We have been over whelmed by the level of press interest in the expedition, especially as the coverage has been over such a broad spectrum of readers and amazingly it is still coming. I have attached just a small sample below.

As we have mentioned previously we are disappointed in the limited film footage we were able to capture out there, and are already looking at alternative camera equipment for next year, to depict the unfathomable conditions and drama that the ice cap provides. However, from the little footage we were able to capture, we will be creating little film snippets over the weekend, so keep an eye out of the multimedia page.

Tarka has now, a little over a month since we came off the ice, fully recovered physically. I however am still a little behind. The numbness in the toes has gradually disappeared bar my left big toe which I still can’t feel…very strange sensation, especially as I keep tripping over it! This week I have been shedding layers and layers of skin from my hands although that seems to be clearing up now. But problematically my knees are in a bad way. They hurt continually especially up and down stairs and don’t seem to be improving. For this reason we have been delaying getting back into training. Although I think it’s about time to dust off the bike and see if exercises will actually help the old knees.

As well as wrapping up from this expedition we have already started planning and organising for next year’s expedition…Rivers of Ice – Take 2!

As you will see from the table that we were incredibly happy with our choice of equipment and nearly all of it performed amazingly, leaving very few things to change or modify for next year.

As soon as we are home we will start replying to the hundreds of personal messages we received offering kind help and support, as well as updating the website with photos and video footage of our epic journey. For the kit junkies we will do a full equipment review and take a look at the few changes we will make for next year (predominantly the camera equipment).

Another quick thing, currently our first public talk about the Ice Cap crossing will be at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival on the 20th of November.

We have completely circum-navigated the base of this glacier looking for an exit by boat and there just isn’t one. There is no way off here other than going back up the glacier which I am not sure I can physically do. Technically especially with the fact that we have no tent, we have run out of food and I cant see. So were about 100 meters from the mouth of the glacier and there is nothing that we can do. We can t go any closer as it sheers off and the boats cant get any closer cause it would be dangerous for them also. So our journey is going to finish by helicopter, it’s the only way off. So we’re just hoping one comes. I don’t know how or where it will land as we’re in enormous cerracs. But hopefully it will have a winch and we’ll be able to get off.

Basically I have just completely had it. The last week since the tent went has just completely taken its toll and I don’t have an ounce of strength left in me and I just can not wait for this to end.

Just thought we would say a few thank yous since we’re here. Thank you to all our sponsors you’ve been amazing obviously couldn’t be here with out them and really really appreciate their support. Sarah you’ve been a star, Caroline again you’ve been a star taking on press and everything else**also big support to PM**. Thank you to all the people that have helped all round the world with information about the area and everything else. And most importantly I would like to say thank you to Sadie, who I cant thank you enough. I kinda through her into being Project Manager, she had never done anything like this before. She just moved her house, moved her business, running her own business all at the same time as doing this for us. As good as the professionals.

Quick summery for now, well we have the longest British traverse, longest journey by a woman and we think the first to descend via the Glacier Spegazzini.

We’ve nearly lost our lives on several occasions, but what we are taking from this trip is that we have every intention of being here back next year at the same time to try again at our main objective. We truly believe that the tactics we used will work and now we know that the first three quarters of the trip we believe if we’re a bit fatter and a bit fitter we can do 20km a day as appose to 16km a day which would give us an extra week at the Fella Rechart. And with over two weeks in all to get through that section, again fingers crossed, it would give a much better chance to get through that weather window. So we have not given up on the mission its just going to have to wait a few more months. But we have still achieved an awful lot so were not going away completely disappointed. That’s probably it for now, we’ll do our final pod cast tomorrow hopefully being on dry land as it were. Bye.

The only thing to report here today since we have been scrunched up in our sleeping bags, would really like to straighten my legs and my knees have big cramps. We have both been screeching at each other in pain. I also have snow blindness in my eyes, just to describe that really its like swimming underwater for 24 hours in a chlorine pool and someone scratching sand in my eyes so their pretty bloodshot to say the least and quite sore. But I am putting drops in them so hopefully they’ll get better.

Tarka has frost bite on two toes. Not badly as in he will loose his toes but he is in quite a lot of pain with them and has nicked the last of the pain killers for tomorrow.

Hopefully tomorrow we will hit land, its 6km till we’re off the ice cap all be it through pretty slow terrain. Then another 10km over the top of some mountains that we need to climb over to get to a pick up point. Then the thick vegetation and some aggressive wild cows thrown into that apparently! So we’ll watch out for those but that’s all to report for today hopefully tomorrow we’ll have some good news, and make land. Bye for now.

]]> http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/27/snow-blindness/feed/ 0 http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/26/glaciar-spegazzini/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/26/glaciar-spegazzini/#comments Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:42:45 +0000 Tarka http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=565 Well hi there everybody. To start with I cant really thank everybody enough for all those that have been involved and thank you for all your messages as well. I’ve got to be honest I was incredibly shocked that the tent was broken in the way that it was. Essentially the main tent pole snapped during the storm, in order to replace it we loosened the guy rope and release it and once it wasn’t under tension any more it was just like a match stick and snapped all over the place and unfortunately the sharp ends of the pole tore into the tent.

