Whenever feasible, pick your team on character, not skill. You can teach skills; you can't teach character.

While I was serving, I worked as an adventure training officer, teaching soldiers how to ski, canoe and climb.

Rivalry is one of the factors pushing me. While my back was turned, the Norwegians managed to achieve the first Arctic crossing in winter. I didn't want the same to happen in the Antarctic.

There is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.

Whenever feasible, pick your team on character, not skill. You can teach skills; you can't teach character.

As a rule, anything that is pretty you avoid when on an expedition in the polar extremes. Normally anything other than white means a hazard such as a crevasse.

No one will pay you for planning an expedition at first: you have to work in pubs at weekends so you can pay the gas bills. I joined the Territorial Army, which paid me when I turned up to drill nights, and so did my wife.