FSB’s Red Nose Day Celebrations

Our new heater has now arrived, hooray! So all being well we will be back out on the ice on Sunday, and not a moment to soon, as poor old Tark’s is suffering pretty badly with his allergy still, and various sources have put it down to the chemicals in the water here at Resolute. We will be testing the heater thoroughly and rigorously tonight to make sure it does exactly what it says on the tin, but thanks to all Ron’s advice from International Thermal Research Ltd I am feeling incredibly positive that we have a fantastic piece of kit from Pioneer Space Heaters. We are all scratching at the doors to get back up on the ice as we didn’t even have time to take in our surroundings last week. It is after all the cold Stark beauty of the Arctic Ocean that we signed up for, so on ‘take 2′ we hope to endure it with a smile.  When we do return on Sunday we hope that the pile of kit that we left out there is still in tacked, our tracking beacon is still beeping away with the kit’s location however,  we  won’t know until we get out there whether the kit is buried under a pressure ridge or floating in an open lead!

Some pic’s from week 1:

Frosted Tark’s

The pressure ridge behind camp

Charlie in the ‘Coal mine’ (at midday)

Charlie trying to fix heater

The good news is that Charlie, Katie and myself are all safe and well. When we were organising the equipment for this trip we decided to use probably one of the most tried and tested pieces of equipment in polar history… a kerosene lamp. The Inuit’s have been using them for generations to heat their tents whilst out hunting so what better piece of equipment to use! When the heaters first started to malfunction we assumed it was something we were doing wrong and so we called back to the Inuit’s at resolute to talk us through step by step how to fix the problem. Unfortunately it became apparent over the next few days that it wasn’t something we were doing it was a problem with the heaters themselves. I don’t know if you have ever looked inside a kerosene heater before but its really not rocket science so we took them apart and tried to find out why they were ejecting plums of black smoke with next to no heat. Having spoken to several engineers and locals about it we still haven’t reached a truly 100%  satisfactory answer but the consensus seems to be that either the fuel or the air was just too cold and as a result wasn’t combusting properly. I expect some of you are wondering why on earth we have had heaters out there in the first place after all Pen, Ann and Martin (PAM) aren’t carrying heaters around with them so why didn’t we just turn them off and be done with it? Well there are two reasons really. Firstly our charge is to man a station and act as a support for PAM. As such a large proportion of our equipment is designed to be an intermediate between the ice team and the rest of the world, much of it is designed to operate off a generator in low but not extremely low temperatures. As we became unable to maintain any warmth in the tent all our technology became obsolete.

The second reason was medically more concerning. Unlike PAM we are not man hauling large sledges during the day and so keeping warm became a real issue. Unfortunately in order to stop ourselves getting cold weather injuries and keep the fundamental communication lines open we had to light our cookers. These in turn gave off relatively large amounts of fumes and so we were forced to keep them on for very short periods punctuated by walks around camp to get fresh air and stay warm. We had a very serious discussion to try and ascertain whether we could hold out safely until the first resupply was due in about a week. Unfortunately despite our original evaluation it quickly became apparent that in order to prevent the situation deteriorating into an emergency and not only causing further risk to ourselves but also to PAM it was decided that we should get off the ice.

7 days after we had  waved good buy to the guys in the twin otter they were back again to pick us up. They even had a doctor on board to check us over on the way back to Resolute. Truth be told it was such a relaxing sensation to be back in the warmth of the plane that we pretty much fell straight to sleep and slept all the way back. Once we landed we were all rushed to the medical clinic and checked over thoroughly. Preliminary tests suggest we are all well and we have to go back in a few days once they have the blood sample back to get the all clear. So we are going to spend the next few days collecting ourselves, cleaning all the soot off our equipment and getting a new heating system and tent before hopefully heading back out later on in the week. Apart from the kerosene heaters making life a misery I actually feel a little sad that we had to leave this camp as it was becoming quite homely.

Two days ago we arrived at 82ºN 115ºW  to our own 4km² ice pan that we now call home. Still can’t quite get my head round the fact that we are living on the ocean and not on land, but a floating ice pan is our garden, truly a stunning garden at that. We had the most perfect weather for our arrival, stunning blue skies and next to no wind. After a 5 hour journey via twin otter (2hrs to Isachsen, a 40 min re-fuel and the final 2hr 20min flight) we were down and got straight to preparing the run way for the second aircraft. The second aircraft was due an hour later loaded with our fuel. As for the cold, the flight was pretty nippy, and I was head to toe in everything I possessed, which left me a little apprehensive to how i would cope as we flew ever more north. Miraculously from the moment I left the plane I was snug as a bug as we worked away erecting tents, filling fuel containers, laying the tarpaulin floor etc. Before we knew it, it was 8.30pm, time for supper and bed, but it was only a few hours later that for the first time that day the misery that I had expected on stepping off the plane, finally hit. Laid in our sleeping bags, only an hour or so after the stove and heater flickered out we were hit with the perishing arctic cold. The following morning I was selfishly relieved to find, that whilst I had suffered silently all night shivering and shacking in my bag, Charlie and Tark’s had been equally as cold and not one of us had gained a wink of sleep. Tark’s then drew the short straw and braved the darkness and the bitter winds that had picked up to re- fill the kerosene heater lamp, within 30 minutes, life, blood flow and even a smile had returned to us all. The day was spent continuing with camp…everything takes a very long time up here and so I think it will be the best bit of a week before everything is organised properly and we have settled into a routine. The priority for the day yesterday was the toilet, as we all wanted to avoid frostbite where possible, and so we are now proud owners of an ice-loo. Camp currently consists of 2 tents, the mess tent and the dorm tent. Both are adequate in space and height, we would even say they feel quite homely if it wasn’t for the problem that is turning camp into ‘the dungeon of the North’. When we come in from working outside we need to put on the heater lamps to defrost and general prevent us from becoming a permanent ice block. The tents are too large for the 3 of us to create any form of heat just through our presence. The lamps however, just on their lowest setting are causing a serious amount of black soot to line the tents and prevent the small amount of day light there is, in. Not to mention the bigger concern, that we are breathing in all these fumes and soot and are slightly worried about our health to say the least! Other than have a soar throat from the fumes and being black from head to toe I am in high spirits. Poor Tark’s however, picked up some rash the day before we left Resolute Bay and it has festered nicely in to a hell of a scabby mess all over his face and just to add insult to injury his eyes have swollen up quite a lot!

As for the Ice Team, we know very little on their progress, other than the small bar of ‘Hotel Chocolate’ I bought Pen for his birthday, thinking I was being very thoughtful and organised to plan for such things back in England, has today caused him to chip his tooth…opps!!