It was a terrible night, a real survival night. It was very serious, there was a moment where we weren’t sure that we could get enough shelter up for the night. When we finally did we were huddled together in a space not that much bigger than Katie and I huddled together. We touched the tent walls pretty much inside our sleeping bags but we did sleep.

Come today the weather has been better, although better is comparative with other days its still been horrific. Very poor visibility all day right up until the very end of the day when we finally got a glimpse of the glacier that we’re heading down. Its been quiet a cold day the visibility has been between 10 and 100 meters throughout the day. The visibility has been a disaster for travelling along a glacier. I think between us Katie and I have fallen down about 4 or 5 crevasses today. One of them was quite an epic episode, quite a deep one, it opened right underneath me and I was kinda wedged quite a bit down. It really is a terrifying experience trying to walk in zero visibility through these crevasse fields. You really are on tender hooks the whole way, your prodding with your poles and its really slow progress.

We’re half way down our exit glacier at the moment we couldn’t make it all the way off today so we’ve had to build a shelter again. We had a bit more luck because the wind wasn’t so strong today so our shelters a bit more impressive but still a shelter non the less. We’re huddled up inside our sleeping bags for another night hope fully getting a little more sleep. Then fingers crossed that tomorrow we’ll be able to exit this glacier, because as I understand it no body has ever exited this glacier before so it is fingers crossed that we can get off at the bottom. I mean our maps indicate that we can but that’s not an absolute given that today our maps didn’t indicate enormous cliffs that we almost walked off!

Apart from that we’re in much better spirits despite being absolutely exhausted. Katie has a touch of snow blindness, her goggles broke today and she had to walk with out so she’s got a touch of blindness and I have a touch of frost nip on my nose. But apart from that we’re very well really we’ll be even happier once we’ve made it off the glacier. We’ll check in again tomorrow to let you know how it all goes. Bye

]]> http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/24/getting-off-the-ice-2/feed/ 0 http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/24/getting-off-the-ice/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/24/getting-off-the-ice/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:57:22 +0000 Katie-Jane http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=562 HI every one I hope you can hear me over the gust of wind I am buried under my sleeping bag to shield the noise somewhat. Serious change of emotions, yesterday I was in floods of tears absolutely uncontrollable yesterday pretty much all day because we have come to the conclusion that we were probably going to have to get off the ice cap without going through the Fella Rechairt and the Cero Mayo and obviously not achieve our goal of making the glacier. Which to me felt like a huge failure despite our journey already being the longest British journeys and the longest journey made by a woman. It wasn’t the goal we came here to achieve, and it felt like we weren’t getting even to have a full attempt at what we wanted. There is nothing wrong with us, we felt like we had it in use, we felt like we had the right stuff we just didn’t have a weather window. It felt like a really hard choice because if we did have a go any of these last few days it would have been suicidal and if we had waited any long we wouldn’t have any food on the other side and with these hostile conditions equally that would have been suicidal. So yesterday although we have given ourselves two extra days we have come round to the fact that we were going to be heading home unsuccessful. So I was really distraught as was Tarka. However over night 4ft of snow has fallen or blown up the valley and the storm hasn’t subsided at all and the tent was completely buried in snow even worse than the night before. So we spent this morning digging it out in 60 knot winds because the tent would be weakened by the weight of the snow. And this morning putting it back up it just fell apart with every gust of wind. I mean were in a tent a thats arguably the strongest tent in the world and we have 5 pole breakages, snapped right through the middle. The whole door is torn away we have no zips its just shredded. It doesn’t stand as a tent at also we have made a survival shelter out of it. Inside at the moment we have ski poles lifting up the roof as much as we can so we can lay in here and our bags pushing out the side. So we have a little den just to keep us warm and out of the wind the best we can. Tartka is out side at the moment shovelling because that getting buried all the time and we cant afford to let it bury us as we will literally be buried us. So big problems, the rescue services cant get us as the storm is too storm regardless. So we have lots of food lots of fuel and we’re just trying to keep warma nd make it through the night really. Tomorrow were hoping to make a bid for a glacier off on the Argentina side about 15km away and we will have to go through crevasse fields but we have no tent and if the tent doesn’t hold its not looking like a good scenario. So we are just praying the tent holds in this position till the morning and we will do our best to get out of here tomorrow. Not making the end seems completely irrelevant now we are just trying to survive. Speak Tomorrow.

]]> http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/24/getting-off-the-ice/feed/ 0 http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/23/lucky-charms/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/23/lucky-charms/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:50:13 +0000 Katie-Jane http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=558 Hi everyone not much to report, huge storm all night and all day despite the weather map showing clear skies above us so we can’t move. Tent is still in the same precarious position its been in for the last few days. .We have a crevasse about a meter in front of us and the hole that Tarka fell down about a meter behind us. We would love to move some where else but cant so we’re stuck in this precarious position.

