MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall Winter 2019

79 It wasn’t only school kids following Sorby and her three female co- adventurers (expedition leader Ann Bancroft, Sue Giller, and Dal Vera). NASA was also studying how the team interacted as women and their strategies for dealing with fear. NASA found the foursome had a high degree of care for each other compared to groups of men on similar expeditions. The data compiled was used in questionnaires for future astronauts. Sorby says, “We talked a lot about what success was [for this expedition] and wanted to make sure that whatever happened, we did it together and remained friends. When I got sick and nearly didn’t make it, or Ann became suicidal, we talked about splitting up the group and that’s not the message we wanted to send.” Ultimately, that early '90s all-woman South Pole expedition was a success on the ground as well. Sorby and her team reached the pole on January 14, 1993 after 67 days on the ice. Technology changes quickly but Sorby’s drive to trudge across ice did not. Fast forward to the year 2000 and Sorby was back in the white room, joining another expedition crossing the Greenland Icecap, once again on skis. “Unlike our (self-funded) South Pole expedition, we had some sponsors on board and better communication equipment,” she says. “We were testing out one of the first consumer satellite phones from Iridium and I remember calling the president of Cascade Designs to thank them for giving us an Outback Oven. We were baking hot scones in the middle of the Greenland Icecap and it was so much fun to be able to call people in real time.” The satellite phone also provided much-needed comic relief. “We even tried to order pizza from Domino’s because their ads claimed they’d deliver anywhere, so I brought the number from the shop in San Diego where I was living at the time and had a good laugh.” With a population around 3000, polar bears outnumber people in Svalbard. Proper safety precautions and constant vigilance is needed on every excursion. BEN HAGGAR ABOVE Hilde and Sunniva testing out their MSD Mission Link communication system. COURTESY HITI PROJECT DATABASE