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In 1997, a group of twenty British women made history．Working in five teams with four women in each team, they walked to the North Pole．Apart from one experienced female guide, the other women were all ordinary people who had never done anything like this in their lives before．
The women set off as soon as they were ready．Once on the ice, each woman had to ski while dragging a sledge(雪橇)about over 50 kilos．This would not have been too bad on a smooth surface, but for long distances, the Arctic ice is pushed up into huge piles two or three metres high, and the sledges had to be pulled up one side and carefully let down the other so that they didn’t become damaged．The temperature was always below the freezing point and sometimes strong winds made walking while pulling so much weight almost impossible．It was also very difficult for them to put up their tents when they stopped each night．
In such conditions, the women were making good progress if they covered fourteen or fifteen kilometers a day．But there was another problem．Part of the journey was across a frozen sea with moving water underneath the ice and at some points the team would drift(漂流)back more than five kilometers during the night．That meant that after walking in these very severe conditions for ten hours on one day, they had to spend part of the next day covering the same ground again．Further more, each day it took them three hours from waking up to setting off and another three hours every evening to set up the camp and prepare the evening meal．
So, how did they manage to succeed?They realized that they were part of a team．If any one of them didn’t pull her sledge or get her job done, she would endanger the success of the whole expedition(探險)．Any form of selfishness could result in the efforts of everyone else being completely wasted, so personal feelings had to be put to one side．At the end of their journey, the women agreed that it was mental effort that got them to the North Pole．
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