30th January: Day 6, Adventdalen Valley - Marcus Liddiard

Today we escaped! We finally managed to leave the vicinity of Longyearbyen town and venture out into the wilderness, much to the relief of all the team.

The dawn broke with slightly cloudy skies, but with no wind so we were able to safely break camp and head off. To make the process slightly easier we had arranged with our local “fixer” called Trond to transport the pulks as far as possible by road (we had no choice - pulling the pulks along the gritted ice road sides ruins their metal running tracks) and then we skied to that same point to pick up the pulks and pitch camp. We are now camping at approximately 8km from Longyearbyen town but have not quite been able to escape civilisation as on the mountain ridge behind us there is a large coal mine, which looks a bit like a bond villain's lair looming above us, and there are a few local cabins scattered around.

Our trek here was made alongside the road which is not very inspiring but it was great to get some distance on skis under our belts and everyone seemed to cope very well (although it will be interesting to see how achy we are in the morning due to our heavy pulks!).

The plan is to progress up the Adventdalen Valley before heading up one of the valleys which join this one. However, this completely depends upon the weather.

The forecast tomorrow is for strong winds and snow which could stop us in our tracks. Hopefully it will be wrong and we will make some progress. It will be great to get to a place where we can see no artificial lights and are not interrupted by snowmobiles.

Thanks to Marcus Liddiard for this post

27th Januray 2010: Day 3

Despite high winds, we headed out this morning for the first time with fully laden pulks. The high winds / low temperature combination meant some challenges in preventing frostbite on faces, and the first kilometre or so featured many headgear adjustments!

With significant food on board, the pulks were noticeably heavier too which meant skill was required on downhill and effort uphill. A group of 18 people (15 team, 3 staff) is also hard to pace but Marcus did a sterling job! After a while we got better at moving at a constant pace to stay warm.

After 3½ hours we reached the far end of Longyearbyen, the wind was howling so we erected the emergency shelter and had a brew and some food. We lost a Thermorest (sleeping mat) to the wind – not something we want to repeat and was a good lesson learnt. Whilst taking a break, we decided to go back to town and see how the conditions changed.

Some of us took the opportunity of last minute purchases – gloves for some, camp seats for others, boot liners for me. We then hauled our pulks all the way back to the Hostel, at which point the wind died down somewhat. Good news - we can finally pitch the tents without shredding them. The majority decided to head to set off, so walked up the glacier to make camp. And off we went.

And so FINALLY! We made camp, pitched tents, storm proofed the tents, melted snow and prepared food. Camp making is very lengthy and we are still learning to speed this up, but it all makes us appreciate the dehydrated food more and keeps us warm.

The mood in camp is good – relief, anticipation and excitement rolled into one, now that we have got going after so many false starts. It is now 23.30 local time and I am on bear watch in 3.5hrs time so will go to sleep now and look forward to another day of adventures unknown tomorrow.

This blog was written by Dom Larose. (Each day a different member of the team writes up the diary.)

Tuesday 26th - The Exped Begins. At last!

Day 2 of the Exped (Day 15 out in Svalbard)

We're off, hurrah! Won't have any internet or mobile access for the next two weeks so no more blogs for now. But we will be sending a "daily dispatch" back via satellite phone (phoning in the copy to Lori, who will be typing it up and sending to friends/ family - to email addresses we have pre-supplied).

We will publish our posts on our return (13 days), filling you in on all our antics then.

Ness Weather Bound in a Guest House

If it's not one thing it's another, having meant to have started on our training expedition yesterday we were stopped by the rain as it would ruin our kit (only made for extreame cold and dry weather!) and today we were stopped by the beyond gale force winds (I'm not sure if there's a technical term for that!) so we have been in the guest house for another 2 nights - I am certainally not complaining as much as I'm looking forward to getting out there. I've never actually seen ice form on the inside of windows when there is full central heating on - honestly feels like the windows are going to blow in at the moment and it was a stuggle to open the door out of the guest house earlier and we had to rope it up to get out, to try and stand and walk about in the wind/get used to the chill and not getting frostbite on our faces, only about -20.... Even the one or two locals we see go by have left their bikes at home today. They litterally ride in all other conditions including over the black ice which is currently on most of the roads which make getting arround quite interesting. Most of us have had bambi moments on at least once a day over the last few weeks! May be we should have invested in some spikes which the locals fit on their shoes for getting about.

