Save £6 off the ticket price by booking in advance quote ”Tarka” / “Katie-Jane” / “Rachel” (£10 on the door) visit www.adventuretravellive.com

Adventure Travel Live is the must visit, one stop shop for anyone planning an off-the-beaten-track travel adventure. The show is packed with inspiration and travel advice that will help you to uncover the journey of a lifetime. From once-in-a lifetime-travel experiences, small group adventures, trekking, family adventures, career breaks, safaris, overland expeditions, volunteering, gap years and much more.

There are over 60 talks at Adventure Travel Live and our impressive line-up of travel experts includes the likes of Simon Yates (Touching the Void), Ben Fogle, Benedict Allen, co-founder of Lonely Planet Tony Wheeler, Doug Scott, Tom Avery, Simon Calder, Paul Rose and many more, oh and us of course!

We will be presenting ‘The Great Walk of China: Proof that anything is possible!’ Recounting my colossal life-change from the world of commercial fashion to adventurer: surviving blizzards, temperatures of -35°C, frost bite, starvation, exhaustion and dehydration? In 167 days and over 4500km we became the first to walk the entire length of the magical Great Wall of China from its westerly terminus to its most easterly. The equivalent to over 100 consecutive marathons with a third of our body weight on our backs. With the hope of inspiring one or two others, that we are all more capable than we think if we are just brave enough to take the first steps!

Show features include:

• 5 x theatres packed with inspiration and advice; from Simon Calder’s weekend of adventure travel, wildlife adventures, overland & expeditions to the planning the ultimate career break
• Nat Geo Adventure explorers workshop
• Royal Geographical Society Map Zone
• The Big Earth expedition planning feature
• Travel Africa safari planner
• Travel Photographer of the Year exhibition
• Nomad Travel Health & Essential Kit Guide
  

Venue & Getting there
Royal Horticultural Halls, Greycoat Street, Victoria, London SW1P 2QD.
Friday 29 January, 6pm-10pm
Saturday 30 January, 10am-6pm
Sunday 31 January, 10am-5pm

On door price
Friday / adults / £10
(£18 for the evening with Simon Calder + valid any one day)
Saturday / adults / £10
Sunday / adults / £10
Under 16s free


Advance ticket offer
I am pleased to confirm that we have teamed up with the organisers of Adventure Travel Live to offer you a discount to the show when you book in advance. You can save £6 off door price for adults (i.e. £4 valid any day), under 16s are free. Add £1.50 postage and packing per order.

Tickets for an Evening with Simon Calder are £15 and takes place from 6pm to 10pm on Friday 29 January only. Also valid any one day for Adventure Travel Live.

Order online at adventuretravellive.com or call 0871 230 7159 and quote  “Tarka” / “Katie-Jane” / “Caroline” / “Rachel”  (please use reference code where relevant J).

Also dont forget 2 days letter we will be speaking about the Rivers of Ice Expedition at the quirky ‘Night of Adventure’ in the style of Pecha Kucha, 15 speakers, 20 slides per speaker, 20 seconds per slide on February the 2nd at 7pm, at the Roxy Bar & Screen, London. This will be great fun and not to be missed, with all proceeds going to Hope and Homes for Children.

FIFTEEN speakers from across the spectrum of expeditions, adventure and travel will talk about their experiences (Tarka and I speaking as a pair being one of them) .

The subjects range from rowing oceans, climbing Everest, walking and cycling across continents, crossing ice caps (I think this is us!), trekking to the North Pole (and South Pole) all the way to flying cars, climbing Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair and spending six months living in a tree house.

Each one is an amazing story. But the twist is that each speaker is allowed just 20 slides. And each slide scrolls on automatically after just 20 seconds!! Tarks and I have never spoken before in this style and i think its going to be quite a challeng but great fun for the audience to watch. This format, originally called “Pecha Kucha” in Japan, makes for a high-paced, varied, original evening.

The Roxy Bar is a really good venue for a night out. The setting is informal so you can sit on sofas with a beer or eat a light meal while watching the event. Friendly heckling will be encouraged!

This evening of adventure is being held to raise funds and awareness for Hope and Homes for Children. All the proceeds from the event will go to support the work of this charity. So please come along, bring a few friends, have dinner, and make an evening of it. Put it in your diary today and buy your tickets here!

February 2nd 2010, www.roxybarandscreen.com, London, 7pm
15 speakers
20 slides per speaker
20 seconds per slide
£15 minimum entry. Buy your ticket online here (or below) and just bring ID on the night. There will be a few tickets available on the door for cash only. All proceeds from the door go to charity
Dinner and drinks available at the venue

On a seperate note our Great Wall of China documenatry won the people’s choice award at Dundee Mountain Film Festival…yippie! the weekend before last and was well recieved at the Autrans Mountain Film Festival in France this weekend.

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.

]]> http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/29/last-one/feed/ 3 http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/29/thank-yous/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/29/thank-yous/#comments Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:52:52 +0000 Katie-Jane http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=570 HI everyone it’s a beautiful blue sky day in Patagonia believe it or not, but its really hurting my eyes, they were much better but the sunshine is obviously making them worst, so Tarka has been leading the blind again!

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.

