit of a laugh. Obviously, there was a message behind it to the men who’d made the comments, but I hadn’t really analysed it in that way, and I was pretty sure none of them followed me on social media, so they would never see the photo to get my message anyway – it was more symbolic.

  But around the time we got back home to Australia, the social media site AJ+ had already made a video telling my story and picked up the sandwich photo. It was viewed more than fi
ve million times and things just snowballed from there.

  Within a few weeks, I had more than 12,000 Instagram followers and there were media enquiries coming in from all over the world. I was spending more time on Skype doing interviews than I was catching up on my homework. I felt there was a lot of pressure and, in some cases, I was being labelled a feminist icon.

  But I’m not sure that’s what I am or want to be. For me, it’s about equality. I’ve been brought up in a family where the fact that I am female has never entered any discussion about what is possible. There is no ‘us and them’ in my mind. We absolutely need to empower women around the world, but everyone, both male and female, should benefit from that empowerment. We all need to work together as one human race to make our world a better place.

  All the stories that followed also stirred up thousands of online comments. Lots of men responded that I was just being a compliant female and doing what I was told to do – I went and made that sandwich.

  The truth is, I didn’t. I asked the camp’s male chef, Michel, if he could make me a sandwich to take to the Pole for the photo, and he did.

  So the joke was on the dinosaurs, again.

  Me and Michel, the French chef at the South Pole camp, who made me that sandwich.

  HOW

  IT ALL

  BEGAN

  1

  BORN TO BE BRAVE

  My parents have always said that they believe I was born a fighter.

  I arrived into this world at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne on 5 June 2001, and as far as anyone could tell, I was a healthy baby girl. But three days later, and for no apparent reason, I stopped breathing.

  I was in my crib in Mum’s hospital room. Dad was there and one of Mum’s friends was visiting. Dad looked over and saw that my face had turned purple. He didn’t say anything to Mum, but calmly picked me up, took me over to the nurses’ station and asked if they thought there was a problem. The movement must have made me breathe again, because when the nurses looked at me, there was nothing wrong.

  Dad took me back to Mum’s room and put me in the crib. He said nothing to Mum and her friend, but he didn’t take his eyes off me.

  Within the hour, I went purple again. Again, he picked me up and took me to the nurses. This time, I didn’t resume breathing.

  The nurses hit the code-blue alarm, and medical staff ran from everywhere to try to resuscitate me. They then rushed me off to the special care unit – and Mum and Dad’s nightmare began.

  Mum had heard the commotion outside her room, but she had no idea that I was the cause of all the fuss until Dad asked her friend to leave, then explained to Mum what had happened. Mum has told me since that when it happened, she felt her heart stop. Her brain froze and she doesn’t remember when it started working again. Instead of being in my crib beside her, I was now in the care of others and all Mum was left with were questions. What was wrong with me? Was I going to survive? Would I have brain damage from lack of oxygen? She was terrified.

  To make matters worse, there were no answers. I would unexpectedly stop breathing – sometimes half-a-dozen times a day or more. Mum was discharged and sent home without me (Dad said she was a wreck) while I remained at the hospital with an army of doctors and specialists running tests, trying to work out what was going on.

  Mum would return to spend all day at the hospital with me while Dad was at work, then Dad would sit by my crib all night. They were determined to watch over me every minute, so that if something went wrong they could make sure I got the attention I needed. Dad would read me stories through the night. He says his favourite was The Lion King, except he made Simba a lioness. As he watched over me, so small and helpless, he promised me that, if I lived, he would do anything in his power to help me achieve my dreams.

  After two long weeks, the doctors still didn’t know what was causing me to stop breathing. Eventually, when I’d gone a couple of days in a row without an episode, I was allowed to go home. Like most parents, Mum and Dad were excited the day had come, but also extremely anxious. They were taught how to perform CPR on a newborn and were provided with a breathing monitor and plenty of good wishes.

  The breathing monitor was connected by sticky tape to the place where my umbilical cord had been. When I stopped breathing, an alarm would go off and that’s when Mum and Dad were supposed to start the CPR – though the doctor told them that if it got to the point where I needed CPR, it was probably too late anyway . . . I’m sure that was reassuring.

  Mum was so worried about being alone with me in case something should happen that Dad decided to take a year off work so he could be there with us. Mum told me later that it was the worst of times, but also the best. She and Dad worked together as a team and it made their marriage stronger than ever.