We did have a good little ski session this morning though - much easier to do on snow than around Hyde Park on wheels after a rather amusing first session on ice out here....Lou is keeping all the boys quiet (Simon) with her speedy pulk pulling and efficent skiing; apparently she had given an impression of being a dizzy blonde during our training in Dartmoor?!

Must get to bed, thank you so much for your supportive emails, really means a lot. Bring on nightly bear watches (sorry M&D I promise to be safe), using a shee wee (gulp), the cold..., and sleeping in a tent with Lee who apparently snores, although he is a fire officer so he can hopefully look out for any interesting stove lighting moments I hope not to create...

xxx

Day Off - Sunday 24th (Day 13) - On skis finally & packing for exped

13 days of Arctic "rat packs" - how much food?!

6pm
It's our day off but we woke to refreshingly clear skies so headed out on skis for the first time. Hilarious. Took a few priceless wipeouts which left us flapping on the ice like penguins as we headed off down the path beside the road going far too fast but having no idea how to break (turns out you still snowplough, it's just fairly ineffectual due to loose bindings, poor edges and it being more ice than snow out). Once we got onto the flat we looked a little less like a beginner's ski class and actually not bad. Simon, Dom and Ness even managed to look pretty pro. Not quite sure how we're going to deal with pulks behind us though...

This afternoon we headed into town for a team "nose-bag" grab. Won't have time to stop for lunch once we're on exped so went for a supermarket sweep to buy lunch snacks for the next 2 weeks. Was a bit like a school tuck box shop all over again. which we'll keep somewhere handy to snack on. We all have our own systems: mine is in a chalk bag around my waist so I can get at it without taking my glove off.

You'd think a £130 (£10 x 13 days) stash of Toblerone etc would be heavenly, but looking at the amount of sugar we'll be consuming over the next two weeks it just doesn't appeal! What have we got? We've each chosen our own but basically Japanese crackers (mmm), dried reindeer meat, salami, cheddar, yoghurt-coated pineapples, dark chocolate, M&Ms, apricots, cranberrys, papaya, pineapple, mango, raisins, cashew nuts, chilli nuts, pumpkin seeds, almonds, prunes & muesli bars... Exciting, eh?! Still it's much more appealing than Mark's which basically consists of fish and fish sweets (made from real fish - seriously). Full of protein, I'll grant that but the smell from the dehydrated fish was so bad that Jim's banned it for fear polar bears will hunt us!!

Amusing moment: after finding she was under budget, Ness made a mad dash across the supermarket to the cheese counter, to the amusement of the team. General consensus was she hasn't been so excited about anything all week - apart from maybe the balaclavas (everybody calls them "gimp masks" because they do look rather scary - when Ness saw them she had a fit of giggles) and dancing (Ness was up on the table before we could blink - good lass!).

Also waved off Jack, who's been an awesome addition to the team for the last 2 weeks after joining us to train for his unsupported North Pole push next year. His jokes will be missed - by SOJ (Simon - aka Son of Jim) at least! Turns out the taxi was late and he missed check-in but managed to wing his way onto the plane... Uh oh, there's a theme going on here.

After dinner, we route-planned our upcoming 2-week exped. The plan is to head up-valley to camp within a mile of the hostel for the next few nights, until we've sorted a good camp routine and the storm that's hovering has passed. Then we're going to head down to the river valleys of Adventdalen, a 30-kms valley that follows the Adventdalselva ("Advent River Valley"), which is basically the main valley near Svalbard that leads up onto the surrounding glaciers. We're all looking forward to getting out there and away from the (albeit welcome) lights of town.