We’ve had so much snow in the last 24 hours that when Tarka went out to check the tent and skis were in the right place, we were completely buried. The wall has made snow whip round the side of us. Unless you went over in a plane you would have no idea that we were here. We are completely surrounded by snow right up to the roof, so he had to dig out all the ski’s and stuff!

We have laid here all day in our bags cant do any thing, dreamt of food, mapped out our lives, normal stuff when you have nothing to do. So that’s about all we have to report today really.

Couple of extra things . We were doing some visual data gathering for Camino about 4 volcanoes that we’ve past on our route so far. Only 2 of them we could see, the others we past on one of our many white out days. But the two that we did pass have had no recent activity and we’ve taken various images as requested so I hope that’s useful.

The other thing I was going to mention was I know that our kit is ultra light and Tarka has shaved down to the last gram, but I did sneak a few things in my bag. 4 of which are little lucky charms I suppose. The first is a four leaf clover that my dear friend Sadie found a few days before we left so I felt that we should take that, I also have a tiny angel pendant that my Grandma gave me for our very first expedition on the Great Wall of China to keep me safe and it did keep me safe and I’ve taken it on each expedition since and thought it was only right it came again. I also have a tiny little wooden lady bird, from one of our youngest followers Hector who is absolutely bug mad and we’ve taken photos on previous trips of bugs and spiders for him. He was mortified that we wouldn’t see any bugs on this trip so though it was best that we should bring one with us, and how can your refuse!!

The final thing I have is a small photo of my mum and dad aptly dressed as Batman and Robin, so their fully costumed incase I need to give them a call and they need to come and get me, thier ready to go.

So there all in my camera bag, my very rarely used camera bag, Tarka hasn’t kicked up too much of a fuss and he hasn’t trown them away so that’s a bonus!

Other than that I cant really report anything more for today hopefully we’ll move tomorrow

Just for those of you, I suddenly realized that we’ve haven’t really explained what’s the Fella Reichert and the Bastion section is. And that is basically essentially a cerac crevasse field. You’ll see why,  the whole ice shelf been bottle necked. It’s essentially a glacier that runs off there and it’s a very steep dip that goes into it. And basically there’s a huge cerac and crevasse field, so that’s the first that we’re waiting at the top of.

And then from there it’s up to the top of the mountain and then it’s a, well depending on who’s accounts you follow, it’s between a sort of 400 and 900 meter absail down a ice cliff. So, that’s basically why we’re sitting here not moving. Hopefully that will explain why and we’re not just sitting in our tent doing nothing.

A couple of things, trying to cheer Katie up today, we thought that possibly we don’t know but we’d be really grateful if anybody does know that this is the longest trip across the ice cap by a woman, I’m wondering maybe? I don’t know, if anybody could let us know about that that’d be fantastic.

We did interview with the BBC this morning again, that was good. You can find out on their website more than likely. **Will add listen again link later – PM**

Lots of little things. We got our single tents  skin, that we chose  has faired  remarkably well. It is starting to wear a little bit. They are holes appearing around the place and we patch them up as best as we can.

What am I missing. Well, we seem to spend, especially today, we spend a lot of time just missing life you know, missing home and missing the best bits of life so the simple things. Being able to just turn a tap on and get some more water out, being able to go to the fridge and get some food out, all the really simple things, you know, even going through loo here is a bit of an epic adventure. So, we have a lot of time to think about that.

Incidentally if anybody can think of some good games for us to pass the time by, that’d be fantastic. We tried the obvious ones and we’d been really grateful for any new inputs. We’re getting quite hungry now we got to almost the finger licker and the wrapper licking  stage which is quite interesting where we really do just mop the last little bits. And then let me see… I think our feet are having the chance to recover which is also a good thing I suppose, not often we get that.

And also we got a very strange phenomenon which would be really interesting if anybody knows why but the tips of all of our fingers have become really hypersensitive. They’re really quite hard but hypersensitive on both us. And we’re quite interested just to know whether it was caused by continual manual labour in the cold  or perhaps some sort of deficiency. But that’s it for today hopefully we’ll update you tomorrow. Bye.

Filming, we have obviously been trying to make a film about our journey but its considerably harder than we thought. We used the camera in the Artic at -40 and stuff with no problem. But here about 80% of the time it just doesn’t work. Presumably it gets moisture in there which then freezes and then it gets wet and then it gets warm and its just a nightmare. What filming we have done we’re please with and we will continue to do our best to get as much footage as we can, but as I say most of the days especially the bad weather days which shows you what were going through, it doesn’t work. It only seems to like the nice sunny days which paints the wrong impression of the icecap. But we are doing our best with that. Similarly with the camera there are only so many pictures I can take of a complete white out! So we haven’t done very well with the photos yet.

I thought I would give you a quick low down on my favourite and worst parts of my day, showing how simple my day is! The worst part is putting my frozen boots in the morning. The pain is immense, probably not helped by the fact that my feet are hideous, there’s very little skin on them and everything is infected and its all just nasty down there. So that’s pretty painful. Don’t enjoy night time at all, because we cannot sleep, we haven’t slept for weeks and its starting to show now, we’re really tired. Not only because its wet and cold but also because in the night we get these shooting pains kinda like growing pains, in our hips and our legs. What ever position we’re in it just hurts and we roll. I just wait for the next day, one day nearer the end, that’s all night time is to me at the moment.