  After seven or so months, my breathing problems cleared up. I had proven to be a survivor. I have no doubt that this beginning altered something in my chemistry.

  Some of my earliest memories are of Dad going off on adventures. He began climbing big peaks in 2007. He’d also had a couple of near-death experiences in his life – one when he was just seven years old and was hit in the head by a tyre rolling fast down a steep hill, resulting in a multiple-fracture exploded skull. These experiences led him to believe he should never take life for granted. He was constantly reminding me and my younger brother, Kane, of this when we were little – and he still does!

  His taste for adventure and exploration has taken him from surfing three-metre swells on newly formed breaks in Indonesia’s remote Banda Aceh shortly after the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, to an extended whitewater rafting expedition in Nepal. He’s even walked the Kokoda Track twice – once with his dad and again with Kane when he was thirteen. And earlier this year, Dad and Kane covered around 1000 kilometres exploring remote and unexplored parts of the Amazon jungle with Matsés tribesmen as their guides and Peru Special Forces escorts.

  When I was about five years old, Dad decided he’d like to climb Mount Aconcagua in the Andes. Aconcagua is the second-highest of the Seven Summits (the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents) and the highest peak in the Southern Hemisphere.

  He was one of only three of his party of 11 to reach the peak on that expedition. A man in the group ahead of Dad’s team died from altitude sickness and one of the guys Dad reached the summit with fell on the way down and knocked himself unconscious, which made for a very slow descent in bad weather. Off the back of this climb, Mum and Dad raised $20,000 to purchase new breathing monitors for the Royal Children’s Hospital.

  Dad went on to climb Mont Blanc (completing a climb that normally takes five days in less than 24 hours), Kilimanjaro in Africa, Russia’s Mount Elbrus, Vinson in Antarctica, Denali in Alaska and, of course, Mount Everest. He reached the top of Everest in 2011. By 2013, he was the twelfth Australian to have completed the Seven Summits.

  In 2008, the whole family climbed Mount Kosciuszko. I was six years old at the time and Kane was just four. It felt great to be at lunch during primary school and able to say we had climbed the highest mountain in Australia on our holidays, though in reality it’s not very extreme! From an early age, adventure was just a regular part of our family life. Dad would come home laden with photographs and stories, and Kane and I thought taking on massive challenges and pushing boundaries was just a normal way to live.

  2

  BIG DREAMS

  At the age of 12, I somehow convinced the rest of the family to go to Nepal and hike to Everest Base Camp together. Base Camp is 5400 metres above sea level and it takes 12 days to get there. The summit of Mount Everest is 8848 metres above sea level and was first climbed by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. I’d heard a lot of Dad’s stories about climbing Everest and I really wanted to be a part of that world and see the places I had only created the image of in my mind.

  Climbing the tallest mountain in the world was never going to be possible for our whole family at the ages of 12 and 10, but trekking to Base Camp
was still an incredibly exciting adventure. It was such a magical part of the world to spend time in. Dad arranged for us to trek with a team that included some of his old expedition friends who would continue on in an attempt to summit Mount Everest. Each day we trekked through villages, met some of the beautiful local people and spent the evening playing cards with the sherpas and mingling with other travellers. I can honestly say that the experience changed my life. It made me think about what I could potentially achieve as a young woman in the world of adventure and exploration.

  One of the members of our group who was going on to climb to the top of Everest was Vilborg Arna Gissurardóttir – or Villa, as we called her. Villa is from Iceland and she had already skied solo from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and had also crossed the Greenland ice cap. As we walked during the day, Villa would share stories with me about her expeditions and answer any and all of my questions. I’m sure I got pretty annoying at times, since she was trying to focus on her attempt at summitting the highest mountain on the planet, but she was very generous with her time and I will be forever in her debt. She had an incredible ‘anything is possible’ kind of vibe. All her adventures sounded so crazy – but so crazy awesome.

  Villa didn’t make it to the top of Everest on that trip – there was an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall and the season was shut down before anyone could attempt a summit. She returned the following year and was caught in the avalanche at Base Camp caused by the terrible earthquake in Nepal. Again, the season was cancelled. But she didn’t give up. In 2017 she became the first Icelandic woman to make it to the top of Everest.

  Villa’s words of encouragement on my trek to Everest Base Camp stayed with me, and after we arrived home I began to create my own ideas of adventures in my imagination.