My 400-mile trek was an icy blast
Arctic explorer on why he loves sub-zero adventures
I’M a bit of a wimp when it comes to being cold, so I was fascinated to chat to dad-of-four Mike Stevenson who has trekked more than 400 miles solo across Siberia’s frozen Lake Baikal in the recordbreaking time of 11 days, 14 hours and 11 minutes.
Mike is a training officer with Bolton Mountain Rescue team and says he was excited to take on the challenge.
“For a number of years leading up to it I’d been going to the low arctic doing cold weather expeditions,” he says. “It’s a whole adventure – I just love it. The extreme cold affects people in different ways. I find it liberating.”
Mike set off with just his pulk – a small sled used for transporting belongings – walking, skiing, eating and sleeping in temperatures as low as -35oC and battling 87mph winds. Some days the snowfall was so heavy he couldn’t see.
Mike says: “All I could see was white. I thought about my kids and my family.”
“A lot of the time you are fighting to keep your fingers warm,” says Mike. “Every hour you’ve got to take your big mitts off to get your food in and your fingers get so cold.
“I camped every night and aimed to get about 5-6 hours sleep. The sleep’s very broken because Lake Baikal is constantly cracking and popping.”
Mike reached the finish line just in time to beat the world record.
“I woke up on the last day, with what should have been a nice 50km ahead of me,” he says. “But I hit a lot of fresh snow... pulling the pulk was physically draining.
“It got close for a time and I thought “I’m not going to do this”.
Mike reached his goal at 9.30pm, beating the record by 1hr 17 mins.
He sums up his feelings upon crossing the finish line in just two words: “Utter relief!”.
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