Ben Saunders - Polar Explorer, Motivational Speaker

A Guided Tour

With a bit of self-timer experimentation, I've managed to capture a stove's eye view of the tent. Seeing as it's been a fairly uneventful day (filming for the next expedition's educational programme, taking photos for sponsors) I thought I'd show you round.

Our palatial Hilleberg Saivo dome tent has two doors, and two porches (sometimes known as vestibules if you're posh, or bell ends if you're American (I kid you not!)) - we use one door/porch for getting in and out, storing our boots and tipping away our pee bottle, and the other end as a kitchen.

Once you're in the inner tent, the thing that looks like a giant bra hanging from the ceiling is actually the Saivo's rather nifty 'chimney' air vents. We poke the cable for the solar panel that's slung over the roof through the air vent on my side and you can see the wire dangling down (it's currently plugged into the satellite phone charger which, along with my socks, is hanging from the 'washing line' on my side of the tent).

In between our sleeping bags are all manner of things - flasks, food bags, the camera bag, the 'tech box' that contains all the communications gear, battery charger, blank SD cards, video camera, etc, and right at the very end lies the pee bottle itself.

The inner tent has twelve pockets sewn into it, six on each side, and I'm not sure how I ever managed without them. Mine contain my diary, a pencil, my iPAQ, my hat, the tent brush (used for brushing snow off when we come in and for clearing ice from the 'kitchen' in the morning), my book, my sunglasses, a tube of lipsalve, my Garmin eTrex GPS and none other than Barnaby Bear himself. I haven't ventured into Tony's side, but from where I'm lying, I can see a tube of toothpaste and a giant hardback book.

We both use our jackets and bags of spare clothes as pillows and we each lie on two 'Z-Rests'. At the foot of our sleeping bags lie our rucksacks and our inner boots, and dangling from the very highest point of the ceiling is our alarm clock (Tony's digital watch) - positioned there because it's impossible to turn it off without leaving the warm, soporific comfort of our sleeping bags.

Speaking of alarm clocks, we're aiming for an early night, in order to be up bright and early for a second go at the 20-mile 'depot journey' tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow night.

Last up, many many get well soon wishes to Teresa. You'll be in my thoughts as I'm skiing along tomorrow…

(And Rhys 'Armstrong', you didn't fool us for a minute (well, actually you did, you git!) I hope the Ironman training's going well - hopefully we'll get to join you for a few Cornish hill reps before the summer's out.)

{ Filed under Greenland on Saturday, June 4th, 2005. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. }