Baffin Babes
„We are not like those guys, who just wanna be all cool. With ice and beard and all..we just like to be outdoors!“ , Emma Simonsson says, as if one needs to have a beard in order to be tough.
The Baffin Babes definitely prove the opposite. If there is still anyone that doesn‘t believe four women can go without a toilet and shower for 80 days, they’ll be proven otherwise seeing the expedition-docu Baffin Babes. The two Swedish sisters Vera and Emma Simonsson and their Norwegian friends Ingebjørg Tollefsen und Kristin Folsland Olsen have done exactly that – without batting an eye! – and at the same time they managed their longest ski tour ever: 1200 km across the arctic pack-ice along the Canadian Baffin Island. Not exactly a stroll in the park considering the 100 kilos on the pulka, temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celcius below zero and polar bears within sight.
„Train to get fit and eat to get fat – that was our motto before the trip“, says Kristin. The four women have planned on gaining some weight for their three-month long tour through the arctic ice-desert since it is known that fat protects from the cold. „It wasn’t hard at all since chips and chocolate went straight to the hips. It was hard to stay fit at the same time“, says Vera.
After arriving on Baffin Island, they decide to take it easy at first. And of course, not everything goes as planned. Emma’s ski boots didn’t really fit the skibinding. Kristin comes to find out that she would have been better off with one shoe size up („I should have listened to my mom..“) and the two dogs Buck and Anu that were supposed to protect the Baffin Babes and watch out for polar bears at night, also turn out not to be ideally suited for such an extreme trip. Buck is old and blind in one eye and Anu has never been on ice before...All the other adventures of that trip, you can see at the E.O.F.T. 11/12.
„We wanted to experience nature and test our limits. Pushing our limits and finding out what’s possible. The most important thing we took out of this trip is that we simply had a great time out there. Of course, some days were really hard“, says Emma in hindsight and Kristin adds: „but we knew that before. It wasn’t a surprise that we would get tired or hungry during such a tour. You are aware of that before you leave. But friendship and fun surely outweighed everything else.“