Eric Philips: Ice Trek - The Bitter Journey to the South Pole

By GILBERT WONG

If a romantic notion remains about the Ice Trek venture to ski to the South Pole and back in the summer of 1998-99, then Eric Philips' account quickly dispels it.

Published this week, Ice Trek has a subtitle that signposts intent: The Bitter Journey to the South Pole by Peter Hillary, Jon Muir and Eric Philips.

This is a tale of how good men go bad and perhaps a little mad when confined to a small tent lost in the blank vastness of the most hostile place on earth.

The Ice Trek caught a certain public mood.

The trio, Philips, a polar expert and outdoor education instructor; Muir, an Australian mountaineer, and adventurer Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund, planned to ski from Ross Island to the South Pole and back - a distance of 3000km.

It was a journey that if successful would give symbolic closure to that most celebrated of Antarctic tragedies: the deaths of Robert Falcon Scott, Titus Oates, Birdie Bowers and Edgar Evans, who had perished almost a century before on the same expedition.

Unlike Scott, the trekkers were outfitted with space-age technology. Their main sponsor, telecommunications company Iridium, had launched a satellite network that let users call anywhere in the world.

The expedition would showcase that technology, accessing up to the minute weather forecasts; calls from home, sponsors and the media.

To help drag their heavy supply sleds, the men relied on quadrifoil kites to harness the wind; they carried solar cells, mini-disk players, pagers, were shod in state-of-the-art boots; garbed in the best cold weather clothing available.

Photos of the men training show them grinning in the face of adventure, confident that late-20th century technology would ease their journey.

Reality proved otherwise.

After 84 days they arrived so weak at the South Pole they could not have survived the return leg.

Their insurance company had to fly them home.

Scott took 14 days fewer to reach the pole walking; Amundsen, who reached the pole first and lived to tell the tale, needed only a further 15 days to get there and back.

Philips' version of why the trek failed, partially supported by diary entries from Muir, is that Hillary could not keep the pace they needed to succeed. And that Hillary's angry mood swings had sapped his companions' energy and will. He squarely blames Hillary.

Trek is a misnomer - the men were engaged in a slog.

With no pressure and in normal society, each could easily shrug off the friction caused by their differing personalities.

But forced to rely upon each other, the fissures soon became deep crevasses.

From the outset, Philips is critical of Hillary's walking technique, saying it wastes energy, is inefficient.

By Day 26 Philips is irritated at the way Hillary eats.

He and Muir wolf their rations down. Hillary's etiquette is "exemplary," he folds a bag like a tablecloth, uses his spoon with care.

Cattily Philips writes, "Unlike Jon and me, I hadn't yet heard him fart, and I began to wonder whether he in fact generated any flatulence."

There is constant tension over cooking. Muir's diary entry for Day 44 records: "The atmosphere inside the tent is so much more difficult than a day's hauling ... Peter's turn to cook. He has thrown a wobbler. Is angry ... Won't listen to reason and is a terrible drain on my energy."

The tensions have never ceased.

A year later, at home in Melbourne, Philips writes that he still feels anger.

"Peter drilled into a part of me that had never been tapped before and I wondered what beast lay inside? How far could I be pushed? Did I have a breaking point?"

Today Philips and Hillary communicate only through lawyers.

Hillary took legal action to prevent the publication of this book, claiming it defamed him.

His action was settled out of court.

When asked to comment on Philips' book, Hillary, now in Australia, responded to the Herald via a written statement.

He says: "It is understandable that Eric Philips is disappointed, as I was, at not completing the return journey we planned to the South Pole, but I regret that it has made him so bitter.

"It is no secret that we had a personality clash, but it's important to keep things in perspective.

"Every expedition to Antarctica has had its tensions and disagreements, and ours was no different.

"Teamwork is about accommodating and living with the fallibility of your team members.

"It is not constructive to try and apportion blame for the fact that the return journey eluded us.

"There are many factors that contributed to that including the early breakdown of the camaraderie that I have enjoyed on other expeditions."

Only in a peripheral way does Philips touch on other factors that might have led to failure.

There was no leader. Philips originated the idea, and brought in his friend Muir, who in turn invited Hillary as the third team member.

Hillary, whose celebrity opened sponsorship and media doors that would have otherwise stayed shut, was the one reporters turned to.

On the expedition it was a different story.

As Philips notes: "Our expedition had no leader, or, more accurately, three leaders, any one of which might naturally emerge and take control in a crisis."

Philips does not give this omission the importance it deserves.

He refers to Hillary's ease with the media and finances with faintly disguised disdain, yet only fleetingly acknowledges that the expedition would not have left Christchurch without a known face acceptable to the sponsors.

After the expedition Hillary became the official "voice" of Iridium, though battery failure left them phoneless until a resupply flight and, in perhaps a final sign of ill-fate, Iridium has since gone bankrupt.

One answer may be that the flash technology only made their journey harder. Rather than focusing on their goal, there was always the distraction of a call to wife, family and friends, media or PR handlers.

At any time a mistake could have cost them their lives. A gobbet of spit freezes instantly to a glass bulb before it hits the ground. Yet at one point Philips calls Melbourne only to be put on hold to the strains of Fur Elise.

The journey was as much psychological as physical.

Philips admits as much, suggesting that the team had the funds to do real icecap training in Greenland but decided to forgo it to their cost.

And so it was that three men from different backgrounds, with different personalities, decided to spend 84 days as close to each other as this newspaper is to you, performing the most intimate acts - sleeping, eating, washing, defecating.

It was a challenge they seem to have overlooked was there until it became all too real.