Day 8 - Update

Some of you may have noticed a lack of updates in recent days and that today we started to head back to Resolute Bay. We are both well but a communications breakage has left us with a communications situation which we are unhappy to continue with. Hence this morning we made the hard decision to turn - to continue would be foolhardy and go against all of our experience and training.

We will update once in Resolute Bay - expected over the weekend. What next for us and individually it is too early to say.

Thanks for all your support and we will update at the weekend.

Writing this in the dark waiting for dinner, chicken Kung po again ... Menu changes on day 10 to Spag Bol for 10 days in a row. Saw some hunters out today asking if we'd seen bears - thankfully not!

Cold fingers today due to biting wind, so a short update. Dinner sleep ski blog dinner ski - how simple has life become ... but stress of getting stoves lit, eating and keeping the comms working play on our mind all the time. Passenger playing on the IPod and dinner to eat.

Until tomorrow

Matt and Kev

Day 5 - Lessons

Today ended well with custard for dinner (chicken korma and cheese first - don't ask about the cheese), but started badly as I need to go to the toilet (so cold it's done in the tent) so with Kev still in his sleeping bag I was up, sorted or so I thought. I then spent the next 30mins cleaning myself and my clothing up. All this at 43years old! What was worse was this meant we started late.

The weather improved after lunch and we finished skiing as the sun set below the horizon. So this is being written by head torch whilst I listen to Snow Patrol and Martha Wainright play 'set the fire to the third bar' whilst Kev boils water for our Nalgene hot water bottles. We expect another cold night so no picture tonight.

Hope you all have a great weekend - we are going skiing!

Another short day due to weather, although we had always planned the first 4 days would be short to allow us to get ourselves sorted on the ice. Last night was the coldest so far and our thermometer whilst skiing showed -42. We stopped as the wind started to whip snow into our faces making the visibility even worse - our horizon has been about 500m all day. The photo shows Kev skiing through some of the churned up ice we have had to negotiate. We knew the ice was worse than last year but at the moment finding any flat ice pans is proving to be difficult!

Kung po chicken on the menu tonight, then a night shivering wearing all my clothes to look forward to!

Day 3 - Storm

A short day of just under 3 miles - we stopped early as we are currently sat in a blizzard. The wind has picked up and visibility is down to about 50ft. So we are hunkered down listening to music and doing some admin. To be honest not what we wanted at this stage but storm days are inevitable ... But I was hoping for them later on. The plan remains for another 2 short days and then we will start to increase the daily time out on the skis. But getting up in the morning is an epic. Anyway chicken korma for dinner later and ice cold in Alex playing on the iPod.

Until tomorrow ....

Day 2 - the wind picks up

We awoke after a fitful sleep to a glorious day, and set off for another short 'get you in day'. The plan was to ski for 4hrs, we skied for 5.5hrs only stoping when the wind began blowing hard. Last year in these conditions we had a nightmare, today was slick! As I write this, tired and sore, Kev is getting the water on for dinner - Kung po.chicken .... We will eat and sleep as the chat is pretty dire.

It is a sublime thing to suffer and be stronger.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Day 1 - An interesting start

We are currently sat in the tent listening to the sound of the stove, which is better than Skunk's howling or Kev's chat. A short day to get our legs in which we will repeat for the next 2 days. We are waiting for Silas (Skunk's owner), as he is going back. A good idea which hasn't worked, we will explain more later - but he isn't very good at spotting or reacting to bears. In fact a bear less than 200m away failed to get a reaction or interest from Skunk as Kev and I thought we were in an advance to contact. We also found that bear whistles attract rather than scare bears.

We are both in good spirits and looking forward to the weeks ahead.

'Twas the night before the exped started - part 2

We are settling down for the night now, I have just switched the TV on and found a channel that plays Duck Dynasty 24 / 7 , I must admit I am beside myself. I must remember not to stay up late to watch it, however if I press my ear to the wall next to me, I am sure Matt is watching it too.

Thank you for all the messages of support that have been sent to us by various means over the last week. This time tomorrow we will be hunkered down on the Ice and getting ourselves into a routine for the days and nights that follow. Our Blogs will be shorter on the ice but we will do our best to keep you all entertained from afar.

'Twas the night before the exped started ....

Our last full day at Resolute Bay, we awoke early to continue with our packing. It was a pleasant day outside with a still air temperature of only -24. Matt was busy checking and testing the comms kit, some of this has to be worn on the body to preserve battery life due to the effect of low temperatures, yI keep my batteries next to my heart, so they are always guaranteed to be warm. We then had to fill a number of fuel bottles for the stoves, this requires high amounts of concentration, precision and a steady hand, so I put the kettle on and watched Matt do them.

