Dominic West at the 2012 British Academy Television Awards (BAFTAs) at the Royal Festival Hall[WENN]When it comes to taking on challenges, actor Dominic West is at the front of the queue. Best known for the role of hard-drinking, devil-may-care Baltimore detective Jimmy McNulty in television crime drama The Wire, Dominic, 44, is just as fearless in real life.
His adventures have included bull running in Spain, swinging on high wires and “wall running” in acrobatic theatre, cattle herding in Argentina, skippering a tall ship on a six-week voyage and paragliding. Yet even he was left reeling by the brutal conditions of the Antarctic during a three-week charity trek in December.
Dominic, who lives in west London with wife Catherine and their four children, had signed up for the Walking With The Wounded South Pole Allied Challenge just six months earlier when his friend Simon Daglish, who co-founded the charity, asked him to take part. “For some reason I didn’t hesitate and said I’d love to go to Antarctica. I didn’t think about how hard it would be,” he admits. “As the time got nearer I became apprehensive and had a few nightmares.”
The challenge comprised a three-team 355km trek to the South Pole in bone-numbing -35C temperatures and biting winds. Dominic was in the Commonwealth team. “We had the best polar guides in the world, three soldiers in the Australian Special Forces and two Canadians who were bomb disposal experts so I was very much the junior team member bringing up the rear.”
Dominic admits he didn’t do much training prior to the trek and most of his cardiovascular fitness came from learning to master disco dancing for a role in a BBC film called Pride, about gay support for the miners strike (to be screened later this year).
Perfecting his moves for a three-minute solo “stood him in good stead” he says. “I was pretty fit by the end of my routine,” he laughs. Filming commitments also meant he was unable to take part in all of the cold weather training in Iceland, including spending a night in a giant freezer to become acclimatised.
The Walking with the Wounded team with patron Prince Harry and Dominic West [PA]“I only got three days in Iceland and that was at temperatures of zero or -1C so landing on the Antarctic plateau early in December was a bit of a shock. I was rather under-prepared for the cold. I couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like. I expected it to be dreadful and it was,” he says.
“When the sun disappears it suddenly drops about 10 degrees when it was already -50. You start to panic because you can’t stop if anything needs adjusting on your equipment or you really will freeze. You can’t take your gloves off to fix anything or you’ll get frostbite. It was very scary being so cold.”
I only got three to four hours sleep a night. I’ve done a couple of triathlons so I’m used to exhaustion but not to prolonged exhaustion like that.
Each member of the expedition had to pull 80 kilos of kit and food and as well as the icy temperatures, being 3,000 metres above sea level left them contending with high-altitude conditions which can leave sufferers breathless. Each day comprised a gruelling nine hours of skiing, broken every two hours with a five or 10-minute reprieve.
The break may have been a relief to aching limbs but it took its toll in other ways. “After every break, because you’ve stopped moving, it would take 25 minutes to get feeling back into your hands,” he remembers.
Exposed skin freezes in seconds and Dominic did succumb to “frostnip”, which is one step away from frostbite. Frostnip looks like a blemish and is the first sign of damage. Left untreated it develops into frostbite where the flesh dies.
“We wore goggles and a hood and mask but there was a patch of my left cheek that was exposed and I didn’t notice how cold it was getting. You have to be wary of when your skin is exposed and that was one part I neglected. It wasn’t particularly sore. Someone pointed it out to me and I made sure I covered it up next time. I still have the blemish as a badge of honour,” he says proudly.
Other members of the three-team contingent included Prince Harry and injured servicemen and women, including double amputees.
The trek was originally a race between the English, American and Commonwealth teams but the adverse conditions meant the race element was quickly abandoned and turned into a group effort.
“For the first week we skied nine hours a day but the last two hours of the day were a nightmare. There were a lot of injuries and people falling out so they called off the race. We dropped to seven hours of skiing a day and that was much better.”
At night the teams collapsed into sleeping bags but despite sheer exhaustion Dominic struggled to sleep. “We had 24-hour sunlight so I used to wake up boiling hot at 2am. I only got three to four hours sleep a night. I’ve done a couple of triathlons so I’m used to exhaustion but not to prolonged exhaustion like that.”Yet Dominic insists it was an amazing experience. “I loved it, mainly because of the people I was doing it with. All of them were extraordinary and then there’s the place. Initially you’re more concerned about how cold it is and your equipment and how much further you’ve got to ski that day and all that worry occupies your mind.
“After a week or so I suddenly thought I’ve got to take my hood down and have a look around at this place that’s twice the size of America and it’s just this vast, empty wilderness. Probably no one had ever stepped where I was skiing and that’s an amazing thought. It was an intensely beautiful, peaceful part of the world.”
Burning off more than 6,000 calories a day, six-foot Dominic was convinced he’d return home slimmer and trimmer. “I assumed that when I got home I’d have lost about two stone. So I jumped on to the scales and was exactly the same, 14 stone,” he laughs.
Dominic’s commitment to the Walking With The Wounded charity didn’t end on his return. Earlier this month he took part in his first ever marathon as part of the Walking With The Wounded team, completing the Virgin Money London Marathon.
Again filming commitments meant his longest training run was about 15 miles but a mix of euphoria and adrenaline carried him over the finish line in four hours and 43 minutes.
Dominic ran the Virgin Money London Marathon for the Walking With The Wounded charity which helps retrain and re-skill wounded servicemen and women. To donate visit uk.virginmoneygiving.com/giving/wwtwmarathon.
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