I started this post about 12 hours ago and I am now on my 3rd attempt. My first draft was a real master piece and the computer, having a mind of its own, decided to crash and loose everything. My second attempt turned into a bit of a rant about the fact that I had lost my first post but I was called away to a meeting and by the time I got back the computers battery had died and for some reason, best known to itself the computer failed to save anything. So here I am on my third attempt!!!

I’ve lost track of time up here and all the days seem to blend into one. Yesterday though I got excited for the first time as Chip (the expeditions operations manager) and I flew from Resolute Bay up to Isachsen to drop a fuel cache. The small plane (Twin Otter) that will drop us out on the ice later on the week can’t carry enough fuel on board to go from Resolute Bay to our drop off point on the ice and back again. Consequently we have had to put a makeshift refuelling station about half way. I say about half way because its very difficult to know exactly were we will be put down. Obviously the sea ice is slightly temperamental and so it will be a case of finding a landing strip suitable to put the plane down on in amongst the chaos. Apart from the convenience of being about half way, Isachsen was chosen because between the 1940’s and the 1970’s there was a research facility up there and they built a runway to get all the kit in or out. It was a very surreal experience, with no pun intended the entire station was quite literally frozen in time. After some fast and furious digging we managed to unearth the door to one of the facilities and when we got inside everything was exactly as it was the last time people were there. All the food was still neatly stacked on the shelves, the beds were made, the pens and pads were on the desks and there was even a leg of lamb in the fridge!

In any case the flight was a welcome break from the never ending mountains of kit we are preparing and testing. Why, so

close to departure, are the team still testing equipment you might be asking! Well the answers are simple. The first reason in neither exciting or surprising, it’s money!!! To cut a long story short expeditions don’t run on thin air and for some reason (still unbeknown to me) sponsors always seem to wait until the 11th hour before joining or committing to expeditions. As a consequence buying equipment is left until the 12th hour and with heavy time constraints you often can’t get the exact piece of kit you want and have to modify a similar item to make do. The second reason IS exciting, well it is to me at least, and that is science. Originally expeditions were all bout science and discovery. As technology and knowledge have evolved at an exponential rate over the past century, discovery and scientific endeavours have made way for personal expeditions. Not that their is anything wrong with these trips but a significant void has opened up between expeditionists and scientists. Many believing that our advancements in technology such as satellites have made the relationship superfluous. The truth of the matter being that there is and always will be a close symbiotic relationship between the two. The only problem being that we are no longer simply charting and mapping new areas (or rarely in any case), in order to produce a significant and worthwhile set of data we have to go the extra mile. As such a considerable amount of the equipment that is being used on this trip is firmly in the prototype stages and has been specifically designed for this trip.

Well I think that’s probably enough about my opinions on expeditions and science. Tomorrow we are collecting the final pieces of our kit and all things being equal and pending good weather we are currently looking at a Saturday drop off.

Oh I almost forgot, for some reason the newsletter is not working so I apologies to those who have subscribed and I will try and fix that as soon as possible. The good news is that our widget was accepted by Yahoo and you can now download it on the right. Just click on it and it will do the rest for you. At the moment it acts a bit like an RSS feed and will update automatically every time we update the website. Hopefully I will get it to run all the videos at images soon as well. Any feed back about it is much appreciated!

Firstly, just to clarify to those Tarka managed to confuse in the last post, any short video clips uploaded onto the web whilst we are away are taken using my small cheap compact photo camera on video mode, hence the poor quality sound and low resolution! I will however, take full responsibility for reducing the sound quality even further by constantly turning away from camera whilst speaking. I had completely forgotten that we don’t have the luxury of radio mic’s (fluffy mic that clips to your shirt collar) out here, wont happen again! Our Sony A1 HDV video camera will be recording the next 3 months but I am afraid you will not be able to see any of this until our return.

Freight has now finally arrived, well some of it, so we are at last back up to full steam ahead in the art of list making, sorting, re-packing, sewing on sponsor badges, dividing daily food rations…etc etc. In saying that, i was actually in bed with flu the day all the kit arrived and missed out on the process of lugging a couple of tonnes of kit back from the airport late at night in miserably cold conditions. Now I am sure some of you cynics out there would probably think i had planned it that way! I however, am just incredibly grateful that i was able to feel like death whilst in the warmth of a hotel bed next to an on-suite bathroom and NOT on the ice at -50ºC.

With only a few days to go before we get flown out onto the ice I should probably be telling you about all things Arctic. However I’m sure you’ll be hearing about enough Arctic and cold weather related stories over the next few months to fill a lifetime so instead I will tell you about South Camp! South Camp Inn is the name of the place we are staying at right now. Not only does it consist of the most eclectic amalgamation of décor and styles but it also happens to be run by a fantastically colourful team. The whole place is run and owned by Ozzie, an entrepreneurial business man from Tanzania of all places. Quite how a Tanzanian business man ended up right up here in the high Arctic is anybodies guess, but he has done, and very successfully at that. Over the years passing expeditions to the North pole have left kit here and Ozzie has accumulated a veritable Aladdin’s cave of goodies. No matter what you might need you can guaranty that it will be hidden in the back of one of the rooms. The other long standing member of South Camp is Randy… an accomplished chef from Bermuda!!! I wont even begin to try and explain how he ended up here but the long and the short is that I am very grateful he has as i have now found his muffins are equally exquisite as his chocolate brownies . There is also a fantastic amount of space, so we have been able to spread all our kit out and organise it into the various drop-offs and categories that we will need on the ice. For all its diversity and good points I heed a word of caution to all who will venture up here in years to come… BEWARE OF THE STATIC! It is quite unbelievable but a combination of aggravating factors has made this building a living Van de Graaff generator! On average you can take about 10 to 15 steps before you have generated enough static to give yourself a shock. We are not 100% sure on whether the building is earthed and to add a little spice and variety to your day all the metallic objects are covered in a tiny coating of paint, enough to disguise it so that you unsuspectingly brush past it, but an insufficient amount to insulate it. A few days ago I managed to walk almost the whole length of South Camp without coming into contact with any metal and when I reached for Ian’s door handle the shock was so intense it felt like the spark from my finger momentarily lit up the dark corridor. I have now taken to running my hand down the walls and deliberately touching as many door handles as possible as I travel around camp to avoid any significant build up.

Well after the mad rush to get up here we have got about 10 days before we finally fly out onto the ice and set up our fist camp. Of course there is always an inestimable amount of work to do before departure so I expect we will be organising and preparing right down to the last minute but given that our freight hasn’t yet arrived we are taking the opportunity to have  few days of down time.

One of the biggest problems out in the high Arctic (And I’m sure most of you know this) is communications!!! Not only does the cold bring everything to a grinding halt but our sole communication uplink is via a satellite system called iridium. Whilst people have managed to send back videos from the Arctic before during expeditions, it is an incredibly difficult , time consuming and tricky job. For those of you who are lucky enough to remember internet when it was in its infancy and we all had standard dial up connections (52kb/s), it took the best part of 10mins to get up the most basic website and video was inconceivable. Well our connection on a good day is about 5 times slower!!! Thankfully we are in a unique position in that the expedition is relatively static and we are not limited by time and weight. We will be doing our absolute best to send back regular videos for you through out the trip to show you what life is really like out on the Arctic ocean. However you will have to bare in mind that despite the fact that we are filming the whole trip on a broadcast camera the footage we will be posting on the site will be quite low quality. Hope you enjoy the videos and please be patient during our first few weeks as we iron out our teething problems that we will inevitably have.