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.
