There’s an exciting, unusual speaking event happening on February 2nd 2010 in London for anyone interested in adventure. I hope you will come along. Rather than the normal format of one long lecture, this charity evening is a bit different.

FIFTEEN speakers from across the spectrum of expeditions, adventure and travel will talk about their experiences (Tarka and I speaking as a pair being one of them) .

The subjects range from rowing oceans, climbing Everest, walking and cycling across continents, crossing ice caps (I think this is us!), trekking to the North Pole (and South Pole) all the way to flying cars, climbing Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair and spending six months living in a tree house.

Each one is an amazing story. But the twist is that each speaker is allowed just 20 slides. And each slide scrolls on automatically after just 20 seconds!! Tarks and I have never spoken before in this style and i think its going to be quite a challeng but great fun for the audience to watch. This format, originally called “Pecha Kucha” in Japan, makes for a high-paced, varied, original evening.

The Roxy Bar is a really good venue for a night out. The setting is informal so you can sit on sofas with a beer or eat a light meal while watching the event. Friendly heckling will be encouraged!

This evening of adventure is being held to raise funds and awareness for Hope and Homes for Children. All the proceeds from the event will go to support the work of this charity. So please come along, bring a few friends, have dinner, and make an evening of it. Put it in your diary today and buy your tickets here!

February 2nd 2010, www.roxybarandscreen.com, London, 7pm
15 speakers
20 slides per speaker
20 seconds per slide
£15 minimum entry. Buy your ticket online here (or below) and just bring ID on the night. There will be a few tickets available on the door for cash only. All proceeds from the door go to charity
Dinner and drinks available at the venue

On a seperate note our Great Wall of China documenatry won the people’s choice award at Dundee Mountain Film Festival…yippie! the weekend before last and was well recieved at the Autrans Mountain Film Festival in France this weekend.

We are so sorry for the lack of updates since we returned, we truly haven’t stopped. We have been here, there and everywhere giving talks, interviews to the press and TV, sorting footage and visiting sponsors etc.

We have had brilliant press coverage since our return, which amazingly is still coming! Our first film ‘The Great Walk of China’ was shown at the Dijon International Film Festival last month and will be showing at Dundee Mountain Film Festival next week and Autrans Mountain Film Festival the week after that. We will both be speaking at Kendal Mountain Festival this Friday about the Rivers of Ice expedition for the very time, at 11.30 in the Parish Hall.

For anyone who hadn’t been following the Rivers of Ice expedition there is a very brief summary below;

From the Jorge Montt glacier we made great progress across the ice cap for 25 days. We successfully traversed one of the world´s harshest environments before reaching the most notorious section of the journey two-thirds of the way in. Tent-bound for 5 days in winds of up to 60 knots, we waited for a suitable weather window: we knew the next technically demanding section could not be attempted without good visibility. At this point, the tent suffered a critical failure leaving us to erect a survival shelter as quickly as possible from what remained of the tent.

Despite having multiple exit strategies along the ice cap none were in range without a fully functioning tent. So despite being aware of the difficulty of descending the Spegazzini glacier, we calculated that it offered the best chance ofsurvival due to its close proximity. In total, we spent 5 nights in makeshift shelters as we slowly negotiated the descent from the ice cap via the glacier in storm conditions. We had hoped to leave as we had arrived, by boat, however the unstable nature of the glacier mouth made it unsafe for a boat to collect us. Subsequently, the El Calafelet 42 division of the Argentinian Gendarmarie were called to provide a safe pick up by helicopter. We spent one night in hospital as a precautionary measure and were discharged with mild frostbite to the toes and snow blindness.

Alhough we did not accomplish our ultimate objective of a full crossing, we did successfully achieve the longest crossing of the Southern Patagonian Ice by a British team as well as the longest ever crossing by a woman. We still believe our fast and light approach is an effective way to complete a full unsupported crossing and will be heading back next year for ‘take 2′.

Sorry for the long delay since the last post, time seems to just be flying past. It only feels like a few weeks ago that we last put up any news but I just saw the date and it has been way too long. One problem that seems to be recurring throughout our lives is that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. We have been furiously organising and training for our next trip which leaves on August the 16th. I know that the project itself hasn’t been released but there is a very good reason for that… the website (www.rivers-of-ice.com) and marketing isn’t quite finished yet. I had hoped to have it online by now but as with all expeditions, everything is running slightly behind schedule and we are seriously pushing to get everything up and online in the next two weeks. In the mean time you can speculate on the expedition based on our training out in Chamonix this week.

I had originally hoped to spend 5 days on the Glacier D’Argentiere but found that it was closed and so we opted to climb from Chamonix back up to the Aiguille du Midi via the Mer de Glace. At 20km it’s not exactly ground breaking distances but it was an incredibly useful excises. The main purpose of the trip was to test out every last piece of equipment that we will be using on the expedition to make sure it could hold up to the job. There are a few little pieces that need tweaking and there will be a full breakdown on the website when it goes live, but on the whole I was very impressed with everything and I am now extremely confident that we have the best kit we could possibly hope for. Sadly this means that it pretty much comes down to use now and whether we can hold up to the challenge!

That said we have learnt some valuable lessons this week such as how to abseil and manoeuvred in and out of crevasses with 32kg packs. I expect some of you have tried this before and have found that it’s quite easy to end up upside-down on the rope with such a heavy pack and that really makes life difficult. As a general rule crossing large fields of crevasses isn’t exactly a humorous affair but Katie did manage to make me laugh when after having crossed a precarious snow bridge she triumphantly (and slightly cockily) returned to its edge to take a photo of her exploit when the wafer thin 3 meters bridge of snow promptly collapsed into the depths of the crevasse and she came running past me exclaiming that it was time to leave.

The total ascent was a little over 2 vertical kilometres and as we neared the 4000m mark Katie started to feel the effects of the altitude and progress became incredibly laborious. We are taking 2 days off to recover before heading back out to finish off all the training we didn’t get round to last time and I’ll post again on the long drive back to England on Thursday.