Richmond Dykes

At 30, Richmond is the second youngest member of the Ice Team. He was born and raised in Cookstown, Northern Ireland, where he caught the engineering bug at a very early age watching his refrigeration engineer grandfather at work. He served his five-year apprenticeship with CA Haffey and Son, finishing at the age of 21. Towards the end of his apprenticeship he specialised in heavy plant engineering and gained an NVQ level 3 in this area. After qualifying he worked as a mechanic on heavy track machines with the US Army in Fort Stewart, Georgia, for almost three years, before being transferred to Ft Carson in Colorado, where he undertook a communications upgrade engineering post.
Soon afterwards, Richmond secured a job back in his hometown working for Finning as a depot supervisor at the Lafarge Cement Works maintaining all the mobile equipment.
When he received an email detailing an opportunity to drive a bulldozer and work with Sir Ranulph Fiennes in the Antarctic, it instantly peaked his curiosity and he applied. After an intensive selection process he was invited to join the Ice Team as mechanic/driver. He considers the experience awaiting him to be the “opportunity of a lifetime”.