Nite Maverick - Megan Hine

My thighs tremble, a deep ache in my left hip screaming for me to stop as an old injury destabilised recently in an accident triggers my psoas muscle, pulling on my lower back. Forward movement on our skis through the thigh deep powder snow, with a mean crust on top has forced the pace down to a km an hour. A deep breath of freezing air in and out through the nose ‘No pain, no pain’ a mantra which when conditions get bad and my body aches to stop I say to myself. I instantly feel my shoulders and muscles relax, the familiar mantra reminding me that my body has faced far worse and the discomfort will be temporary. I feel my focus expand away from the ache, extending back out over the Arctic landscape around me and peace once again falls over me as I push forwards.

As much as I love the jungles of the world and have spent many years’ worth of time working and exploring them, the cold places have always captured my heart and my imagination like no other environment. I made a promise to myself during the covid lockdowns when my schedule had gone from spending 10 / 11 months overseas heading up the rigging and safety on high stress adventure TV shoots to standstill that I would spend more time over the coming years on adventures for myself again without clients. Last year I skied across Iceland, ran across the Gobi desert and established some new alpine climbing routes in Mongolia, this year I find myself in Arctic Sweden on a 500km adventure over 16 days through the highlands bivvying and sleeping in rough shelters.

In the mornings the temperatures are -35 Celsius rising to -15 middle of the day. Some days are whiteouts, visibility dropping to around five meters, the white of the snow blending with the clag and spindrift blowing round us creating a weird phenomenon where you have no idea if you’re moving or not and you ski on a bearing without taking your eyes off the compass. In conditions like this you truly see how easy it is to get turned around. When conditions are like this going is slow unless you’re on a lake as you probe ahead with ski poles to ensure that you don’t ski off the edge of anything as its impossible to see the depth of the landscape. Other days are blue bird days where the breathless beauty of the surrounding world captivates the senses, on these days the warmth of the sun on the face is a welcome treat fostering the hope that the clear skies will later reveal the aurora borealis (northern lights). The display we saw was the best show I have ever seen, I felt like I was on the set of ‘stranger things’ the sky lit green as the ribbons flowed across the night sky above us, making me appreciate the mythology and folklore many indigenous cultures hold which surrounds these ethereal light shows.

As we made our way across the landscape it was a time of reflection and recharge for me as I move into the next chapter of the journey of my career. Excited to share this with you before too long…