Archive for May 2005
\At least I think it's a sun dog (or parhelion) that I've captured in today's photo. I'm more used to seeing them at higher latitudes, where sun dogs tend to look more like a semi-halo with a 'mini sun' either side of the real one. They're caused (I think!) by ice particles in the air refracting the sun's rays. I'm not sure it was quite cold enough for that today, and we skied under an odd, flat, grey kind of light all day, with the sun dog slowly revolving around us.
I'd planned on doing a monster day - 20+ miles and just over 1,000m of ascent, with heavy rucksacks. We got off to a strong start, but Tony started suffering from stomach problems as the day wore on and we decided to stop early in the hope that it clears up overnight, and that we can get cracking tomorrow. Fingers crossed. (And no, I haven't added anything to his food in revenge for yesterday's prank!)
On an entirely different note (the note of me blowing my own trumpet, perhaps) I've just been told that I'm in the current issue of ID Magazine. I feel slightly embarrassed, as the photographer (Nigel) that came around to my flat to take some shots of my expedition gear for the article caught me at a particularly busy/stressed/grumpy moment and I probably didn't seem very accommodating at the time. Apparently the photos turned out brilliantly, so Nigel, if you're reading this, I owe you a pint.
{ Filed under Greenland on May 31st, 2005 | 2 Comments }
We're back in amongst the mountains again, camped by the wind-blasted and sun-eroded cairn we built last week. We found it without using the GPS - the six-foot-high marker was visible from more than a mile away, and our stash of food and fuel was safely buried at its base. We're particularly pleased about the fuel, as another of our experiments is using two-litre Coca-Cola bottles to store petrol (thanks for the idea, Steve). This may sound daft, but we're obsessive about saving weight, and the Coke bottles are way lighter than either the MSR titanium fuel bottles, or the heavy-duty five-litre canisters we're using. We'll try them at -40 in a test chamber in the UK before they get the full vote of confidence, but they're looking good so far…
I spent a fair bit of yesterday's update grumbling about the surface we're skiing on; today was different but no better - the wind has obviously been whistling up the valley, and it's left a meringue-like surface in its wake. It's difficult to get any glide going (or any speed up) but it's all good training.
Before I sign off to tuck into my chicken curry, I need your ideas. Tony played a mean but brilliant practical joke on me today. After figuring out he could write text messages from our satellite phone to our satellite phone (they arrive a few minutes later with the same exciting beep that accompanies bona fide texts) I received a message that would have put me in an intensely awkward position. Anyhow, I'm currently plotting my revenge, and any ideas would be gratefully received…
{ Filed under Greenland on May 30th, 2005 | 4 Comments }
After an unintentional lie-in (exactly who slept through which alarm, we're not entirely sure) we set about cramming our wordly possessions into our rucksacks, before skiing off down the valley towards our depot.
The slightly downhill bits were great. With moderate weights on our backs (a little over 20kg each) we were able to maintain an exaggerated langlauf 'kick 'n' glide' style, often with a single stride carrying us for a few metres. It was only on the two steep downhill bits that things got out of hand.
Within seconds of the gradient steepening, both Tony and I had face-planted in spectacular style, thanks to a combination of wind-blown, rutted snow (think moguls with sharp edges), XC bindings and top-heavy rucksacks.
Wiping out became a recurring theme on the next steep bit, and the surface left a little to be desired throughout the day - it seemed to alternate between icy-hard slabs and deep powder with a deceptively crusty layer on top.
We skied late into the evening (hence the delayed update) and I think Tony found the going quite tough - he's already zonked out in his sleeping bag as I write this. I'm pretty tired as well, but today brought back fond memories of my solo expedition to the North Pole last spring; there's something immensely satisfying about 'giving it your all'.
