(Montreal) Caroline Côté is eager to surpass herself. An accomplished ultramarathoner, award-winning documentary filmmaker, community-minded woman, she needed more for her next challenge. It will therefore attack the South Pole. Alone.
Posted at 9:07
The 36-year-old Montrealer, who also earns her living as an adventure guide, wants to become one of the few women to reach the South Pole solo – there would be seven or eight, depending on the different sites consulted, she says. — and the second Canadian, after Meagan McGrath, who achieved the feat at the end of 2009-beginning of 2010.
However, Côté does not just want to go the distance: she wants to do it in less than 38 days, 23 hours and 5 minutes, a record set by Sweden’s Johanna Davidson, between November and December 2016.
“Here too, in Quebec, we can live experiences that will change us, but I have the impression that the South Pole is really the apogee,” she replied to The Canadian Press there. a few weeks ago, when he was asked why Antarctica.
“It’s the land of adventure, the land of expeditions with the explorers who went there, who tried hundreds of years ago to explore this territory, which is vast and that is unknown to the majority of men,” she explained.
“It ignites a flame inside of me. It makes me want to go after myself. […] It is clear that one can go to the end of oneself in Quebec; but to do that over there, in Antarctica, it took it to another level. It’s a place where we face ourselves,” added Côté.
The latter, including the most recent documentary, The Last Glacierwho has just won the Gemini for Best Director, will set off for Punta Arenas, Chile, next week, where his journey to one of the most hostile locations on the planet will officially begin.
She has spent the last few months putting the finishing touches on her preparation, from a physical, mental and logistical point of view.
“I just came back from an expedition in Greenland where I was a guide, so it allowed me to train in terrain that was similar to Antarctica,” she said. Having a sled to pull for a month prepared me well, but it’s not enough.
“(In the last weeks before the start), it becomes stressful because we have to prepare everything. All the little details about the equipment that I’m going to bring, talking to people about the project, because it’s important for the partners, all these things that mean that in the last days, last weeks, I will hardly have time to train physically. »
Its margin of error is non-existent.
“We can’t make mistakes and it’s complex, because every little detail in my daily life, day after day, when I go to advance there, I will be alone to face them. I can never tell if I don’t succeed it’s someone else’s fault,” she said.
“No, it’s really going to be me who’s going to be tested, alone for so long, with the sun circling around me day and night. But I wanted that: I wanted to find myself alone, to see how I will react, ”continued Côté.
She will be alone to achieve the feat, but will still not be left to herself.
“There is a Norwegian meteorologist who will accompany me in this from a distance, who will give me the weather […] There is also a base camp, Union Glacier. It’s a place where there are doctors and a whole team ready to help us, ”she said.
“Every day, I will have to communicate my position to them. So they’re really going to follow exactly where I’m at each day. If really there I decide that I can no longer continue, because it is too windy, or that I have a serious health problem like an infected wound, they will be there to intervene, ”she summarized .
Cost of the adventure: some $160,000. Côté has a few partners — the equipment manufacturer Helly Hansen, for whom it serves as a “human laboratory”, Treco, a Quebec company that manufactures freeze-dried meals in compostable bags, as well as Tel-Loc, which provides it with a satellite telephone — but most of the funds come from his personal reserve and some donations.
Côté will leave Montreal on November 9. She hopes not to return too soon: it will be a sign that she will have succeeded.