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.

Only yesterday were we able to calculate our final pack weight with all the additional food etc. and so today we headed out to Wimbalball Lake on Exmoor with the help of Andy Ward to test the packraft fully loaded. With a fair wind and driving rain it was a good day to train for Patagonia, the capital of the world for wind and rain! Our first problem, was when we were both paddling the raft (without any kit) the wind caused the boat to spin. This is a common problem on flat based boats but we had hoped it wasn’t going to have as much of a dramatice effect on us as it did. The only way we could overcome this was for the person sitting at the back to use their paddle off the back of the raft as a rudder. With only one of us paddling the distance we were covering was obviously considerably reduced. This in its self is not a major problem it just makes for longer hours paddling. However, the real problem came when we added the kit. With very little room in the raft we had planned to float 90L ‘river’ dry bags off the back of the raft filled with all the kit. When we tried this out a few weeks ago the plan worked to perfection. The excess air in the dry bag allowed it to float along behind with minimal drag. Today, with the backpacks and the additional food and fuel for the first 76km kayak section totalling 100kg pulling along behind, the drag was horrendous! Not only had the weight increased but with the kit being bulky and leaving little air in the dry bags, they sat low in the water. With only one of us paddling the other on steering, we were going nowhere fast.

We have to remember our objective for the Rivers of Ice expedition – to complete a full crossing of the Southern Patagonia Ice Cap unsupported and without kites! So we have been weighing up whether its worth taking the risk and jeopardising the ice cap crossing with a paddling section that is merely for our enjoyment and to add an additional element to the film. After a lot of deliberation, we have decided it’s not worth the risk, and we are going to take a boat (as nearly all previous expeditions on the ice before us have done) to the base of the Jorge Montt.

I am currently feeling pretty low about the change of plans, paddling through the fjords alongside dolphins whilst taking in the stark beauty of the remote Patagonia waters in a mode of travel that is new to the both of us, had been something I was really looking forward to. An element of adventure before the stark reality of the Ice Cap and getting down to business – to achieve what is boarder line possible! But, I must keep telling myself that too much time, effort and money has gone into Rivers of Ice, for a local fisherman to retrieve us from the fjords having not made the Jorge Montt in the allotted time.

Images courtesy of Andy Ward

When we started planning for our nutritional requirements we immediately assumed that the expedition food on the market was the best that we could get and didn’t give it a second thought. There are quite a few different brands out there and so we set about finding the ones with the highest calories. Unfortunately it quickly became apparent that in order to get enough calories from these expedition meals alone the weight of our packs was going to be totally astronomical. To add to the problem some of the major manufacturers of these foods were being a little on the generous side with their calorie estimations and they don’t include the weight of the packet in their figures. So suddenly we have gone from having 800kcal in a 162g packet (as quoted by the manufacturers) to actually being ≈ 735kcal in a 206g packet (what we tested)!!!

Realising that unless we could solve this issue the expedition was going to be a non starter, we started to look at individual ingredients within the meals. You have probably noticed that I have been talking obsessively about calories however you will now probably be pointing out that it’s not just about how many calories but rather what form these calories are delivered in. After all if it didn’t matter how we got those calories we would just take bars of lard and be done with it.

We have been working tirelessly and it’s been a long slog but not only have we finally managed to fit ≈ 896kcal in a 181g packet, but we have managed to do it with an excellent blend of protein, carbohydrates and fat. As if all this wasn’t enough there is also a very real chance that our food will need to be rehydrated using cold water due to the very limited fuel rations we have.

We have used all sorts of ingredients including ground almonds and a variety of nuts and seeds, cream powder, AMF, Cheese powder etc. and it really have been a steep learning curve. Knowing what I know now I am positive that it is possible to go even further and increase the calorie density significantly. However one thing that shouldn’t be overlooked is the psychological aspect of eating. As brilliant as it sounds on the face of it, if you increase the density of calories so far that all it takes is a mouthful for your whole days rations you will loss that all important moment in the evening after you have been facing the elements all day, your exhausted and cold and you get into your tent and have that hot meal and feel yourself come back to life.

[pro-player width="640" height="400"]http://vimeo.com/5873234[/pro-player]

If you are seriously considering an expedition that requires absolute nutritional control then I would seriously recommend visiting a nutritionist, getting a breakdown of exactly what you need and then go out and put it together from scratch.

The problem that arises here is that in order to paddle efficiently and cover the distance we need paddles. However the lightest paddle we can find weighs in at a rather painful 800g (approximately) and I am truly loathed to carry an extra 800g right the way across the ice cap that can’t be used at all while on the ice.