Here's to tired legs, big dreams and ski tracks as far as the horizon…
{ Filed under Greenland on May 29th, 2005 | 2 Comments }
'If some instrument could be devised to test sledges in this way it would be of very great service… Sledges vary enormously, and it would be an excellent thing for a leader to be able to test his sledges before buying them, and also to be able to pick out the best for his more important sledge journeys. I believe it can be done by attaching some kind of balance between the sledge and the men pulling it.'
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the youngest members of Captain Scott's final expedition to the Antarctic, wrote this in 1922. Spookily, Tony only read this paragraph this evening, after we'd spent the entire day testing four different sledge designs and configurations (thanks to Alex at Acapulka), using exactly the device 'Cherry' imagined - a force meter between the sledge and its hauler. First up, we weighed each empty sledge (using some giant fishing scales Tony managed to procure the day before we left for Iceland). After that, we'd load each sledge with a number of different weights (from 50 to 180kg - food bags, fuel bottles and large Ortlieb dry bags packed with snow) and test each sledge several times over the same course, as well as working out the average force necessary to move each one from a standstill.
With the conclusions tucked away in our diaries, we're off for some speed trials of a different kind tomorrow. We left a small depot of food and fuel in the valley we skied up, marked by a GPS waypoint and a snow cairn. It's 24 miles from here, and we're heading off with rucksacks (ultra-light 90+ litre prototypes from Crux) to recover it. We're keeping our fingers crossed that the weather and visibility will hold out - there are some monster clouds rumbling up through the mountains as I write this and I popped my head out of the tent to take the attached photo.
{ Filed under Greenland on May 28th, 2005 | No Comments }
I've always found music to be incredibly powerful stuff, and its ability to conjour emotion, to stir feelings and to inject energy into fatigued muscles seems directly proportional to your distance from civilization. The further away you are from home, the more powerful it gets.
On last year's expedition I listened to a lot of music (30 hours of tunes on three iRiver mp3 players). It started out as an occasional treat - a few tracks in the sleeping bag at night, but as I passed the 85 degree mark and really started to crank out decent daily mileages, I had it on full-blast, often for ten hours a day.
I'd meant to bring one of the very same mp3 players on this expedition, but I managed to leave it in my bag of personal gear in the aircraft hangar at Isafjordur (which I'll be picking up in a couple of weeks time). So I'm music-less.
Or at least I thought I was. Ten minutes ago, Tony reached over and handed me his mp3 player (it had been tucked away in his rucksack) and I'm currently in my sleeping bag, plugged in and grinning like a loon. It's full of great stuff - everything from Stevie Wonder to The Streets, Joss Stone to Jurassic Five, Kenny Loggins to the sublime KT Tunstall, and we've just been discussing the best motivational skiing tunes. Tony describes Christopher Cross' 'St. Elmo's Fire' as 'mental spinach' and he's convinced the 'Training Montage' from Rocky takes 20kg out of his sledge. Me, I'm struggling to pick out a favourite from last year's 30 hours. I remember Public Enemy's 'Fight the Power' getting me over a particularly nasty set of pressure ridges. Reef's 'Place your Hands' followed by the Ramones' take on 'What a Wonderful World' pulled me out of a rotten mood one morning, Cat Power's 'I found a reason' moved me to tears more than once and Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger' seemed to double my skiing pace.
So, it's over to you. Any suggestions for more mental spinach to haul sledges to?
{ Filed under Greenland on May 27th, 2005 | 3 Comments }
We've had a few scorchingly sunny days recently, and in an effort to train in conditions more like Antarctica than Antigua, we set the alarm for 0300 this morning. We were rewarded with near-perfect conditions: -15 degrees or so, a howling, biting wind, ice all over the inside of the tent and a gorgeous sunrise.
As a result of our work on processes yesterday, we cooked breakfast, melted seven litres of water and packed our kit up in double-quick time and were in our harnesses, leaning into the wind an hour and forty-one minutes after our alarms went off. Many two-man polar expeditions take two to three hours to get ready in the morning and we felt a mixture of pride and indigestion as we skied for the first session.
