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.

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/2009/09/17/never-a-problem-always-a-solution/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/17/never-a-problem-always-a-solution/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2009 06:44:49 +0000 Katie-Jane http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=547 Right well I have 2 days to tell you about and quite a lots happened. So yesterday, we walked in a blizzard, as per usual. Tarka mentioned briefly that we were going through a crevasse field. What he didn’t tell me whilst we were going along, and probably quite wisely, is that that two snow bridges that he was on, kinda boomed out beneath him luckily there was enough snow that he could actually back off and go a different way. But you know, the noise of a huge crack and thunder underneath you scared him a little. Thankfully the rope was long enough back and the wind was howling enough that I was completely oblivious. Which is a good thing.

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!

So, that was our morning which was a bit depressing really ’cause we’d already eaten our full breakfast so we couldn’t go half rations really, and we were worried we weren’t going to make the distant.

However, it all cleared up and we had a little bit of visibility this afternoon. We managed to make, we think we haven’t check it but we managed almost our daily distance, slightly short.

The other reason that we were slightly short on our daily distance today and it’s becoming a bit of a problem is that Katie has development an infection on her foot which could or couldn’t be combined with frostbite. It’s very difficult to tell in the moment but anyway, her toe is very swollen and I’ve put her on an antibiotics course courtesy of Doctor Ed, but it is making walking very difficult. Her little toe is quite, although is also the whole right hand side of her foot, is quite swollen so it’s very difficult for her to put it in to her boot in the mornings. A lot of agony, a lot of tears. And then walking all day. She’s starting to take pain killers and we’re hoping that the antibiotics course will kill that infection pretty quickly.

Apart from that, we’re both feeling the hunger a lot more now. We are starting to dream about food and we’re eating our entire meals and still being quite hungry at the end of it. So, that’s all good. Apart from that, our morale is quite high today. We’re quite cheery and I think we’re doing maps after this, but I think we’re almost at the half way stage or maybe the day after in regards to food to distant ratios. So, that’s all good. And a part from that, that’s about it really. We’re all wrapped up, it’s snowing and we’re just about to go to sleep, chat tomorrow. 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.

So, I mean it really just…it truly makes my experience in the Artic in February feel quite pleasant because at least then it’s just cold and you could wrapped up because here it’s just evil. I wouldn’t want to put off people coming to Patagonia of course, just the ice cap itself!

Lets just talk a little bit about the panic attack because I’ve seen other people with panic attacks or I thought and it wasn’t like that. I’ve seen people get really upset and they get carried away and they get in a tiz until they can’t control their breathing and it is just a complete mess. Where I was happily just finished dinner, in my sleeping bag chewing on a 9 Bar and I said to Tarka “oh pants I need to go out side for a wee”, which when your in your sleeping bag is a bit of a rig moral. Before I even had a chance to eat my last bite of my 9 Bar I couldn’t feel my hands…well, I could feel that they were going tingly, then I couldn’t feel them. I lost coordination and couldn’t focus my eyes, it felt like someone was sat on me. My chest was going tight and then I couldn’t breathe very well and this just came out of nowhere. You know I wasn’t upset about any thing and now I’m really worried about needing a wee in case it happens again! One interesting fact, that Dr Ed Mathers did tell us, is that after you start hyperventilating in a panic attack, after about 4 minutes of that unless you can bring it back to normal, you pass unconscious which presumably is the body re writing itself! Aren’t we clever us humans! Anyway, that’s probably enough of me rabbiting. I’m going to go kind of to sleep in my wet sleeping bag. And, yes we’ll speak tomorrow. Bye.

]]> http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/10/on-the-move-again/feed/ 0 http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/09/tent-bound/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/09/tent-bound/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:39:17 +0000 Tarka http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=533 Hi Everybody bad news today. Unfortunately, today is the first day that we’ve been completely tent bound. This weather has been absolutely incredible I’ve never experienced wind like it. It picked up in the night and we got out this morning to go as per usual and both Katie and I were literally swept off our feet and it’s quite amazing. So we spent most of the day waiting to see if the wind would die down allowing us to carry on or not. It hasn’t. It has a very, very slightly started to ease off later on this evening, but nothing spectacular. So we had to build three walls now and every time we do it collapses because the wind is so strong. The tent is partly buried. it’s a bit depressing because that puts us 10 kilometres behind schedule. Apart from that though, we’re still in good spirits, we’re a little depressed and dampened by the fact that we didn’t make any mileage at all today but we will try and make it up as soon as the weather lets us out the tent.

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.

But we don’t have the warm clothes that we had before or we don’t have a nice hot drinks coming into or big sleeping bag and I mean no fault of the sleeping bag but we have brought bags for weight reasons that are just warm enough to survive but not warm enough for comfort and I’m wearing every single item of clothing I have every hour of the days as it is and we don’t have enough fuels for warm drinks.  So, I’m  just really, really suffering from the cold and it just brought me down yesterday and exploded in to tears and to make it worst, you know, you get tired if you don’t sleep and then you feel the cold more. It’s  kind vicious circle that’s biting me at the moment and I can’t keep the food down.  We’ve got these added supplement of cheese powder and AMS which are the 2 things that have changed since, over the last week since I felt quite ill and so I’m losing a lot of weight ’cause I can’t obviously get out all the calories that I am putting in ’cause it’s coming out one end or another quicker than it’s going in.  So, I’m actually going to stop the AMS and cheese powder and just see if I can keep down just a normal evening meal as it is and then hopefully, stop losing the weight as fast as I am.  So, yeah, all that was a bit down really but today, I am much much better.

We’re having a fairly good weather. Really, really strong winds hitting us on the side but it wasn’t snowing and the clouds are pretty sparce.  It was just a strong wind.  So, we can still see where we’re going and navigation is pretty easy.  So, actually this morning we did a radio interview BBC Somerset with Emma Britten.  That should be going out in the morning.  That was lovely to speak to somebody.

We’re actually camp outside Mount Fitz Roy region which is really fairly well known pinnacle mountain. Really, known for serious climbing and it’s quite different to all the other mountain here.  It’s really jagged peak. I’m sure it’s the most it’s the most  photographed place in Patagonia, all be it not from this side, they would have been photographing  from the other side to where we are.  But its nice to see a landmark. The only other thing to say is, over the last week, we’ve been doing some analysis with Sarah and hopefully she’ll have put on either today or maybe tomorrow some evaluations on how we’re fairing in the minds whether she things we’re going cuckoo or if we’re doing okay. I don’t know.  So, that’s it for today.  We’ll speak tomorrow.  Bye.

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.

We got up early this morning,  to have a good crack at the crevasse fields and we are walking by first light.  We had an absolutely the amazing day weather wise, it’s  held out with the sun pretty much all day except probably about half an hour when it went to zero visibility again. So, we’ve trundled along. It’s got to be one of the hardest days on record and  we’ve actually made it up onto the plateau.  Wheey, which, to those of you who don’t know what that means, that means that we’ve finished battling with the crevasses.  We have probably 10 more crevasses in front of us to battle with in the morning.  But apart from that, it’s then a case of making some mileage. You’ll start to see the dots on the map not sitting on top of one another anymore hopefully finger’s crossed.

To top it all off today we’re both harbouring a few injuries, sore feet, Katie’s got a sore shoulder, and she also sliced her finger while trying to open dinner which just tops it all off. Anyway, she’s just rolled up in her sleeping bag having had enough.  Excellent!.. We’ll speak tomorrow. oh and Happy Birthday Charlie

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.

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.