The other thing I cant stand is my rope that’s tied between Tarka and I every second that we’re moving. Because where ever I am the rope is in the wrong place, I trip over it, it pulls me over! I am going to cut it to shreds when this is over I hate that blinking rope!

But the best bits… well taking the boots off!! Breakfast we LOOVVEE breakfast. There our own home made breakfast and their absolutely scrumdidlyumpsus! Even though I say so my self. Hum what else…Sadie, we love hearing our voice answer phone message from Sadie, although its not her in person it lovely hearing her voice and hearing all the messages on the web site and makes us feel a little less isolated. What else? Probably the second hour of the day walking is my favourite point of the day purely because it’s the only time I’m starting to get warm and nothing started hurting yet, so that’s a good hour.

And I thinks that’s about it, I’ll leave it at that tomorrow Tarka will have some more news about the most difficult part of the trip and we will go from there. Bye!

]]> http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/20/best-and-worst-bits/feed/ 0 http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/18/fresh-snow-and-mountains/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/18/fresh-snow-and-mountains/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:25:35 +0000 Tarka http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=549 Right, well, with no huge surprises with the weather here today. We have absolute zero visibility and amazingly, we’ve now… in about 5 days, we’ve actually seen absolutely nothing and no exaggeration… I mean, nothing other than each other. It’s the only break in the relief of whiteness that we’ve seen. It’s quite incredible. We could be anywhere. We could be in a completely alien planet, for all we know. Today, there was absolutely no wind, we had a total dead wind day. Which made the navigation really quite difficult.

I know some of you are wondering why we’ve navigated… why on the map looks like we’ve navigated right out into the middle of nowhere. Probably on your map, it looks like we’re heading down, but we’ve actually headed west. The reason is that there enormous mountains in the way that we’re having to navigate around them. So we’re gonna have to go right over to the west so right down to the bottom of the map and then we’re looping back up where that tiny little neck is, hopefully in a couple of days.

This morning, in zero visibility we actually wandered into an enormous crevasse field. The crevasses were some of the biggest we’ve seen on the whole trip. And I actually fell off the lip as I was leading, just a momentary lapse in vision, of absolutely nothing at all and we just fell off the edge and we decided that it was just too dangerous to carry on that way. So we put on the tents and we had a little look at the maps and then doubled back on ourselves. We’ve actually gone through the mountains today and we’ve not made quite as much distance. We’ve only made 11.5K, which was a bit disappointing. But given the conditions that we were towing uphill through the mountain, it was pretty good. It’s been really, really slow progress today. I mean, the snow has been so deep for some reason. Just in here, it seems to be a collection of fresh snow, which has been deposited from over the mountains, which is just making pulling incredibly difficult.

And then just right at the end of the day, it just instantly changed to rain and we were absolutely drenched, so we got camp up as quickly as we could. We are still damped now. We’re doing our best to dry ourselves off and then we’re gonna bury ourselves in our sleeping bags.

Other than that, really, the only other thing is we were thinking today about was kit. For those of you that like kit, we were just trying to work out if we could do the whole thing again. Realistically, what would we change? And the answer is, realistically, we don’t think we could change anything because the weight of the packs at the beginning was so immense. But if we were a little stronger, we would have changes 2 things. We would have actually bought slightly warmer synthetic sleeping bags as appose to the down and we would have bought full length Neo Airs. But we could have change its because we couldn’t fit to those into bags and we couldn’t have carried them. But if we could change, then those were the 2 things that we would have changed. All right then, we’ll take them tomorrow. Bye.

The I got worst in the evening, having now spoken to a few people we are convinced that I had acute Carbon Monoxide poisoning last night. We actually think that the panic attack I had a week or so ago was a mild version of this also. But this was a full blown episode. I lost all control of my body, I went like a stiff plank, I had a seizure, full dilation of my pupils, nose bleed and then unconscious. I remember coming round to Tarka screaming my name, I was in his arms and he was screaming at me. I’ve never seen him terrified and the look on his face frightened me to death as well. So it was a horribly scary night and it took about 2 hours before I was under some form of control. Its knocked me for six really, this morning I didn’t want to leave the tent, it took 2 hours of tears and convincing you know “what should we do?”, basically it scared me to death. I’m finding it really really tough from every angle and that was really the extra nail needed to make me want to quit.

But equally I didn’t want to fail so I did get out of the tent and I have walked another day. And I am feeling much better today.

We had another blizzard today so we couldn’t see anything. We had a lot of  sastrugi.  So that’s really uneven ground and the sledges kept turning over. Tarkas sledge fell over far more than mine and at one point he was bashing the hell out of it with his ski sticks! He lost his rag, he was so angry it just kept going over and over and over.

We had to stop a little bit early because of the wind, we couldn’t stand up. But we’ve done 13km and after all of last nights fiasco we’re quiet pleased with that.

