Our guest on Tuesdays meeting was Andrew Bayley, MP for Hunua.

 

As well as MP for Hunua, Andrew is an adventurer par extraordinaire.

 

Andrew walked into our meeting in all the gear that he used to trek to the North Pole.  He explained that temperature would drop to -40 degrees, which meant that there couldn’t be any exposed skin so a facemask was necessary.   Also, the high UV also meant the googles were needed as eye protection. 
 
His expedition to North-Pole took place in 2016.  To prepare, he climbed Mt Cook to start, and then climbed Vincent Masif, the highest mountain in Antarctica.  After a few more practice mountains and hiking (by dragging around a tire around Auckland), he headed off to the Arctic circle with his son.
 
The expedition started from a small village in Northern Norway.  He showed us the photos of a seed vault, polar bears and a cave that you could see the ice from underneath. 
 
Andrew’s group then took their 50 kg sleds onto a Russian plane and were dropped off closer to the pole.   However, the group had many kilometres of pressure ridges and channels of open water (leys) that they had to trek through to get to the pole.   With a GPS unit, they were able to find the exact position and were then helicoptered back out.  One of the highlights at the end of the journey was being given a Russian paratrooper badge from a Russian CO prior to their departure.