Shortly after this we went down onto the Ice to see Skunk our Greenlandic Husky that we are borrowing for the trip, he was extremely enthusiastic to see us when we arrived. It will be his 2nd birthday when we are on the ice, the little guy doesn't know how lucky he is by spending it with me and Matt.

Insights into Kev's World

We woke up this morning after a windy night at Resolute, the Blizzard warning which had been in force was cancelled and the sky is currently crystal clear blue, but the wind gusts in and out every so often. We continued with our food preparation, this time making biscuit sandwiches that we will be eating for our breakfast on the mornings of day 11 - 25. As you can see from the picture, it takes some precision, 4 biscuits, 50g of butter and a dollop of peanut butter or Nutella. This was another of Matt's fortes, I watched in awe as he cleaned his table down, donned a white apron (tastefully embroidered with his initials), and even produced an in date 'food handling hygiene certificate' to say I was impressed is an understatement (Matt's note - this really did happen in Kev's world!). In half the time it took to make mine, his were sealed in cling-film and packed away.

After this we went back up to the airport to tie up details with 'Borek Air' who will be picking us up at our final destination of Isachsen at the end of our expedition.  Back down to the hotel this afternoon we continued to re-acquaint ourselves with the stoves, practice makes perfect.

We are putting the final additions into each daily food bag, we have 35 in total, each one having a morning meal, a evening meal, various hot drink ingredients, supplements for each day, ranging from small cheeses to flapjacks, chewing gum for cleaning teeth and a pair of hand-warming gel pads that will go in our gloves each day. The final addition to each bag is our ski march rations that comprise of a bag of chocolate and nuts that we will munch on as we ski.

This evening we are going to catch up for a quick brew with the North Pole expedition teams from the South Camp Hotel who visited us last night, then we have a few more things to complete, this includes,sorting personal kit and equipment, and working out our final prep for tomorrow. 

Kev's Ramblings

After a good nights sleep we had coffee and toast for breakfast and continued sorting through all the kit and equipment.  One important area being the rations that we will carry on the trip, this ranges from freeze dried Chicken Korma to Spaghetti Bolognaise which will sustain us through the long days of man hauling our pulks. During which we will be burning between 6-10,000 calories a day, whilst only carrying 1kg of food a day which equals about 6,000 calories. One of the key jobs today for us was filling freezer ice-cube bags with Olive Oil, this once frozen can be added to our rations and gives the calorific boost needed later during the expedition.  In addition to this we will also be introducing butter into our diet with 25g and 50g portions added to our main meals during our journey.

This afternoon we took a trip to the airport to confirm our pick up from Isachsen at the end of our journey, this will be by a 'Borek Air' Twin Otter aircraft, timings location and also our 4 legged passenger 'Skunk' all have to be factored in.  We also managed today to get across to 'South Inn' to meet members of the North Pole expeditions that are in their final preparation stages.  This evening we have been practising lighting the stoves in the extreme temperatures which we will be working in. This involves pre heating certain areas of the stove with a candle to warm it up, practising such a simple task makes it intuitive when we are tired and are not as sharp as we would want to be.  Worryingly this afternoon there is a blizzard warning here at Resolute, which has reduced visibility and also lowers the temperature even more with its wind chilling effect.  However we will continue with our preparation tomorrow and will also be meeting up with Skunk. 

Finally tonight we had a reciprocal visit from the 'South Inn' North Pole teams, Matt knew most of them from his previous time up here and was busy chatting to them, I played the host, with limited resources I managed to rustle up some tea and coffee and some home made biscuits I had made this afternoon - much to Matt's surprise. This visit was filmed by a Japanese television crew who used the last 30 seconds of spool tape to interview me and commended me on my ability to produce filter coffee and home made biscuits at short notice. Finally as I finish this blog tonight you will all probably not be surprised to know that the temperature here at Resolute is higher than the number of Twitter followers that I have, yes its -32. 

Kev's Perspective on the Journey to Resolute Bay

An early start on Wed morning saw us loading our gear onto the transport at 6 am.  Our flight wasn't leaving Heathrow Terminal 3 until 1300 but we wanted to be there in good time and with little fuss.  Arriving at 9am we unloaded our gear and then Matt used his charm to enable us to pay a reduced rate for our excess baggage charges.  We then settled down and waited to board our aircraft.  Our flight to Ottawa was uneventful except for some turbulence whilst crossing mid-Atlantic. We 'arrived' at Ottawa with a bump where the outside air temperature was - 11 degrees centigrade.  Utilising our time to good effect we stocked up at the local grocery store for some food provisions for the expedition and doughnuts for the car.  We had decided to overnight at the airport due to the early flight the next morning to Iqaluit.  Rather than just sit at the airport, i told Matt that i wanted to see the a movie called 'Jack Ryan - Shadow Recruit' he agreed but was distracted by the fact i went to sleep and snored throughout, I must confess to falling asleep at the start and waking up intermittently. We then drove back to the airport with -14 being our outside air temperature. Our quiet location in the airport to bed down for the night was rumbled when at 0300 hrs we realised that the baggage weighing scales were right next to us and a large party of school children were excitedly weighing their luggage.

