A massive mishap always seems to happen on polar expeditions within the first week. Mine came on the third day when I discovered that I had frostbite. I’m pretty rigorous about personal hygiene and every evening I would melt enough snow to wash between my toes to prevent trench foot. That was how I noticed that my toes were becoming white and felt wooden.

By the next day they had started to go purple and blue, while swelling and developing blisters. Then the outside of my big toe started to come away, making it seem that I had an empty toe without the stuffing. Soon two other toes became stumps. No tears were shed, but I found the only way to cope with that degree of pain in my left foot was to howl.

It looked like the premature end of my attempt to become the first woman to reach the North Pole solo. In the event, after 84 gruelling days and 326 miles on the ice I was picked up last Monday only 89 miles from the pole, having travelled further north than any other woman solo in some of the worst conditions of recent history.

In a sense I had been preparing for this adventure since the age of seven. My Highlands boarding school had no central heating and any water in the room would have a thin layer of ice over it in the morning. But it wasn’t until 10 years ago, when I joined an all-female trek to the North Pole, that my passion for polar travel was ignited. It was like a lit match dropped on petrol. Since then I have been to the South Pole twice, once in a team and in 2004 I came second in a race to become the first British woman to make the journey solo and unsupported. I shaved six days off the previous female international record of 49 days.

On this latest Arctic expedition I would be hauling sledges, which confers advantages when crossing ridges and relaying loads. I needed to consume 5,000 calories a day, but it’s always a losing equation because the body can never absorb enough. My supplies included butter, nuts and dehydrated food, plus some Highgrove fudge supplied by my distant cousin the Prince of Wales, patron of the expedition.

The charity I was raising money for, Special Olympics GB, helps people with learning difficulties to compete in Olympic-style events and has a motto which proved apt: “Let me win, but if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.”

I am 47 and a mother, but pretty hardened after 18 months’ training that included swimming in ski boots. I faced a 50 to 60-day “window” to reach the pole before conditions made travel untenable, but I believed that I could get away with 75 days if necessary. I was as ready as I could be.

On March 6 I started out from Ward Hunt Island in the high Arctic, feeling an enormous thrill and the anticipation of adventure. It didn’t last long. On the second night I camped on cracking ice, with the background sound of huge pressure ridges moving. Initially my toes caused little pain. But later, when I kept banging my foot while crossing ice rubble, it was excruciating. Howling like an animal seemed to help.

I never thought of giving up. I had the medical equipment to limit the damage and was hoping I would get past the ridges and ice rubble. But things were dramatically different this year. I experienced intensely cold temperatures as low as -55C, which shot up to the -30s, followed by a storm that created a terrifying scale of ice movement.

My worst moment was seeing hundreds of miles of pressure ridge collapsing around me. The noise was indescribable. It was like something out of Revelations, the end of the world. The ice beneath me was cracking and there was nowhere to run to. The only way forward was by mountaineering, scrambling, rolling ice boulders aside and digging obstacles with my spade.

At night I thought of my husband William and our five-year-old son, Josh, at home in London. Josh was closely involved as the expedition’s project manager for his year at school and was proudly following my progress. Another nocturnal concern was lighting the stove as the fuel wouldn’t ignite in the early weeks. My trick was to warm the fuel pipe with a lighted candle.

I didn’t see any polar bears but had taken a shotgun which, despite its plastic covering, rusted over so quickly that had I met a bear I’m not sure which of us would have survived.

Despite the difficulties, I was slightly ahead of my schedule in the first three-week section and was just meeting my target for most of the middle section. Then ice drift began pushing me east and south, so that I seemed to be marching on the spot for 13 hours a day and going backwards one nautical mile as I slept at night. In reality, I was achieving between five and seven miles a day. But the 60-day deadline passed and the brutal ice rubble did not ease.

In the tent I scavenged for food, picking up escaped pine kernels from the floor. By last Monday, when the delayed resupply flight landed, I had no rations left.

It was the moment of truth: the pole was still another 10 days away and the pilots said that deteriorating ice conditions there would make a landing dangerous. The decision was out of my hands: you don’t have a choice when two other people’s lives are at risk. So I pulled out.

I’m 13kg (29lb) lighter and am walking on crutches. But there’s always another adventure around the corner.

www.rosiestancermarsnorthpole solo.co.uk

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