The wind and cold refused to let up for the entire morning, and we faced one final climb before the end of our journey. It wasn't as steep as Tuesday's back-breaker, but the surface was particularly challenging. The snow was iron-hard in places and had been blown into huge serrated ridges and ruts, much like the sastrugi common to Antarctica. It was tough going and I heard Tony call his sledge a few unusual names as he laboured up the slope. I found navigating through this terrain oddly similar to negotiating the fractured sea-ice surface of the Arctic Ocean and was soon absorbed in 'joining up' patches of smoother ice and snow.
Reaching the peak,it swiftly became apparent that we had reached the outer limits of the Kangerlussuaq Mountains. In front of us was the largest, barest expanse of white I've ever seen. The Greenland icecap. Both Tony and I were stunned into silence; it was as if we were seeing Antarctica for the first time. The view from our tent as I write is stunning in its contrast; in one direction a jagged jumble of snow-capped peaks, in the other, a frozen desert of absolute immensity stretching to the far horizon .
Armed with force-meters, stopwatches and heart rate monitors, we're planning to carry out some back-to-back testing of our top-secret, prototype sledges (resplendent in Brooklands purple!) tomorrow - I'll let you know how we get on.
Right now, it's time for an early night…
{ Filed under Greenland on May 26th, 2005 | No Comments }
Today was occupied with the essential (but largely boring to you, dear reader) task of working out and refining what we are loosely terming 'processes'. We're trying to shave as much time as we can from the day-to-day tasks that make up much of expedition life. Melting snow to make flasks of energy drink, putting the tent up and taking it down, cooking breakfast, cooking dinner, packing the sledge etc.
To inject some interest in to what would otherwise be a lacklustre dispatch, I'm going to do two things: first I'm going to tell you about the books we're reading, and then I'm going to throw caution to the wind and publish some of our more printable limericks (see if you can spot the recurring theme).
Books: I started out re-reading 'Icetrek' by Eric Philips, the story of his 1998 journey to the South Pole with Jon Muir and Peter Hillary, a frank account of how team dynamics can hamstring an expedition. Eric has a great writing style and he has a knack for conveying the 'inner journey' that goes on on expeditions of this scale. I'm now on Tony's copy of 'Samuel Pepys - The Unequalled Self' by Claire Tomalin, which sounds boring but is in fact one of the best books I've read in yonks. Tony is racing through Apsley Cherry-Garrard's 'The Worst Journey in the World', certainly my favourite polar expedition book and a contender for my favourite book of all time. He has a massive 'Naval History of Britain' in his sledge as a backup. I kid you not.
Now what you've all been waiting for (apologies to any sponsors if I've overstepped the mark of proprietry, but if you don't like the occasional fart joke, you're sponsoring the wrong man):
Ben's insistence on food stuffed with carbs,
Gave him the most pungentious farts.
He dug out a trench,
To be rid of the stench,
And caused an earthquake in these parts.
(By Tony, age 28)
Ben raced Tone up the hill in great pain,
But his efforts it seemed were in vain.
Ben cursed 'you're cheating Tone,
Up the hill you've been blown,
By your very own supply of methane!
(By Ben, age 27)
Ben was crossing a tricky snow pass,
When he tripped and fell down a crevasse.
He uncovered his ass,
And let out such gas,
That he rescued himself with great class.
(By Tony, age 28)
Sensible blogging will resume tomorrow…
{ Filed under Greenland on May 25th, 2005 | 1 Comment }
We're currently camped at an altitude of just over 2,000 metres, on a rounded-off ridge with one of the most glorious views on the planet.
