Delays delays delays

Due to the weather at Cape Discovery we have been delayed another 24hrs. We are ready to go and now just sat waiting. However every days delay adds pressure on what we need to achieve and means that we need to increase our daily mileage and hours marching at a quicker rate than we planned.

All part of expedition life!

Food, Food, Food

Mule Bar - one a day every day and lots of flavours

9 Bars and Wholebake Flapjacks

Eat Natural bars

For Goodness Shakes - we will drink this every morning as soon as we get up

4 weeks of food about to be packed

57 days worth of food for 2 people

Testing the blogging software

Up to now I have struggled to understand and get the blogging software to work. I now seem to be managing and am also trying to send photos - this is a journey into the unknown which i know amuses Jules!

Another night out - belated blog post from 21 Feb

Jules and I are again sat out in the tent making sure that our admin is squared away before we depart. We are happy with fitness and know that its a long race rather than a sprint, so our biggest concern is making sure that we can live in the Arctic. The temperature at the moment outside is -37 and dropping, whilst inside its about 0; which we are happy with.

The other reason for the night out is to check our website update software which has been tempermental recently. So a short blog, which may or may not get posted..

ipadio: Northern Exposure - News from the ice - 6th phonecast

Preparing the daily food bags

As the hotel restaurant was shut today it was a perfect day for us to use the free floor space to unpack the boxes of food.  We broke out the various meals, cereal bars and drinks onto the free tables.  We then used the spreadsheet that Matt had prepared detailing the daily menus and the breakdown of calories to create lines of piles of our daily amount of food - on average one breakfast meal, an evening meal and an assortment of cereal bars, flapjacks, and energy bars to be used for lunch.

Once we had laid out the food we went about bagging and numbering each daily food bag, essentially ending up with a 6-day rotational menu (last day of the week we get a dessert!!!) and 10 bags full of food - a large bag of 12 meals for each of the 6-day periods we anticipate being on the ice for.

The 6 main meals we get to enjoy while on the ice are as follows:

Beef and Potato Hotpot

Fish in Parsley Sauce

Chicken Korma

Spaghetti Bolognese

Chicken Chassuer

Kung Po Chicken

Once our food had been put into some sort of order we continued to scrutinise equipment to best achieve the lightest load possible for the both of us - a continuing dichotomy of comfort and redundancy versus efficiency…..where do you draw the line and at what point do you say we’ll just have to make do?

The inevitable delay

Today’s only real news, other than we spent the afternoon chopping 14kg of butter into various 100g, 50g and 25g blocks (the racy world of expedition prep), is that following a visit this morning to meet with Steve at Kenn Borek Air (the guys who will fly us onto the ice) we have a delay.  Because of predicted weather conditions and hence levels of light (there is a lot less light at Cape Discovery than here), the pilots have said that they will now drop us off on the 28 Feb.  That’s a delay of 2 days - a whole extra 2 days and another crazy weekend in Resolute Bay!

So what - well it now means that we have 58 days to get to the pole.  It means that we have to take 2 days less food and fuel; it will also mean that we’ll be 2 days closer to sun up; that we only now have to endure getting up in the extreme cold another 59 times (another nights training and 58 times on the ice).  It would be very easy to sit here and come up with as many negatives points as positive.  But the simple fact is that we now have a new plan - we now have to get to the pole in less than 58 days - it removes any real possibility of full rest days (which was a tenuous idea anyway), and means when we hit the last 2 degrees we need to turn our thoughts to the expedition becoming a forced march as we will be looking forward to a warm bed and shower.

Tomorrow we plan to spend the day sorting and bagging our food.  Once this is complete we can then refine the packing plan for the pulks to ensure that we have equal weight and that the weight will decrease at a similar rate.  There is plenty to keep us busy, but Jules and I really now just want to get on with it - if we were offered a flight tonight onto the ice, I think we would both take it!  Time to stop the thinking and just get on with it!

The joys of expedition life!