The only other thing to report at the moment is the bad infection on my foot is doing much better. I have 3 other wounds that are also infected. The problem is that tomorrow our medical bandage supply will run out and then we’re forced to use the repair kit, electrical tape and gaffa tape and obviously if we use all that up and then if something breaks we’re in trouble.

So its all going a bit Pete Tonge! But we’re going to carry on the best we can any way and I think tomorrow we’ll be half way in distance and we have 15 days of food left. Whether we make it, who knows?. That’s all for now bye!

Anyway, it was incredibly cold. So, we had another night with no sleep. So, that’s 48 hours now with not even 10 minutes between us, sleep. Yesterday, in our day off we actually cut up the sleeping bags and sewed them back together as one slightly smaller bag in the hope that we keep warmer. So we’ll see how that goes.

Right this morning, that’s where it’s all kinda started. Not everything had completely dried. The socks, the gloves, the boots and our trousers. So, that all froze over night. And if you could hear the swearing and the screaming, of me, having put on the bandage on my feet and the freezing socks, and then trying to get them into the completely frozen ski boots. You would have thought I was giving birth. It was just horrendous. And it was good 2 hours before I could feel my hands or feet. But everything did dried because we‘ve had clear skies today, all be it quite cold because we were walking into a head wind but everything is dry bar our socks. So that’s not bad.

We walked up hill all day, every step was up hill and over half of it was with our back packs on as appose to pulling our sledges. It’s the first time we’ve put on our back packs for 8 or 9 days now. They are considerably lighter but still a dam sight harder work than pulling our sledges. But we had to climb over a cole between some mountains, we are actually perched on top of the cole at the moment. We had planned to make about 20km today but with the terrain we only made 14.5km so that’s not too bad considering we were carrying rather than sledging.

Ok last bit of information, a wound that I did have a bit of an infection on my toe quite a while ago from a blister, had healed. But I’m having really bad pains and problems with it and we can’t work out whether I’ve got an infection inside or if I’ve got frost bite its looking a little like frost bite at the moment. So, I’m gonna start a course of antibiotics in case its an infection but I‘m going to look after it as if it could potentially be frost bite as well.

So, that’s the only problem of the day but we are happy and we’re looking and hoping for a good day tomorrow. Bye.

We got caught out 14 hours, we had really heavy rain. I mean real heavy rain coming in. Which, eventually after we pitched the tent, turned to small streams and they started to pour over the top of the grounds sheet. So that the entire tent floor was about a centimetre deep in water. Everything that we own was drenched bar our emergency warm clothes. So it was a pretty, pretty awful evening. We spent most of the night fending off hypothermia with hot water bottles. We use a couple of days worth of fuel, our emergency day of fuel, heating hot water bottles trying to fend off hypothermia till the morning. And today we decided that we were going to just stop, reset, fix everything, and try to dry as many of our clothes as we could.

Bit of sods law really it’s been perfect day outside and really hardly a breath of wind. I mean it has been windy but not compared to what we’ve been dealing with and the sun’s being out. So it was a bit of irritation that we are still sitting in pretty much the same spot. But I think it was a necessary day for both of us. We’ve been on half rations again all days where we sit, we’re on half rations. But the morals a lot better today and we’re fingers crossed for some better weather tomorrow hopefully. So we can actually make some more distance. And that’s about it really. Thank you very much for your messages and we’ll chat tomorrow. Bye.

So all in all it was quite eventful. I thought… I might as well tell you about navigation anyway since we started talking about it. You know, most people would probably assume that you navigate purely on a GPS and ultimately of course we do navigate on a GPS, that’s how we reference all our coordinates. But it’s not really practical to walk on a GPS all day. A, because you’d have to have it switched on all day, so you’re using valuable batteries. We can’t carry enough batteries to have it switched on all day. And B its actually quite awkward unless it was taped or strapped somewhere that you could see it as it would just get covered in snow. So we use three methods to navigate. The first method is to use our shadow. So on the days whereby the sun is just peaking through, enough to create a shadow. You basically, set a bearing on your shadow and then you walk keeping the shadow at the same angle all the time. *Katie – that’s pretty rare* Yes, it’s pretty rare over here but the advantage of it is that it’s obviously a good day and it’s quite a clean, crisp way of navigating. The only thing you need to be aware of is that the sun is moving all day. So if you don’t vary the bearing as you’re going, you just gonna go round in a big arch.

The next method that we use is actually using our watches. Our watches have got a fantastic function called an azmus which is probably far better describe, if you click throu the website and find the links back to Tissot, they probably explain it much better than I do. But basically, it allows us to set a bearing on our watch. And if we drift off the bearing too much, it will bleep at us and tell us that we’re walking in the wrong direction. So thats second way of doing it but again we’re using batteries so we don’t always use that one only when we have to.

And the third way to navigate is with a little bit of a fabric tied to our ski pole because the wind blows so hard here generally speaking, it tends to blow in a constant direction. You’d set your bearings… And then you walk keeping the flag fluttering always in the same angle to you. And that’s probably our most reliable method of navigating the **bad connection**… ..check that we haven’t drifted. There you go a bit of interesting information on how we navigate. And that’s about it really, we’re very tired and depressed this evening, but we’ll talk tomorrow. Goodnight.

