Reflecting on the experience

We get off our bikes and start to embrace, overwhelmed with emotion, perhaps even relief. It’s been one of our most difficult challenges. We were travelling as a team, yet most of the time, we were alone in our thoughts, behind our goggles and our balaclavas.

The sense of happiness and achievement is palpable, and our eyes fill with tears of joy. We are the first all-female team to fatbike the frozen lands of the Arctic, connecting the Russell Glacier with the western coast of the world’s biggest island, Greenland. Yet it’s the experience as a team that bonds us more than the achievement itself.

There’s no doubt that Greenland’s savage beauty has changed us forever. This wild land has a fragility that is calling us to wake up to a new world reality. We’re all connected to it somehow and our destiny seems interlinked to its survival. Nations, like individuals, come to light in times of crisis. Indeed, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic, but will surely shape humanity’s future and survival – possibly sooner than we think. The question is whether each of us will do our part to safeguard our planet and its most vulnerable, or simply be a bystander.

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