It is not an easy decision to withdraw from a long term project and abandon your dream. Especially when you have invested two years of planning and preparations. Petter had a hard time making this decision, but there is no doubt in my mind that it’s the right one for him. Family comes first and when your motivation falters one has to take a step back and reconsider.
Petters decision did not come as a shock to me as he had expressed concerns for a while. None the less I was shaken with the prospect of forfeiting the whole project when he broke the news. Petter was always aware of the consequences of his decision and he has kindly offered his support in any way that he could. He graciously agreed to abandon any resources already sunk in the project to the benefit of the expedition, should it go on, being equipment, expenses or airfares. This was of vital importance to me as I needed to recruit a new partner for the project. And as you can imagine – partners for expeditions in polar regions don’t grow on trees.
After receiving the sad news I immediately considered my options. Crossing the ice cap with a group was viable but my primary objective was to complete the project with a single partner and no guide.
As luck would have it, a few months back I had the pleasure to befriend an ambitious gentleman named Christian Iversen Styve, a 25 year old student, freeskier, outdoorsman and all around nice guy. We met at one of the of the group workouts conducted by Latitude Expeditions last year and have been training together occasionaly since then. Christian had already told me about his plans for future adventures and our conversations left no doubt that he possessed the required mindset for this kind of outing.
All it took was a few phone calls and Christian was on board. They say that “you can’t talk someone into a polar expedition”, but Christian did not take any convincing. His main concerns was if he could get time off from his side job at Sportsnett and if he could afford it all on his student budget.
The famous polar explorer Roald Amundsen said that there is no such thing as luck, only good planning. But I have to admit – Christian being the positive and adventurous individual that he is, the chance of meeting a man of his ilk at a time like this is slim to none. I simply lucked out . I am looking forward to hooking up with him for training in the mountains of Norway and completing this epic journey together in May.
Stay tuned for our next post presenting Christian in more detail.
The adventure is most definitely on.
(Christian hauling tires in Oslo)
March 18th, 2010
Great! I agree, you are definitely lucky!