I woke again at 0530 (to find Matt still sat there awake) excited to find that I had a new follower on Twitter - I was less excited when I found it was Matt, however he kindly pointed out that I had to find another 600 plus followers to catch up with him. 

We touched down at Iqaluit after an uneventful 3 hour flight and whilst waiting in the passenger terminal a Canadian Television crew asked us for our comments on a new flight schedule that was being introduced from Halifax to Iqaluit.  I said to Matt 'Isn't Leeds Bradford the nearest airport to Halifax'?  He frowned and continued watching something on his IPAD, but i did sit there finding it funny. Taking off at 1430 we began our final leg up to Resolute, stopping off at Arctic Bay for fuel, it was a crystal clear night with the sun setting as we took off for our short hop of an hour into Resolute.  Landing there as the sun went down the temperature reminded us of what challenges we will have in store, it was -42 degrees centigrade, a degree less than when we arrived almost to the day last year. We drove down to our accommodation and shortly afterwards began moving our stored equipment down into the dining area and sorting it out as we prepare for our trip.  I was going to finish this Blog on a high and say we are buzzing, however one of us has just been reminded of how many followers they have on Twitter, tune in tomorrow for an update on our expedition, and maybe some more information on Twitter followers.  

Reflections as we look to return

We are due to return to the High Arctic next week; as our thoughts turn to what we are about to face, Kev captured his thoughts looking back at the lessons from last year.  The blog will, over the next few days, start to be updated on a daily basis; so as we start again, i truly hope that we might, for a change, have a more successful trip on the ice.  But first Kev's thoughts ....

We continue

No sooner had we decided to call a halt to the expedition and return to Resolute Bay than we began to think of returning. As we have already written, it would have been easier to continue our journey than stop. Throughout the expedition we discussed our options, and the courses of our actions, sometimes whilst cooking food, sometimes in the early hours of the morning from our sleeping bags when we couldn’t sleep. That Sunday afternoon we weighed up our options, with a storm forecast from the North and whilst still within range of a skidoo recovery we made our decision and decided to return to Resolute Bay.  It was a long journey back to Resolute on the back of the Komatik (Innuit sledge) being pulled by skidoo. Most of the time we could see that the Canadian Rangers were following our old ski tracks, that we had made only days before. Once we arrived we then began to turn our equipment around and pack for our return to the UK. Our return was not to be that quick, later on that night a storm came in that closed the airport for 4 days until it passed.

Upon our return to the UK we went our separate ways and after a few days rest got back to our working routine, both of us wearing gloves as our hands recovered from the harsh temperatures that we had been exposed to. Through emails and phone calls we both reflected on our decision to halt and to this day we both sincerely believe it was the right one, we returned with all our digits intact and with more knowledge of the formidable environment that we had operated in. Many famous Polar explorers have not succeeded on their first and sometimes second time in their expedition endeavours.

Not long after returning Matt and I started to discuss our strategy to enable us to return in 2014. Our ability to prepare, train and work together greatly improved when both of us were posted to the same Station, the distance that we have previously had in hundreds of miles between each other was reduced to the same distance in metres. We fully utilized the resources available to us in our preparation, with our excellent gymnasium facilities and concentrating on functional training and core stability programmes, we went through progressive training, one thing was always guaranteed – pain.  Our training techniques have raised a few eyebrows from the younger members of the gym, with battle ropes, tyre flipping and kettle bell drags the mainstay of our core stability programme. During this period we met Nathan Helberg and his ANKOOR harness training system, after a demonstration and some chatting, Matt and I were hooked and tried it for ourselves; an utterly brutal piece of equipment which has proved to be our mainstay in our training routine to this date.

We have also analysed our performance on the previous expedition. Whilst some factors were outside of our control (weather), Matt has modified the tent to make it easier to put up in high winds, when the wind will send the temperatures plummeting.  We have tried and tested new stoves which will give optimum performance in the extreme temperatures in which we will operate. We have made improvements and tweaked our personal clothing and equipment. 

I myself have read lots of material to improve my ‘Polar Bear’ Knowledge. They are extremely intelligent creatures, and I have no doubt that we will see some on our next trip. I look at our route every day on the wall, breaking it down into legs, from Resolute our first target will be to get to site of Polaris Mine, situated on Little Cornwallis island, this was formerly the most Northern mine in the world where zinc was extracted. Once we get here, we will then look further north and Polar Bear Pass will be the next marker. We will then continue our journey North heading towards Isachsen ......

But for now I am just looking forward to the unknown.