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29 March 2024

Emirati owes pole position to work lessons

Elham Al Qasimi says reaching the North Pole was the most exhilarating moment of her life all pictures. (SUPPLIED)

Published
By Reena Amos Dyes

"I wanted to test the skills I had learnt in the corporate world in a more challenging environment to see if they would work there and to find out if I had imbibed them well and was growing as a person," says the first Emirati woman to reach the North Pole on skis.

Speaking to Emirates Business after coming back from her trip to the top of the world, Elham Al Qasimi, who till a few months ago worked as an investment banker before she decided to give it all up and go 90 degrees North latitude, said: "The skills that I learnt in the corporate world were decision making, being organised, team playing, discipline and being proactive. And when I was in the Arctic I realised that these were the very skills that I was using in order to survive in that extreme environment."

The 27-year-old Qasimi said in the extremely cold and dangerous conditions of the North Pole you have to make the right decisions quickly in order to survive, have to be more organised so you can do things quickly without wasting time, have to have discipline so you can carry on even if you are very tired and you have to learn to work even with the most difficult people as a team.

Talking about the journey, she said: "After we reached Longyearbyen in the Arctic Circle, we caught a Russian plane to a Russian floating ice station that is basically a huge iceberg on which they have set up heated tents, cots and a makeshift medical clinic. This ice station, called Borneo, supports scientists, researchers, journalists and expeditioners who go to the North Pole.

"The whole thing was so surreal. As the North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amidst waters that are almost permanently frozen, the ice keeps on drifting. Forget about icebergs, even the kilometres-long sheets of ice keep on floating with the southward current all the time. So as we stayed on the floating ice station for a few hours, during the time we were there the ice station floated 32km to 89.2 degrees North. We had to go to 89.0 degrees latitude to begin our journey to the North Pole, so we had to be taken back to the location by a chopper.

"The sights that we saw from the chopper were really breathtaking. Below me it was like there was a desert of ice. The landscape was so beautiful, rugged and bereft of all life. As we were looking down, me and my team members were absolutely quiet as we were just taking in this sheer beauty, this isolation and the enormity of the situation and the task ahead."

Al Qasimi and her six team members were dropped off in the middle of nowhere and now they had the enormous challenge of skiing nearly 81 nautical miles over a period of nearly two weeks to reach the North Pole. That meant having to ski eight to 10 hours a day in order to reach their destination with breaks of just two or three minutes after skiing for two to three hours at a stretch.

Al Qasimi said: "You just have to keep your head down and plod along no matter how much your legs, knees or hands hurt. It's freezing cold at -25 to -30 degree centigrade and its wet and tiring and its made worse by the fact that for each 10 steps you take, you drift back one step in terms of the distance you travel because of the drifting ice.

"So if you have travelled 10km in a day, you will lose 3km while you sleep at night. So in essence you will always end up skiing 35 per cent more than you need to in order to get to your destination because of the drifting ice and also because sometimes you come across long stretches of the ocean waters that you can't cross and have to ski for miles before you find a safe crossing place."

What made the task even more difficult for petite Al Qasimi was the fact that she, just like the others with her, had to drag a sled containing all her food, clothes, tents and survival equipment (weighing 35kg) at all times.

Recounting one close call, Al Qasimi said: "On the way we had to cross an ice rubble, which was around seven feet high. An ice rubble is many pieces of crushed ice that have fused back together. They are as slippery as the ice you find in the refrigerator. So it's pretty hard to climb and what made it even more difficult was the fact that we had to get our sleds up as well. So while we were doing this, I slipped and fell and I could have gone right into the ice-cold Arctic Ocean and compromised my team and endangered my life. But luckily I was able to recover in time and cross over safely. But it really shook me up."

The group managed to finish the trek in eight days, two days ahead of schedule and reached 90 degrees North at 1.15pm on April 23.

Reliving the moment Al Qasimi said: "My team mates and I dropped our sled harnesses and took our skis off one last time and stuck them upright in the snow at exactly 90 degrees latitude. A few moments later it had already moved and we scampered forward to capture the moment again, to look down at our GPS screen showing 90.00 00 000 000. It was the most exhilarating moment of my life as I had achieved what I had set out to do and discovered my strengths and found peace."

And undertaking such a trip only brought her closer to her family and friends.

"When I arrived at the Pole, no part of me felt alone. My loved ones each wrote encouraging words in a small journal I carried with me," she said. "And as I approached the last two miles, I heard excerpts of it with each of their own voices. I could sense my nation willing me forward. It was a magical last two miles."

So what does she plan to do now that she is back?

Al Qasimi will go back to the world of finance, but has not decided whether it will be here in the UAE or back to the United Kingdom. However, till she makes up her mind she will be working to raise more money for the two charities that she supports – the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and Peas, which stands for Promoting Equality in African Schools.

"While I was on the trip and we were skiing for hours on end I used to think, those children endure more than I am enduring now, so I have to go on for their sake. Now that I am back I will try to raise even more money for them so that they can have a shot at a better life," she said.

Al Qasimi also hopes to raise the profile of Arab women and to show her compatriots they need not hold themselves back.

"Arab women are half the population, half the human capital that we have in the region, and most importantly they raise the next generation, shaping their minds and characters to a certain extent. It is half the human capital that often remains untapped," she said.

"Unlocking that needs to be about more than education. It is life experiences, building opinions and interests and preferences and goals… In the multiple roles that women play we can maximise their impact by simply realigning access and exposure to character building experiences, which will be different from person to person, but the effect will be the same."

Wise words that could well be applied in corporate life, too.