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!!

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!