WEEK 2 in Soggy Svalbard: Advanced polar training, January 18th-24th

View of Svalbard from Nybyen

Saturday 23rd Jan - Day 12

WOO HOO. Our skis have arrived.(Finally, after what feels like weeks of delays and days of trying to track them from Oslo to Tromso to ???.) The boys turned the breakfast room into a workshop and spent the morning drilling holes, gluing holes, screwing bindings, getting the skis good to go. Simon was the demon on the drill, Marcus the glue-sniffer and Lee screwed them all up (sorry, the boys humour is catching). Jack, Mark and I sorted out the cookers, re-attaching them to their wooden boards with metal ties and on aluminium paper (to stop them burning, as they were before - not ideal, seeing as they keep us alive out here!), whilst the rest of the girls did a full kit inventory to get things ready, mended and allocated for our expedition next week.

At 5pm Bjorn (Erlingson), the IW sea-ice scientist who is with us this week, sprung a surprise. Earlier in the morning, I'd found him hovering, almost hopping outside our door (he's in the room opposite Ness & I). After enquiring if he was OK, I found out he was more than alright, his third granddaughter was born this morning... Congratulations Bjorn! To celebrate, he organised a shindig with an old friend and sea-ice professor at the University of Svalbard, who kindly invited us into to his wonderfully cosy house for drinks (will upload some pix when we get a chance) and told us stories about his life exploring the ice in weird, wonderful and remote places, which continued until pretty late. It was a very special, and memorable evening. Quality "team bonding".


Thursday 21 - Day 10

7am
After a low-spirit evening last night (sea ice reports from the Arctic aren't good right now, so our expedition "proper" is looking dicey), we've woken to find it a Good Morning here today. This is more like it. Everyone's biting at the bit to get their harnesses on and get out there. Wooaah.

Temperatures have plummetted back to -17 (after rising to -6 yesterday), all open water leads have frozen and there's a foot of snow everywhere & we're happeeee. Light, fluffy snow everywhere. It's a great feeling pulk-pulling with that crunch under foot with blue skies overhead. (Ha ha, got ya - Oh, for blue sky days!). Okay, with dark skies overhead, but it's still really invigorating, even with the dark.

Definitely makes a change from last week when it was warm (+2) & running torrents down the road - incredibly depressing freak conditions, which the locals say that they have never before seen in Svalbard at this time of year. Needless to say, there's been endless debates over whether or not this is down to climate change or quite normal, freak weather patterns, if you get me.

These conditions will sure beat navigating the lethal ice terrain covered with running water that has been so regularly wiping us out this past week. Has sometimes felt more like playing hopping stones across an Alpine river bed pulling an errant kayak than pulk-pulling in the High Arctic! After a few rainy days (when I sunk through the snow up to my mid thigh, and lost my boot. Ugh.) the water froze and it became so icy everywhere that cars where sliding off the road and being abandoned all over the place... Some of our guys resorted to night "dwarf tossing" on the way back from dinner. (Which basically involved persuading a reluctant "Mini" - Claire - to lie on her back while the boys took her feet and pushed her along the ice on her back, to see how far she'd slide... 20 feet. Not bad!)

What else have we been up to? Lots of super useful training, learning about snow laters, avalanche training, rope-skills, firing up the stoves in high wind (it takes 2 people around 4-hours nightly to melt enough water for dinner and to fill our hot-water bottles (Platypus sacks) and 4 one-litre flasks for the next day, stove-learning, rope-skills etc

Monday 25th - Day One of our training expediton... In theory

Day 14 out here. Today should be Day 1 of our Training Exped... But it's not. See below to understand why.
V V Frustrating.

8pm Packed up and ready to go. Have counted and put EVERYTHING (spare batteries, needles/ threads, plasters) into seperate zip-locked plastic bags and then into bigger, marked-up dry bags (spares/ first aid/ electrical etc). We've had to decant all creams out of metal tubes and into small plastic tubs, so they won't freeze, and have even separated our vital five daily (weight is all important so that's our total allowance of loo roll etc - nice!) wet-wipes into 13 individual, zip-locked plastic bags (one for each day), so that they don't freeze into an unusable block.

