There was once a band called Static-X. Their late lead singer, Wayne Static, had the most remarkable shock of hair. Long, hellraising spikes, straighter than a razor blade. As a rock-loving teen, I would use GHDs (or my mum’s iron) to electrify my mop, too. But I could never quite achieve the same mane as Wayne. At 19, I gave up and let it flop like Kurt Cobain.
Twenty years later I was at the Eclipse Nordic Hot Springs in the Yukon, Canada. I’d flown from the UK to compete in the International Hair Freezing Contest. Every year, competitors are invited to jump into Eclipse’s balmy waters, wet their tresses and let Jack Frost have his way. Someone in the foyer asked what I was planning to fashion. “Well, have you heard of Wa…”
The caveat of the competition is that there must be cold weather. A minimum of -20C. If the mercury doesn’t sufficiently drop, your follicles won’t freeze and the fella with the camera won’t take your photo. When I arrived last winter, it was around -10°C. Damn cold, but not cold enough. You see, I’d unwittingly chosen an El Niño year, when North America warms up.
My guide assured me that the temperature could drop: “Let’s just wait a few days and see,” she said, in a kindly tone. Fortunately, the competition isn’t a one-day affair: photos are taken across the season and judged in spring. “So, what can a solo traveller, bumbling around the Canadian subarctic, do while waiting to freeze their hair?” I asked.
Obviously you start by trying to freeze other parts of your body. Which is why I went for a dip in a lake a few miles from my lodgings in state capital Whitehorse. Trevor Braun, who in the summer months heads up Yukan Canoe, had on that February day chainsawed a hole in the ice large enough for masochism. I’m a fan of cold-water swimming in my native Kent, but no amount of North Sea can prepare you for the gelid slap of a bonafide ice dive.
Genital pangs aside, it was a joyful, jetlag-zapping experience, augmented by the view: pristine snowy hills, spiked with serried pines. I managed five minutes before Trevor and I thawed in his mobile…
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