Melbourne schoolgirl Jade Hameister was the youngest s st person to trek a difficult route to the North Pole.
Melbourne schoolgirl Jade Hameister walked into the history books in snow-covered boots when she became the youngest person to trek one of the more difficult routes to the North Pole. Along the way, she faced dangerous conditions, freezing temperatures, a
JADE HAMEISTER IS NOT what you’d call an underachiever. Having climbed Mt Kosciuszko by age six and reached Mt Everest Base Camp aged 12, it stands to reason that she’d embark on an expedition to the North Pole at the grand old age of 14. On 1 April this year, after months of pulling tyres along the beach, punishing CrossFit routines and a dress rehearsal on New Zealand’s Tasman Glacier, the teenager found herself in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, in the Norwegian high Arctic.
But there was just one problem: the sea-ice runway at Barneo, the Russian base and landing point for all North Pole-bound explorers, had significant cracks. She was snowbound for a week, eating into precious days she’d allowed to reach the pole (and in doing so become the youngest person ever to ski over more than one degrees of latitude to get there).
“It was definitely frustrating, annoying and inconvenient, but I think that was all part of the journey,” says Jade from her home in Melbourne. “It’s the Arctic, it’s always going to be unpredictable.”
She spent her downtime in Svalbard dog-sledding and brushing up on her ski skills with her father and fellow explorer Paul. No slouch himself, Hameister senior – the 12th Australian to climb the Seven Summits – would be hampered by a fresh internal stent from kidney stone surgery the whole way. He had, in fact, checked himself out of hospital just three hours before flying out of Australia.
A week after they arrived, on 12 April, the team was given the green light. Jade, Paul, cameraman Petter Nyquist and polar explorer Eric Philips (also the recipient of the 2015 AG Society Lifetime of Adventure Award) were finally cleared to fly at midnight that night. Touching down at Barneo at 3am, the team hopped in a helicopter bound for their starting point, strapping into their skis the moment they landed. Originally planned as a 21-day expedition, the adventurers now had just 11 days.
“Those first steps were very exciting, a pretty cool moment for me,” says Jade. “But also I was feeling a bit nervous; I’d never been in such a region. I was definitely tired, sleep deprived, but I was ready to go… I wanted to get straight into it.”
At –25°C with little wind, the team made a respectable 10km, negotiating a couple of small pressure ridges with ease. Then Eric spotted a disquieting sight: a set of polar bear tracks in the snow. “I don’t think I was terrified,” says Jade, “but, you know, they can smell you from 20km away, and they can run at 40km/h.”
Thankfully, the carnivores were long gone. But as a precaution the team carried flare-guns and Eric was armed with a .30-06 rifle strapped to his sled and kept by his pillow at night. Jade had spent half a day at the shooting range back in Svalbard, but “unless Eric and Dad and Petter had been torn to pieces [by bears], I’d never have shot it”, she says.
That night, Jade and Paul shared a four-person tent, allowing them space to set up a stove inside (standard practice for polar travellers) to warm their bodies; Jade unwound with her Kindle and posted a nightly Instagram snap of her progress via satellite.
FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS the skies were clear blue; the team made good g round with Jade in the lead, lugging her 50kg sled behind her. “It felt good to be out the front, on your own, because you couldn’t see the people
behind you,” she says.“It felt like you were the only person there.”
At the halfway point on 18 April the team came across a series of frozen leads – fractures in the sea ice – some cockeyed and badly cracked, but all leading north. Eric was forced to cross one on the water, rigging two sleds together, donning his dry suit, slipping across and then ferrying the others over. It was timeconsuming work. At that stage, Eric predicted another five days, and another 75km, at their current pace to reach the Pole.
A stiff wind whipped up. It was ‘only’ –18°C but with no sun for days it was still bitterly cold. Particularly so for Jade, the only female in the group, who had to answer the call of nature onto ice and snow; she eventually contracted minor frostnip (early frostbite) on her legs and backside.
Then, with a light wind behind them, it began to warm up for the last leg. The sun played hide and seek in the morning, re-emerging at lunchtime. “Towards the end of the trip, especially the last couple of days, I felt quite sad,” she says.“I wanted longer. I thought:‘We’re this close, now; we’re going to make it.’ And so I wanted to make it as slow as I possibly could.”
THE FINAL 11KM approach on 24 April was like a dream.“It was surreal,” Jade says. She recalls blue skies, crossing a ridge, stopping for lunch (frozen salami, biscuits and chocolate) and then says “time just kind of stopped after that”.
About 500m away, an Air Berlin jet soared above inexplicably, presumably on a joy flight. Then, at 4pm, Eric handed Jade the GPS with the instruction to locate 89.59.59 (you can’t preprogram 90 degrees).
It switched to 90.00.00 three minutes later, making Jade the most northerly female on the planet and also the youngest person ever to venture so far to this point.“It was really hard to take in,” says Jade.“I didn’t process it until perhaps a week after I got home. Obviously, it’s just ice.You don’t actually feel like you’re standing on top of the world. It doesn’t really make sense.”
Giddy, she put her ski-poles on the Pole and spun around the world’s latitudes. And then, composing herself, hugged her dad.
Along for the ride, but missing from the history books, was Mishka, the teddy bear and team mascot Jade had strapped to the front of her sled. Her full name is Mishka Jabari – the first part Russian for “little bear”, the second Arabic for “fearless”.
Fearless little bear. It’s not a bad nickname for the teenager herself, especially considering this trip was just part one in her intended polar quest: a 2000km hat-trick of the North Pole, Greenland and the South Pole that is to be completed before December 2017 (see box above).
“I think, now, it’s only just starting to sink in,” says Jade bashfully. “But when I got back I still had homework to do; I still had to go back to school. Everything was just so normal.”
Today, she’s already back into her CrossFit schedule, back dragging her tyre around, back building strength for her Greenland crossing in April. It’s exhausting just thinking about it. But you could never call Jade Hameister lazy.
Giddy, she put her ski-poles on the Pole and spun around the world’s latitudes.