Was supposed to be our first day of expeditioning and sleeping under canvas tonight, which we've been gearing up for over the last few weeks. but it's been raining torrentially rain all day AGAIN. We were meant to head out at crackadawn but had to raincheck to 4pm and again at 7pm. The combination of horizontal driving rain, high winds and night temperatures dropping to -23 means that it's pretty lethal just walking outside (it's one big ice-rink). The result? No skiing. No camping out. The danger? Getting soaked to the skin, not being able to dry anything out, then freezing into an ice ball at night. These conditions sound relatively warm but are some of the most lethal for these reasons.

Morale is pretty low as we're packed and ready to go but hanging around the hostel. Still, Ness and I looked have used this time as best we can, checking in with all back home. Hear my son Hamish (14 months) just wanted to play "ring-a-ring-a-roses we all fall down" (running around in circles then throwing himself on the floor) all Sunday long - even in the supermarket! V cute but poor Ewen! He's also learning to dance (was teaching him before I left). His latest move is a little head-banging dance to the "wheels on the bus go round and round"! Seems like I need to get home, before Dad ruins his dance floor groove for life ;)

Meanwhile, most of the team went swimming at the pool in town to vent their frustrations. (Ness and I went a few days ago so skipped.) They returned home soaked to the skin, despite wearing full waterproofs; this weather is unbelievable. V glad to be staying under a roof tonight!

Despite having a hob and kettle to hand, we're getting used to expedition food so it's Day One with nosebags and "rat packs" (rehydrated army packs) and already I'm over them. Nuts, more nuts, cheese, salami, apricots, chocolate, more chocolate, wine gums just doesn't cut it. I'm. Craving. Sushi.

V. excited about crawling into bed and under my duvet, while I still can. Tomorrow, we'll be slug-lets in our 3-layer sleeping bags...(We do look like green worms in them!) We're off for a good night's sleep while we can get it.

Night.

29th January 2010 - Day 5 - Lee Howell

Longyear Glacier

A day of extremes in terms of temperature and weather conditions. A completely still, beautiful night, the full moon clearly visible in the dark blue sky. The only sound being the crunch of our feet on crispy snow and our breath entering the frosty air from our warm bodies. A few hours later we were in the middle of the wildest storm we could imagine. Tents buckled and bowed under the sheer force of the wind and shook until they seemed as though they could be shredded at any second. An experience of nature, beautiful but dangerous, how I love this place and the opportunity to experience the task upon us. From a practical perspective today was one of consolidation. The strong winds meant we could not risk damaging the tents by taking them down and moving on, so in typical polar exploration fashion we waited and waited for the wind to die down; no chance. It was only after we had made contingency plans for tomorrow that the winds began to fade away. Time for more cross-country skiing practice in the dark and preparing our camp routine for our third night out. It is incredible just how reassuring it is to see the cooking stoves splutter into life and provide the heat needed to boil water for rehydrating our meals and hot drinks, which has psychological as well as practical benefits. There is also a real sense of independence which comes from being self-sufficient. Everything we have and need is packed into our pulks and moved physically from place to place. We have yet to experience the isolation that comes with travelling long distances in single file but this will come, I’m sure. Our commitment to sponsors, friends and family spurs us on, along with our polar dreams and aspirations, which whilst are different for each of the team members we are as one in our desire to get as much from this training in order to prepare us for the challenge ahead.

Thanks to Lee Howell for this post

Ness's Update from the Arctic Circle

Where to begin??! Having in true Ness style almost missed the flight from Heathrow - running (or rather attempting to move one foot in front of the other) from the office with a North Face bag which was larger and almost as heavy as me and felt lined Sorel Glacier boots to Heathrow T5 via Paddington and the Heathrow Express was interesting...a quick conference call to Bex Comyn was needed on how to negotiate onto a flight when you are more than late after a few fair well calls as the realisation that I would arrive at the airport after the flight had closed.....It was closed but thank goodness as it was delayed I was allowed on - someone was on my side!! So the journey to Norway and Svalbard (1.300km from the North Pole) began.

