5th February 2010: Day 12, Adventdalen Valley – Heading Home - Claire Mcaleer

N78 11 34
E16 03 18
Distance travelled yesterday: 12.1km

Well, here we are at our last campsite on the penultimate day of our training expedition. It definitely seems like we are coming back to civilisation now. Having not been able to see any light at night other than starlight for the previous few days, tonight we can see the lights of Longyearbyen in the distance and even the mine that had become clear at the start of our expedition is now behind us, seen as an orange glow halfway up the mountain.

Marcus is leader today and decided on a relaxed style of leadership which apparently makes miracles work as even myself and Yolanda had our tents down and our pulks packed ready to go ahead of schedule. It snowed during the night so we all woke with a nice dusting of snow on our tents this morning and the skies continue to be overcast all day today such that even after the day got lighter our surroundings were distinctly grey and eerie still.

These conditions make it difficult to judge the contrast of the terrain ahead but as usual we ploughed ahead at a steady pace led by Ali our navigator at the front. Over the last 10 days we have definitely become more skilled at pulling our pulks at a steady pace and today while skiing next to Ali and looking back at the rest of our team skiing in formation I felt really proud of what we have achieved.

As the valley opened up on the route home we had our closest encounter yet of several caribou. It was at this point that Howard had decided to delay our progress home by getting us to simulate skiing in whiteout conditions by tying up to together in our lines and staying close to the person ahead of you. The caribou watched for a while before heading off uninterested and we continued to experiment with ways of tying ourselves together.

The grey conditions also made distance perception rather tricky today and it was slightly bewildering to find that although we could see the spot we were heading for quite early on in the day it never seemed to get any closer until a few hours later all of a sudden we arrived.

We have reached the road back to town now and decided to make camp next to an old disused building which would once have been used when the mining industry here was more active. Simon has built a Taj Mahal style luxury snow latrine to celebrate our last night camping.

Tomorrow we will trek the last 7km back to the guesthouse where I’m sure there will be lots of queues for the showers where we can all get ourselves properly clean. I think everyone’s looking forward to getting back for a nice meal that is not rehydrated and a warm bed with no bear watch to wake up for. The mood of the team is buoyant, we’ve all learned a lot and I think it’s safe to say that we have all enjoyed ourselves and worked well together.

In case this is the last diary entry I’d like to say a few ‘thank yous’ to our staff, Howard, Em and Mary for keeping us safe and happy and to the rest of the team who have shared this experience with me, thanks for being such a great bunch of people and here’s to many more years of adventure and exploration.