Death at -70C as charity trekkers huddled together in Arctic tomb
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TWO survivors of a charity trek told yesterday how they clung to their companion as he froze to death in a raging Arctic storm. As their tent was crushed by snow and battered by 160mph winds, Philip Goodeve-Docker had phoned his parents to beg for help. But the appalling conditions on the Greenland ice cap meant that a helicopter could not be sent immediately, so the three men huddled together for warmth as temperatures dropped to -70C By the time rescuers reached the men, 40 hours after the storm trapped them, Mr Goodeve-Docker, 31, was dead and his friends Roan Hackney, 31, and Andrew Norman, 33, were frostbitten and unconscious. The rescuers managed to find them only because they spotted Mr Hackney’s hand, in a red glove, sticking above the snow. ‘The extreme weather was relentless,’ Mr Hackney, the team leader, told an inquest. ‘I was concerned we would suffocate under a blanket of snow. We huddled up, with our bodies intertwined, trying to preserve as much body heat as possible. ‘I was calling out their names and kept trying to break into song and strike up conversation to keep our spirits up. We were exhausted.’ IT worker Mr Norman, from Bracknell Forest, Berkshire, told the inquest at Basingstoke: ‘Phil froze to death in front of me. I knew he was dead.’ The three had been trying to raise money for charity by completing a 35-day, 400-mile unsupported trek across the ice sheet. It was Mr Goodeve-Docker’s first expedition and he had admitted on Facebook that it was ‘nutty’. They were dropped by helicopter on April 25, with sledges carrying two months’ supplies. But two days in, they were caught in the storm. Experienced polar explorer Mr Hackney, of New Cross, South East London, said: ‘ The tent was crushed and caved in on top of us. It offered us no insulation and only our bodies were holding it up. ‘The possibility that we might not make it came to mind. I told Phil and Andy that if they wanted to call home, they should.’ Events manager Mr GoodeveDocker, from Chilbolton, Hampshire called his parents, who said help was on its way. Coroner Andrew Bradley, a friend of the family, fought back tears as he recorded a verdict of death by misadventure. ‘The appalling situation in Greenland was all-consuming and swept away all before it,’ he said. ‘Never was a verdict of misadventure so appropriate.’ Mr Goodeve-Docker had planned the trip in memory of his grandfather, former Royal Geographical Society vice president Patrick Pirie-Gordon, who died in 2011.