In the spirit of ultra light travel the most obvious thought is to reuse another piece of equipment that we have to take on the expedition. So what could double up as a paddle?

We are heading back out next weekend to try and iron out some of the problems we have discovered. Unfortunately there aren’t that many options, the best solutions we have come up with so far are:

1. We use our shovels as efficiently as possible.
2. We take a paddle and carry an extra 800g across the icecap.
3. We make a paddle out of wood and an ultra-sil dry bag when we get off the glacier.
4. We take a wooden paddle for the first section and leave it at the base of the glacier and use either option 1 or 3 at the other end.

Now we know that the raft and equipment works we off to a slightly more impressive piece of water to test it out.

Thanks for joining us on our new website. Please let us know what you think of it and if there is any additional information that would be of interest. For the next 5 weeks we will update the website in the traditional text format. Once we have departed for Chile, this page will become an interactive map presenting daily audio podcasts. For those of you who don’t have speakers there will still be a standard transcript as well. Updates will come through every evening during the expedition, summing up the juicy details of the days events and how we are feeling about the situation.

A little over a week ago we returned from a fantastic 2 weeks training trip on the Mont Blanc Massif. As I have no previous glacier travel experience, it was a real eye opener as to the size of some of the crevasses and seracs and just how to get across them when carrying such heavy loads. Tarka with his wealth of alpine experience was, as ever, a thorough yet patient teacher.

There were numerous terrifying moments at the start of the fortnight, as everything felt completely alien. For example, I would spend 2 or 3 minutes (okay nearer 5) whimpering trying to pick up the courage to cross a 2ft wide snow bridge over a gaping chasm below, cross, look back with a mix of relief and pride as to what I had accomplished, only to see the bridge plummet to the depths below. On climbing the ice walls I would

weaken so quickly from the adrenaline and fear pumping through me as I tried to cling to the face with just one axe and the front 2 spikes of my crampons that I made falling an ever more likely possibility. Trusting your equipment is such an important part of ice climbing but something that took a while to get my head round. All in all I spent at least the first four days feeling completely inadequate and thoroughly doubting my ability to achieve our goal in Patagonia. But Tarka kept picking me up and telling me to stop being so hard on my self, I was learning new skills on an extremely difficult section of ice with a 35Kg bag on, it was never going to be easy!

One of the biggest lessons I leant during the training was the speed at which I must react if Tarka is to fall down a crevasse! We went over the routine of making your self safe, tying off the faller, descending the rope to put the faller into the safe position in the circumstance that they had become unconscious during the fall, ascend the rope, before finally hauling, using a set of pulleys, the casualty out! There was a large amount to remember, but after a few run-throughs I felt I had it, so next we were to practise for real. I stood a full 8m back from Tarka with the rope tort (you would always be roped together in a crevassed region), he stood at the edge and on the count of 3 was going to let himself fall in! The plan was, as soon as I felt the rope move, I should drop to the ground backwards so that my feet were facing the direction of the fall and that I could dig my crampons and axe into the ice and stop Tarka falling any further. Despite the 3, 2, 1 countdown (which Tarka described as being kind, incidentally) all didn’t go quite to plan! He was gone so quick and I shot forward at one hell of a speed, falling to the ground forwards smashing my knees on the ice, only coming to a stop by a fortunately placed, raised lip on the crevasse edge, which I lay over looking down at Tarka who was screaming up at me as to weather I was okay, despite the fact he was supposed to be the unconscious patient! I am now fully aware how heavy Tarka is with his full pack on, and how I need to increase the weight of the dumbbells back at home. Thankfully after a few painful and panicked moments I righted the situation and some considerable time later Tarka was hauled from the hole!

You will be pleased to here that as the days went on my skill level and confidence rose drastically and we are both fully back on track with confidence and enthusiasm as to our chances in Patagonia. In addition Mont Blanc provided us with an excellent opportunity to put nearly all our new expedition kit through its paces. There are a few alterations and modifications to be made but on the whole we are thrilled with everything and are completely happy that we have the best gear for the job. In the next day or two we will be out on the river putting the rafting/ kayak kit to the text and let you know how it goes asap.

Longitude west 73 degrees, 15 minutes, 12 seconds.

This is a test transcribe to see if we can get this phone message typed in to text and then emailed over to the expedition website where it will be converted into an audio file and place onto a map at the correct location. That’s it. Fingers crossed.