What else? Last night we had a bit of panic because Katie lost all feeling. She got pins and needles in her arms and legs and everything. And so we made a very quick call to our good expedition doctor, Dr Mathers. Thank you very much for actually picking up the phone in the night, that was much appreciated. And yeah, he explains that essentially, it was a panic attack which sounds pathetic I think but it can have some fairly worrying symptoms. So anyway, worked our way through that and Katie is now good and well so we have no excuse to quit and go home. We got to stick it out unfortunately. Right. Excellent, We’ll report tomorrow hopefully having made some mileage.

The only light entertaining moment of the day, on the plateau (which isn’t flat by the way even though you would think that from the word ‘plateau‘!) We climbed a big hill in the morning and got to do some down hill skiing the other side. Although my attempts were pretty horrendous! Every time I tried to go even a couple of feet the sledge would shoot past me at a rate of knots and knock me over. So after a couple of attempts of that Tarka took over and stood in the middle and had a sledge either side and nicely controlled them down the slope whist I snow ploughed on behind!

Other than that we cant see a foot in front of us so its just heads down staring at the tip of your skis, there’s no scenery to look at and its too cold to stop for breaks. So its just generally miserably. I hate to say its miserable because we chose to be here!!

I have good news, the feet are slowly beginning to heal. Their well bandaged but today was the first time in about a week that every step didn’t bring tears to my eyes so that is good news.

Once again thank you for all your support and comments, it really does help when all those little niggling thoughts about wanting to quit and go home creep into your head, which they do. Its nice to know there people out there following us and supporting us and we really appreciate that. Speak tomorrow. Bye x

Today had its own highs and lows. The lows were Tarkas excitement that we were on the plateau meant that when we weren’t on the plateau this morning and he had a huge temper tantrum and threw all the toys out the pram, yelling at all the equipment, thankfully I managed to get away with it lightly and he didn’t shout at me which is a bonus! By lunch time we finally made it to the plateau and we could put the bags down and pull them along in our micro sledges which although is still hard work its nothing compared to carrying those buggers!! That was a good high

The only problems of the day was that we’ve had a complete blizzard all day. We’re still roped together even though we are out of the crevasse as half the time I cant see Tarka in front of me so really really bad weather.

I haven’t really got much skin left on my feet, which is quiet uncomfortable. I’ve never really suffered from blisters before I am assuming thanks to the lakes and bogs at the beginning. Our faces are horrendously burnt even though we’ve got factor 50 sun cream and lip cream on and despite the blizzard we are burnt to pieces. Its very silly burns as well I have huge goggles marks and Tarka’s got huge sun glass marks.

The final thing which is a low is I started dreaming of food really badly which is always a bad sign as it means you want to come home already. I desperately want steak and chips and an ice cold coke.

I think that’s all, speak to you tomorrow.

It’s incredibly windy here. We’ve been fighting with the wind constantly although we were kind of expecting to be. The biggest problem that we’ve got is bad visibility, we’ve been navigating in almost zero visibility all day for the last couple of days and I don’t think it’s such a problem up on the plateau but whilst we’re down here navigating through the crevasses it’s incredibly difficult. Every time I keep stepping onto a crevasse and having to back off them.

We’re almost up on to the plateau. Fingers crossed. We had to stop early today just again because of the poor visibility. We got a few running repairs going on with the back packs. They done absolutely amazingly. I mean, there were only officially rated to carry 23 kilos. We got over 50 kilos in them and they have lasted. A couple of stitches and seams have started coming undone but we don’t blame them for that.

Today is the last day of what we called  river rations which they were the rations that we’d allocated to get to the glacier and didn’t count in the actual expedition food. So tomorrow morning is the first day of our actual proper expedition food. We’re quite looking forward to having a bit of a change in diet.

There are few aches and pains, Katies ankle is quite sore, we’ve got a few blisters that we’re nursing but apart from that we’re in good spirits and we’re quite cheery. Bit frustrated with the poor visibility but apart from that, we’re good.

When we woke up in the morning we couldn’t even see a foot outside the tent. So we were tent bound till about mid day when it started to clear a bit but still really no light but we thought we would crack on and see how far we’d get. Its pretty slow progress over all the crevasses and you cant actually see where they are. And then I fell over one. We were walking across a snow bridge crevasse on each side and my ski came off and the weight of the pack pushed me forward, and I went head first over the top, but was rescued by my leg, which got jammed down the snow hole and twisted at the knee and made a nice anchor. Painful anchor but it stopped me going all the way down. It was a daunting moment for a second!

We only managed about 3 and half hours before the light got bad again and my ankle is pretty sore, so we set up tent in another storm. Tarka has built huge snow wall around the tent hoping that it will……**end transmission**

The snow is incredibly hard work to make your way through. As soon as you take your ski’s off you sink up to your waist, it’s a real real battle. Earlier in the day we spend about 40 minuets just trying to get our skis back on. – End of Transmission

**from PM** team sound in good spirits, although frustrated by the non working satellite phone. If any one from SELEX is reading this they have model 9505A or any one that has experienced similar problems them please get in touch my details are on the Team page.

