Choppers and Chin-ups
A slightly alarming start to the day; we called Air Alpha, the operators of the helicopter we'd chartered to pick us up tomorrow, to be told that as of June 1st, they were 'no longer operating in East Greenland'. Hmm. Thankfully, after a few frantic satellite phone calls, we managed to sort things out – it seems we're being picked up from the same location, at the same time, by the same pilot, in the same helicopter, but by Air Greenland. All very confusing, but the good news is that the weather's been perfect today and the forecast for tomorrow morning looks good.
The weather was, in fact, so good today that rather than resting (as any sensible human being would do after dragging sledges and lugging rucksacks for ten marathons up and down the same stretch of featureless icecap) we decided to build 1) a giant windbreak that we could read/sunbathe behind and 2) an icy multi-gym. A day without some form of exercise just didn't feel right, so I dug a giant hole in the snow, Tony built walls either side of it, and we slung a combination of skis and snow shovels between the two walls in order to do chin-ups and parallel bar dips (as gracefully demonstrated by yours truly in the pic – note my natty 'Muhammed Ali' silver inner boots). A fierce competition for the remaining chocolate rations ensued, and we're now lying here with full bellies, stiff arms and sunburnt legs.
On a slightly more serious note, this expedition has been a key testing phase for SOUTH later this year, and I wanted to give a quick shout-out to two people that have gone way beyond the call of duty. The first is my incredible assistant, Natasha Montrose, who has been running both my and Tony's lives while we've been in icy isolation (and dealing with an avalanche of spam email that I seem to have triggered by setting up an 'out of office' autoreply thingummy). The second is Pete Barr-Watson. I've not yet met Pete (although I now owe him several beers and a slap-up dinner) but he stepped in to host this website when the original hosts went a bit wonky last year, and he's provided us with a huge amount of techy support over the past few weeks; you wouldn't be reading this without him. You're both stars – thank you.
— Filed under Greenland