It was not a straight forward thing however, having had a night in Oslo - highly recommend the Raddisson airport hotel - you can push your airport trolley into your room which is 10 minutes away - I almost kissed the information person at the airport when they told me and was the highlight of the journey for at least the first 24 hours! Day 1 flight to Svalbard or not quite. Having flown over what I could only see as snow, snow and more snow with occasional frozen rivers and mountains for we had to land at Tromso (think I've spelt that wrong!) in the far north and stay for the night due to unseasonally warm weather and rain the runway was too runway - slightly extraordinary for somewhere that is usually fully functional in temperatures of -25....thankfully I met up with one off the instructors so we made the most of the SAS airport flight delay allowance fund.

Finally arrived and met up with the rest of the team a day later and it was time to get used to 24 hour darkness....really hard to get used to - when on earth are you meant to shut the curtains?? It was great to finally start wearing my kit rather than carrying it and get stuck into putting up tents, pulling pulks, polar bear drills and lighting stoves in the cold. Unseasonally warm weather has meant we haven't been able to do as much as we were meant to outside but I'm sure we will be fully up to speed after a 2 week mini expedition which we are just about to embark on.

The town is a lot more civilized than I had imagined but still struggling with the darkness, and have discovered my fingers really aren't great in the cold so need to invest in some fat mittens to keep them functional. I've also had to invest in a merino wool bra which I suspect will be a little smelly after a few days out pulling pulks but is essential to keeping away pain from certain areas.
Seriously not looking forward to any potential encounter with polar bears - especially as it's still dark all day - although the sun appears for a moment for the first time at the end of this week which is pretty exciting and we saw the moon for the first time yesterday - no northern lights as yet....learning to ski on the cross country skis has been pretty interesting - especially as it's so icy.

Otherwise all well - great team bonding - and have managed a very fun night out in one of the 4 places to eat (including a cafe) in town - which resulted in experimenting with various gimp masks....you possibly might have to have been there for that one.

Will update when back from our training expedition in 2 weeks - seem to be lacking in dry bags so will be taking my Herve Chapelier bag with me - as well as more functional north face bag and rucksac (thanks H & M!), don't think that's the done think but anyway! Bring on the shower and pedicure on return!! Right must get on with dividing up my food into nose bags....

Big love xxx

ps read Lou's blogs for a more factual account of proceedings!

Lou - Arctic Bound

Week 1 in snowy Svalbard: Basic Training, January 11th- 18th

Flicking through The Rough Guide to Norway on the plane (London-Oslo, Oslo-Tromso-Longyearbyen) as we flew to Longyearbyen, the capital of the Svalbard archipelago, was a disconcerting experience: "It is one of the most hostile places on earth, some 640kms from the mainland and 1300kms from the North Pole; two thirds of its surface is covered by glaciers, it's soil frozen up to depths 500m. The record low temperature is a staggering -46 degrees," I read as we flew into a blanket of ever more inky darkness and four weeks of polar night ahead of us.

So here we are in the High Arctic, the legendary land of Thule and the midday moon, where the sun never rises above the horizon between late October and mid February.

Yet despite being in a constant state of near total darkness, we have acclimatised surprisingly quickly and grown to rather love the dusky light, the stars overhead (when it's clear), the brisk cold and the gently rolling northern lights rolling... Though it is a little strange setting out for our morning pulk-pulling with head-torches on, and I do have a distinct urge to crawl back to bed and sleep, sleep, sleep after eating.

This first week we've been learning the basic skills we need to become "competent polar explorers": managing our kit-layering systems (which has basically involved exercising at different speeds to work out how to cool off/ warm back up, that sort of thing); navigation, orientation and getting to grips with our GPS's, pulk packing and pulling (not always as easy as it sounds - when navigating steep, uneven, slippery or deep-snow ground it can be a bit like taking a pesky dog for a walk); putting up/ storm-proofing our 2-man and 8-man tents in cold/windy environments (securing, defrosting poles); belaying and ice-axe-anchoring on steep, icy slopes (awesome fun bum-sledging back down) etc etc.

