At the risk of being too graphic, the hardest part of a polar expedition is going to the toilet in a wind. Let me be even clearer: It’s not the bare bottom that hurts, nor do guys risk frostbite to a delicate part by peeing at -40˚ or -50˚. That doesn’t happen. It’s the wiping after number two that is agony.
To avoid soiling your glove, you remove it and wipe while holding the toilet paper with a bare hand. Never do you understand better how many nerves a hand has, and every one of them is screaming. If the process takes a while, you have to thaw your hands between wipes by pressing them against your neck or belly until they recover for round two.
Once, during a manhauling expedition, my Inuit partner went out to do his morning business. Like many Inuit, his fingers were incredibly good in the cold. My own hands are pretty good: A thermophysiologist once tested their cold resistance in a lab, and whether from good genetics or lots of time in the cold, their response was closer to that of Inuit than to white people. But they couldn’t compare to a real Inuk’s. My friend could work barehanded in the cold much longer than I could.
‘Only half-dead’
Nevertheless, on that frigid, windy morning, he came back into the tent with a ghastly pallor.
“You look dead,” I said.
“Only half-dead,” he replied. It took him 15 minutes to recover from the ordeal.
So a couple of years later, you can imagine my delight when polar guide Richard Weber shared with me a trick that he uses with his clients during their treks. Weber brought a collection of oversized light plastic gloves — the loose kind that doctors use for certain applications. By slipping these over a glove, you can wipe with a protected hand. The plastic glove is then discarded in the expedition garbage bag.
It is a game-changer.