I have been passing on your messages each day so please keep them coming, life is only going to get harder and they need that ray of light each night. And just in case any one has been losing sleep, Katie-Jane was not seeing tiny characters from a Disney movie but very rare Patagonian deer called Huemel.

]]> http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/08/30/first-ice/feed/ 0 http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/08/28/day-three/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/08/28/day-three/#comments Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:37:33 +0000 Tarka http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=511 It was quite a cold night we were tucked deep into our sleeping bags, it was quite a clear sky amazingly we had no rain. We’ve taken to zipping the sleeping bags togther for extra warmth. This morning, well no body mentioned that we were going to have to cross multiple glacial rivers, which were between knee and thigh deep each one. We had to cross each one 3 times with the shuffling, and their cold enough to lose the feeling in your toes so its very unpleasant. We have also had to contend with some serious vegetation this afternoon up the mountain.

It may be unclear, as we often get carried away in the planning and organising so it may not be obvious, in order to get up on to the glacier, instead of confronting the glacier head on we are actually coming around the side so that we can drop down on to it. The vegetation here is almost a cross between jungle and desert and its incredibly dense. You can be hacking with your machete and in parts its so dense there’s no room to swing your arm to get through it. All the plants are desert plants so their all sharp, spiny and spiky and they do their best to stab you whenever you go anywhere.

The weather has been pretty good all day, sunny and enjoyable. We have been able to dry some of our gear and ourselves out.

We are past the second leg now, we’ve got one more leg to go now and given the vegetation we have made some good ground today. Our ankles are really beginning to suffer now with the weight of the pack, sometimes the rocks look sturdy, but when you step on them all the moss slips away, which means you have to catch your self which is fairly hard work.

Katie’s coping very well, she had a massive burst of strength at the end of the day today. She was a little down to start with – end of transmission.

Bags are feeling really, really heavy today and obviously back is still feeling sore from yesterday. We’re going pretty slow over the rocky terrain, bogs, vegetation and everything. We haven’t really stopped, we had 20 minutes off for lunch. No other breaks and just kept going backwards and forwards, doing three times for each bit of route which is quite depressing and working our asses off really. But, you know  that’s what we came here to do.

Some good news for the end of the day. Just as we were where we wanted to stop anyway we have found an old, well I think it was a cow shelter once upon a time. But, it is a nice bit of a relief from the rain. We lit a fire and we’re doing our best to dry everything out tent, sleeping bags and clothes. Tarka is laughing at me because I am wearing my sea goggles to avoid the smoke from the fire which I think I genius but he thinks is ridiculous. But, it’s giving us something to laugh about anyway. Well that’s about it for today and we will speak again tomorrow.

On top of the rain, we both have blisters on the inside of the arch of our left foot ’cause we’ve been walking all day on a slope all day in wet shoes, so adjusting those tonight.  Katie fell over a couple of times and almost damaged her ankle quite badly. But we’re still in quiet high spirits and we are about to have dinner and  we will chat with you tomorrow.

The packs weight in about 46 Kilos each at the moment and in addition we have two 8 kilo dry bags which we will shuffle for the first few days and then all the climbing gear and ropes on top of that. Quiet a lot for the back to cope with when its not in perfect working order.

Weather wise we been quiet lucky its not raining its pretty cloudy but fairly pleasant. We’ve had a lot of ice bergs to get through today with the boat which is why its taken so long to get here. But all should be good for the morning.

The only other big news is apparently yesterday we were in National Chilean News papers, but we haven’t seen a copy and it will take a good few weeks to get to the village of Caleta Tortel where we left from this morning, we just heard that thought the grapevine.

That’s all for now, hope fully well have exciting news when we actually get under way. Till tomorrow.

Hang on a second, where is the wind and rain I hear you ask?! Every morning we have woken to the bluest of skies, glorious sunshine, not a breath of wind and a cool bite in the air, keeping the snow crisp. Probability would have it, that we are going to have bad weather for the next forty having used up our 4 good days!

A couple of little things to report. Firstly, Tarka’s allergy, that he suffered from in the Arctic earlier this year, has shown some symptoms again so we have had to bin several items of clothing used in the Arctic and replace them with new ones from the only Cochrane shop.

Last night we went out for a bite to eat and had a classic ‘lost in translation moment’. I ordered a simple pizza and mineral water, dull I know but I am currently loosing weight as opposed to gaining it, so thought I would try and aid recovery. Tarka, as ambitious as ever, tried to order two Empaladers (small samosar style parcel of food) but his brilliant accent actually managed to order him two bowls of lettuce and tomatoes (ensalada)…just what a growing boy needs. To top it off he had accidentally ordered a Chocolate Sunday for his drink, with whipped cream and cherry on top to boot!