It helps that we've been kept so busy that we've barely had time to think about anything, let alone those big, white, furry beasts out there. (One was spotted in town last week for the first time since the locals can remember... Which suggests that food might be sparce and they're getting Hungry... Errrrrr, glad we'll be camping out in the wilderness over the next few weeks then.) That said, Jim has been imparting his 26-years knowledge of polar bears and teaching us (ahem, trying to teach us) not to panic when we hear one pawing the sides of our tent, as one did on his expedition a few years ago... Ian (fellow team-member, mean shot and trusted gun-treasurer), we‘re trusting you. No pressure!! All this explains why, when out exercising, we always take the pen flares, Berry gun (warning shots) and rifle (last resort).

At night we return to our hostel, Guesthouse 102 (top), up in the far end of town(Svalbard has 2,000 inhabitants) in Nybyen (“new town“). It’s an old miners' hostel that's clean, homely and efficiently run by a nice man called Trond. It’s a cross between a youth hostel and a basic Norwegian chalet - a modern, flat-pack, Lego-looking one. Every night at 6pm we head down to a restaurant/ bar called Husset (“house” - getting the gist of the original names here?) for dinner. All in all it's much cosier than we'd dared hope and sure beats camping out at -25 on nose-bags and “rat packs” (Arctic freeze-dried ration packs).

The highlight of the week was undoubtedly the Lovely Ness arriving on Saturday after a tantalising two-day wait (so near, so far) in Tromso ("the Paris of the North" according to the guide book, but more "Northampton of the North" says unimpressed Ness-ster) for the freezing rains to stop in Tromso. Amazing that rain stops planes in the land of frozen ice but apparently the horizontal driving rains were washing away the grit, freezing and making tobbogan runs of the runway. Fortunately she had our equally lovely mountain guide Howard to keep her company over red wine and pizza. What else? Ah, the end of week team-dinner last night at the legendary local restaurant/ bar Krau in town on "Bond Street" (some amazing kit shops here) which turned into a Jaggermeister-fuelled affair. Naturally. Nessie's table-dancing, Phil's Irish accent, Jack's drinking games (and ability to know every lass's name in the bar - sorry Jack!!) and Yolanda's Spanish drinking style were other comedy moments. Who said this was all hard work?!

The lowlight has been the unseasonably warm temperatures. Day one was -17 degrees, the perfect start, but temperatures climbed as the week progressed, reaching +2, with driving sleet and torrential rain. Rather depressing as we came this far north to experience conditions as close to the Arctic as possible. Instead, southern Norway has had consistently colder weather than here. And even the northern parts of the UK, would ya believe it? Grrrr. Bring on (advanced training) next week, colder climes and getting those planks out.

Have a fantabulous rest of January all. If you promise to never take your kettle, bath or local forgranted again, we'll eat mountains of chocolate for you! Big hug (not a bear one), especially to my boys. X

1st February: Day 8, Adventdalen Valley - Phil Thompson

N78 11 16
E16 34 02
Distance travelled yesterday was 7.5km.

An uncertain start to this morning as the weather changed through the night from still to blowy and then snowfall and then back again.

We were concerned the weather would not be good enough to allow us to continue on our route, however after waiting for the weather to settle the day remained as expected so the group took just two 5 minute food/ water stops through the day as we pulled our pulks through the Adventdalen Valley delta floor.

The highpoints of the day were glimpses of dark blue sky. Until now it has been pitch black. The sun itself won’t be seen until the 8th March but it starts to get light around the 18th February.

The lowlight reflects off the snow causing strange and unusual formations, so much so that we debated whether a cloud was the northern lights or not. We are now getting great glimpses of swirling northern lights - a greenish milky way hue in the sky above. Beautiful.

We had a great opportunity for building complex snow holes into the bank to outdo each other and impress the neighbours who were a bunch of reindeers.

The team is settling into a routine with bear watches through the night.

Administration around camp is improving. Setting up camp is straight forward although getting the job done is still slow but as we are working to the same pace we all finish more or less together.

Last night we broke camp and a mistake was made when a stove fell on a Jerry Can soaking my sleeping bay, bivvy and most of my kit in petrol. We tried our best to keep my sleeping system working but today I found my lunch has been permeated by the fuel. That could make me very ill in the night or hopefully just give me a bad headache. Just bad luck!

Thanks to Phil Thompson for this post.