Neither of us have really noticed the altitude (aside from the sun being even stronger up here) but the climb that we ended the day with was an epic. It took us a shade over an hour from bottom to top, the surface varied from glass-smooth ice to thigh-deep powdery snow. My ski skins (strips of fabric that give us traction on the snow) started slipping as the slope steepened and I switched to walking, strapping the skis to the top of my sledge. The weight of the sledge was incredible - it still weighs more than I do and this afternoon it felt like double. The harness bit into my hips and shoulders, and it seemed to be threatening to drag me right back down to the bottom if I slipped. Driving my poles into the ice, my legs and arms were awash with lactic acid, and at times I wondered if I'd be better off with the crampons that were stowed in my sledge. I was dripping with sweat when I reached the top, and Tony was hot on my heels. He leant on his ski poles and looked up at me, his mirrored Oakleys glinting red in the sun. 'Was it Michael Jackson or the Jackson Five that did that song…' He started smiling and raised his voice a couple of octaves. 'Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop till you get enough.' He stabbed a piece of snow with his pole. 'I've had it in my bloody head for that whole climb.'
{ Filed under Greenland on May 24th, 2005 | 2 Comments }
My brain seems to work differently in the Arctic. My ideas respond to the crisp, white silence and solitude like bacteria do to that jelly stuff in a petri dish, and today they were dividing and multiplying so fast that I seriously started wondering if a dictaphone could be incorporated into the handle of one of my ski poles for future expeditions.
I think Tony works the same way. We take it in turns to lead during the day, and at least once during each 'session' the leader will stop dead in his tracks, spin round with a grin on his face and shout back 'guess what?' or 'I've got it!'
We've come up with dozens of tweaks to our equipment, improvements to rations, brainwaves for fuel saving, modifications to clothing and a million madcap ways to use what little gear we have in as many ways as possible (using our snow shovel as a tripod for our video camera was one recent success).
And we still find time to make up rude limericks about each other.
Our daily routine is getting pretty slick now - one of our main reasons for coming out here was to fine-tune this to a point where we're able to, let's say, put the tent up quickly and safely in a zero-visibility snowstorm. While the weather's been incredibly kind to us so far, I'd say we've nearly reached the kind of robotic automation that I operated with on last year's expedition and we've both carved out definite roles in our day-to-day existence on the ice.
We bashed out a decent mileage today (11 miles in five hours) and climbed another 900 feet for good measure. I'm pretty pleased with our pace and fitness so far.
Apparently quite a few of you responded to my plea for help yesterday - I'll let you know how we get on with recovering the photos when Ilm back in the UK.
Last up, a huge congratulations to Sofia for summiting Mont Blanc (plenty of unclimbed peaks in this neck of the woods if you still have the bug!)
{ Filed under Greenland on May 23rd, 2005 | 1 Comment }
I was all ready to write a cheery post on our day in Greenland, when something disastrous happened. Somewhere between my Pentax *ist digital SLR camera (yes, it's called an *ist and no, I don't know how that's pronounced) and my iPAQ (the dinky palm-top computer I write these updates on) we managed to lose an entire storage card's worth of photos. 256mb - at least 80 pictures, as far as I can remember. We're not entirely sure why it happened, but an investigation is under way and there are several suspects.
We had taken some photos we really loved and so i was absolutely gutted to lose them. Tony tried to cheer me up by introducing me to the 'is it bigger than a toaster game'. It's basically a guessing game, with the only proviso being that the first question must be 'is it bigger than a toaster?' Apparently purists will always follow this with the question 'is it smaller than an alsatian?' I am beginning to have severe questions regarding his mental health . . .
Digital photos aside, today was awesome. We skied until late this evening and spent much of the day roped up, negotiating a steep crevasse field with our heavy sledges in tow. Crevasses are one of the big dangers we'll face in Antarctica later this year and we're both feeling far more confident around them after today.
Tony stuck the camera out of the tent door a minute ago to get this photo. The big snow sculpture is actually a six-foot-high cairn marking a depot of food and fuel we've buried. The reason we're practicing this will become more apparent later this year… As for now, does anyone know if data can be recovered from seemingly 'wiped' SD cards?
