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.