Two firefighters from Wales, Rebecca Openshaw‑Rowe and Georgina Gilbert, pulled well over their own body weight on an untried 750-mile plus route to the South Pole. They spoke to Steve Morgan
“52 days, 10 hours and 30 minutes – in the freezer”.
It doesn’t get any further removed from the firefighting day job than ploughing close on 1,227 kilometres – 762 miles – through the stark, often stormy wastes of West Antarctica to the South Pole – where temperatures routinely bottom out to -51.
Add in the challenge of lugging well over your own body weight in supplies at a breath-catching altitude – this as a relative novice on skis – across a hostile snowscape with no liquid water and no wildlife.
“I’ve done a lot of things in my life sport-wise,” reflects Rebecca Openshaw-Rowe, “but this is the toughest challenge.”
Openshaw-Rowe, “Bex” to her Mid and West Wales Fire Service mates – veteran of a rugby World Cup and former Great Britain rower – certainly earned her stripes completing the remarkable challenge alongside Georgina – “George” – Gilbert. Currently with South Wales Fire and Rescue, George is in her 26th year fighting fires and – as an ambassador for gender equality – stereotypes.
Inspired by their attendance at a training and development event in 2019, the Antarctic Fire Angels (AFA) project was born. Tucked away on a website brimming with can-do advice and testimonials is the motto “you can’t be what you can’t see”.
“Our key message is about women supporting women and inspiring the next generation – and every generation – to have a go at something,” George says.
“Something” is quite an understatement. “The preparation doesn’t quite ready you for the longevity of it,” she adds. This was a huge undertaking four years in the plotting.
LEARN TO SURVIVE
The spectre of Covid threw a huge spanner in the training works not long after the would-be explorers – strangers beforehand – signed up. “You need to learn to survive in the cold and live on the ice and we couldn’t go anywhere where there was any snow or ice,” says Bex. “So we skied on beaches, on sand, we pulled tyres around the country. We must have looked very strange.”
Having prepped the best they could, with tough taster treks to Norway and Sweden, it was time to depart for real in November 2023. By that time the initial party, tackling a new, as-yet-untried route from Union Glacier via Constellation Inlet to the South Pole had, for various reasons, been pared down to Bex and George. Though they did not travel, the remainder of the Angels – Nikki Upton, Emily Butler and Elissa Pedone – were hugely active on the support front, with Bex’s wife, Kirsty Openshaw-Rowe, who is also a firefighter, updating social media during the expedition.
It is testament to George and Bex’s rounded, team-centric characters that they seem as keen to talk about their back-up as themselves. George is also quick to pay tribute to the fire service. “Nothing but supportive,” she says. “Amazing, all the way up from our watches to leadership team.”
The hardest yards on the altitude-busting 25-kilometres per day schleps – one of the tougher days brought an 800-metre incline – were eased by checking the constant stream of goodwill messages from friends, workmates – and expedition patrons Dany Cotton, former London fire commissioner, and TV presenter Lorraine Kelly Smith.
Our key message is about women supporting women and inspiring the next generation
A tracking app allowed the intrepid duo’s progress to be followed via the website, with audio clips and check-ins, at least when wi-fi was available.
“There were hundreds and hundreds of these amazing, inspiring motivational comments from people, just spurring us on, really. It really helped,” says Bex. “Many of the people we didn’t even know.
“It wasn’t just family and friends; it was complete strangers who’d really taken to our expedition.
PEOPLE WERE OBSESSED
“It gives you validation – to be so far away, yet to have that kind of connection with people back home and know there was so much support. It helped massively. People were obsessed with it – when we’d finished, we had so many people say: ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do now’!”
For Bex and George, it is back to work – changed in part by the experience, reflective and certainly more appreciative of life’s simple things: trips to the loo without fear of frostbite, hot showers, and food that isn’t freeze-dried.
Critically, they hope to have sown a seed of self-discovery for others. “We’d learned how to do absolutely everything from scratch four years ago. It’s about believing in yourself,” says George. “And the fact that you can teach an old dog new tricks as well – neither of us are particularly young.
“We don’t go out of our way to prove ourselves – you shouldn’t have to – but believing in yourself, is without a shadow of doubt, where to start in life.”
You couldn’t really wish for a better set of role models – the perfect combination of fire and ice.