{ Filed under Greenland on May 22nd, 2005 | 8 Comments }
We started the day with an enormous climb. Ten minutes after we'd set off, the incline of the glacier we're on changed from flat to slightly uphill. Ten minutes further on, we were struggling up a surface so steep that (if it weren't for the fact we were actually doing it) I'd have said it was impossible to drag sledges heavier than we are up it on skis. We climbed 500 feet in 45 minutes. 'I've never done that before', I said to Tony as we rested briefly, slumped in our sledge harnesses, at the top.
A little later on, we had to contend with something else I hadn't tried before; skiing downhill with heavy sledges (I've spent nearly two percent of my entire life on skis, dragging sledges, but the Arctic Ocean doesn't really have any long, smooth slopes.)
We sat at the top of the slope, chewing on energy bars and weighing up the options. As we saw it, there were three. One, to ski down, still harnessed to the sledge and hoping against hope that it wasn't going to a) overtake you or b) run you over. The second was to strap our skis and poles to the sledges, lie on top of them and bomb down at high speed. We finally went for option three, 'launching' the sledges from the top and following them down, practising our telemark turns en route. It worked rather well, apart from one heart-stopping moment when my sledge caught an impressive but unexpected amount of air as it careered over the lip of a snowed-in crevasse.
Speaking of crevasses, Tony came up with the theory today that some of them actually extend all the way through the planet, emerging as 'mirror' crevasses in the opposite hemisphere. We skied along for a while in fits of giggles, half-expecting some disgruntled Australian to come firing out of one of the nearby chasms, eyebrows still smouldering from his passage through the Earth's core…
The highlight of the day came after we'd put the tent up this evening - I had the chance to talk over the satphone to the launch of a sponsored walk (in California!) in
aid of the Friedrich's Ataxia Research Alliance.
Humbling stuff indeed, and I felt privileged to be involved, all the way from the other side of the planet…
{ Filed under Greenland on May 21st, 2005 | No Comments }
We've actually camped in the same site for two nights in a row now, although you'll be glad to hear we haven't spent the entire 24 hours in
bed.
Today was taken up with equipment testing, crevasse drills, photography, and a sledge-less round trip to a nearby glacier to hone our langlauf technique. The weather, once again, was beautiful and once we'd warmed up, we skied with bare hands, earbands and sunglasses. Glorious.
Marc asked yesterday about how we're powering the gizmos necessary to beam these updates back to you - namely an Iridium satellite phone and an HP iPAQ (or PDA - a palm-top computer, about the size of a Kitkat (classic, not chunky!). I'm equally excited and proud to say that we're using nothing more than solar power, and I'm going to hand over to Tony to talk you through it…
When we are out on an expedition with a blogging element, Ben and I need to power a GPS, Iridium phone, PDA, digital camera and video camera as well as a pair of MP3 players when the only thing getting you up that hill is a quick blast of 'St. Elmo's Fire'.
While we've chosen/jury-rigged systems that run on a similar format (the trusty AA battery), there is still a question over how you charge the batteries themselves. One simple solution has been to take lots of lithium batteries; they are lighter than normal batteries and are extremely good in the cold. However, if you are on the ice for a significant period of time the weight starts to build up (bear in mind we cut the labels out of our thermals to save weight).
The other more rare option (particularly in Antarctica) has been to use rechargeable batteries, with some kind of solar panel. The main problem with these in the past has been the weight of the accompanying battery pack. Recent expeditions have been lugging around batteries weighing ten pounds or more, which begs the question why bother.
On this expedition we wanted to try out a fairly new flexible solar panel system from Iowa Thin Film (see pic) that has double the ampage of more common panel systems. The result? We have been plugging the electrics straight into the panel and haven't used a battery yet. We are both really excited about the possibilities for expanding what we can do online with the extra power. Now if we can only find a way to get free phone calls. . .
{ Filed under Greenland on May 20th, 2005 | 1 Comment }
Ben Saunders is the youngest person to ski solo to the North Pole and holds the record for the longest solo Arctic journey by a Briton.