The good news is that we have arrived with almost everything we set out with. I say almost because when we arrived in Santiago we had to go through customs and we had to declare all the food that we had with us. Although all the expedition food was fine and they let that through they were deeply suspicious of out Peperami and a few varieties of nuts. The fact that we had 2 bags of nuts and 4 bags of Peperami taken wasn’t really a problem, the problem was that we spent so long in customs that we nearly missed our connecting flight. Whilst I was more than happy to spend the night in Santiago, the thought of Katie’s logistical plan not going 100% according to plan was enough for her to charge across the airport leaving stunned passengers in her wake, through the queue of 200 people waiting to check in and promptly ordered the poor lady at check in to stop the flight. Cutting a long story short, we made it onto the flight and despite taking bets that our bags were never going to make it to the other end we have to give due credit to TAM air who must have got some poor guy to run out onto the runway in order to get our bags on that plane.

This part of Chile really is very beautiful; it’s a strange mix to tundra and Spectacular Mountains, but what I love the most is the fantastically eclectic mix of architecture. I can’t even begin to describe it because no two houses are the same. They have just built houses in what ever shape and size seemed like a good idea at the time and it has such character.

Some of you probably don’t know this but we spent months testing out various cookers trying to see if it was possible to use the MSR Reactor. We had two major problems with the system, one being its efficiency in the cold and the second was obtaining sufficiently good quality gas canisters. On our little shopping spree this morning, as we were replacing our Peperami and nuts, I turned down an isle and there must have been at least 50 different sizes and makes of Iso-Pro (including the illusive 500ml)!!! So for any other expeditions that might be thinking of using a gas stove down here don’t worry about getting hold of the gas. With regards to temperatures we will log the temperature every day on the ice cap and post our findings to try and definitively asses whether it would be feasible to use such a cooker. White gas on the other hand is a nightmare to obtain!!! Well that’s not strictly true, it’s not that it’s a nightmare but the quality just isn’t very good. What they sell is called ´Bencina Blanca´ and although it is white gas its not quite as pure as what I was hoping meaning that we have to clean the cooker a lot more regularly and carry a little more fuel than anticipated.

Katie isn’t feeling very well so she has just gone to have a rest before our combined 20 hours of busing over the next few days.

I can’t believe another week has gone by and that there is only 6 days to go!!

This week we have been working closely with Sarah, our expedition psychologist and I’ve been really taken back by how little I prepared psychologically for my previous expeditions. In the build up to our trips we spend considerable amounts of time training physically. We also spend a huge amount of time on the mandatory organisation and logistics, but until now we have never really put aside much time for to ‘officially’ prepare mentally. Under Sarah’s expert eye we have been working at dealing with some of our own fears and possibly more interestingly our ‘Dark Sides’. No this has nothing to do with Star Wars but rather the character traits that we poses that on a normal day would be our greatest assets but often under great pressure can become our worst enemies. On an expedition as difficult as this, where the odds are stacked against us, my mental preparation is the most important preparation of all, as I personally find so many elements of the journey incredibly daunting.

I have been working on visualising myself carrying out the various sections of the expedition successfully, as my head naturally thinks what if! What if the rope brakes? What if I forget something? Etc. So I have been trying to consciously concentrate on the idea that ‘you get what you focus on’ if you think your going to fall you are far more likely to,but equally, if you think you will reach the summit then you will. It sounds so obvious I know, but I suffer from an irrational fear of slipping on snow (I have never even fallen) and overcoming this is a real battle.

How we work as a team and make important decisions in crisis situations is obviously crucial. To help with this Sarah carried out 2 assessments that looked into the ‘bright’ side and ‘darker’ side of our personalities (kindly sponsored by Get Feedback). The results of which, has allowed us to work on tools and techniques to best manage ourselves and each other in what will be an extremely challenging environment, with the aim of making the most of our strengths and reducing the impact of our weaknesses. To see the results of Sarah’s summary from our personality assessments please click here.

A further dimension of physiological pressures to face us this week, has been the planning and logistics. Withso many elements of the expedition changing in the past fortnight, I reached a point where I just wanted to through in the towel (and we haven’t even started!) Taking out the packraft section felt like 3 months of prep had gone

to waste and that we were going to have to start over with little more than a week to go, it also resulted in more costs (charter fishing boats to take us to the start etc) and the funds have well and truly run out! Sponsorship falling through due to timeframe, and the video camera braking amongst many other little things, just tipped me over the edge and I had had enough.

24 hours later I was back on track with a new plan, and had managed to put it all into perspective… The packraft was always a fun element not an essential one, the change of kit and tweaking bits and pieces down to the last second is completely normal for expeditions, and as for the sponsorship… well its defiantly not the first time and I can bet it wont be the last either.

However, the week has finished on a high. We had a great rope work session in Avon Gorge on Saturday going through routines, and on Sunday I woke and for the very first time since the expedition idea came about, truly believing I could do it. I always was ready to give it my best shot, but knowing only to well that what we are attempting, with a light and fast approach, will be boarder line possible, I hadn’t 100% believed in my ability. But I do have the skills, and I now believe that if the weather isn’t against us too much we can achieve this.