So, although we are down at sea level we’re a lot warmer here and the wind isn’t blowing and it’s not howling and we manage to get the tent up, well the sheltered up pretty nicely this evening. But, tomorrow is gonna bring a bit more of an adventure. We got an inkling that there might be a way out, but we wont know until tomorrow.

What else can I report? Katies knees are incredibly sore and her eyes are a little bit better. My frost bite is doing fine and we hurt generally, but we’re incredibly tired but we’re all well. So, fingers crossed we’ll have some better news tomorrow. It might be our penultimate it might not. We might be here for a few more days. We just don’t know yet. But, talk to you tomorrow.

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/2009/09/24/buried-in-snow/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/24/buried-in-snow/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:20:20 +0000 Tarka http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=560 Right, hi everybody well incredibly sombre mood in camp today. We really had a bad day. Last night the actually wind in the tent seemed to die down quite a lot. But, when we uncover our eyes this morning we found that the main reason for that was because the tent was almost completely buried. We had about just a glimpse of the roof not buried. And, so it took us 2 hours to dig the tent out outside. It’s really been the worse storm that we’ve been in so far. We can’t hardly stand at all, the wind was just so incredibly strong and whipping snow and so fast that it was burying the tent as quickly as we could unbury and we got to dig ourselves out which is a good job that we had the shovel inside. We basically after a couple of hours manage to free the tent and all that is anchors and we moved, we relocated about 3 or 4 meters further north from it. And, since we relocated the actual leeward side of the tent is almost totally covered again, so I’m gonna have to go out in the minute and uncover the tent. So, it’s been a very, very, very low day today really. We’re very depressed and we actually to each other for the first time. And, we knew we were losing weight but we’ve looked at each other for the first time and we are incredibly skinny. We really lost  an awful lot of weight now. And, as you know we really reached the end of our half rationed limit now. We really starting to push the boundaries of whether or not it’s healthy and safe to stay on the ice cap. We are discussing it very seriously and we got to see if how many more days we can realistically hold out and still hold our energy. But, there’s also there’s so much snow and I mean I can’t begin to describe the amount of snow that has fallen. When we first put our camp up 4 or 5 days ago whenever it was, there were crevasses all around us. And, now it’s almost a totally flat plain when you’re walking around. The powder comes right up to your waist when you’re walking around which is incredibly difficult. So, we do have to consider the possibility of ice fall, snow falls and avalanches, so we’re gonna be very seriously thinking about it all this evening. Sorry, that  we have got any better news we‘ll chat tomorrow.

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.

What else just happens, the video camera decided it doesn’t wanna work again. So unfortunately we’re trying to fix that so that we can actually do some filming when the time comes. Apart from that we are just try to catch up with some sleep. Nothing hugely exciting to report. A lot of whiteness! We’re quite tired and the bags are relatively dry. So we’re enjoying a little bit of a rest. And that’s about it really. So we’ll try and update you with some better and more interesting news tomorrow.

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!

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.

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.

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.

]]> http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/07/daily-routine/feed/ 0 http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/06/wipe-out/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/09/06/wipe-out/#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:01:35 +0000 Katie-Jane http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=527 Sorry but you got me again. Tarka is out building a wall around the tent. The wind has done a completely 180 flip and the wall he just spent the last 10 minutes building is now not working, so he’s out busy again. Last night we actually had the best night sleep since we started, amazing and good news. Good because although we still had a blizzard going on, the wind had died down a lot and so we had snow settling on the tent and adding some layer insulations, so we were really quite warm and snug.

But, got up in the morning and again zero visibility. Wind, as I say wasn’t as bad as the day before but we just can’t see even a foot around you. It can make you feel quite sick and dizzy. So, we had two big climbs, again I’m waiting for this plateau to be flat! And, with one of the climbs came a steep descent. But, obviously when you can only see a foot around you we had no idea it’s gonna be quite so steep. And, I had a huge wipe out and took everyone with me all the polks, tarka! Tarks shouted at me and I did try and explain to him, you know this is quite steep and I haven’t got my heals fixed in here. I have only really done normal Alpine skiing before. I am not a telemark expert, so please you know bear with me here. Which he finally did see the point and apologised.

Eventually, 5 oclock just before we finished for the day the cloud actually cleared and the wind and the snow stopped. And, we could see where we are and it makes such a difference when can see it’s the most incredible scenery, but we see for like 0.5% and it’s ridiculous. But it really boost moral when you do see it. By 6 oclock it’s gone again winds blowing and Tarka’s building the walls. Thats pretty much it for today. Yes, bye now and speak tomorrow. Bye

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 was our first real day man hauling, we’ve got new aches and pains in different areas our hamstrings, bums, lower backs are all aching a little bit. But it makes a massive difference and is a lot easier than carrying the packs, so we’re all for that.

Its been a white out most of the day, about 99 percent has been zero visibility and we’ve been navigating on a bearing following the wind. Then right at the 11th hour the sun came out and it was amazing, we saw the terrain and the beautiful landscape for the first time which was quite exciting.

Bit of a record breaking day for distance today. We made 17.2 km which is absolutely amazing compared to our record 5km before today, so absolutely winning today. Fingers crossed that we can keep it up for tomorrow.

Katie’s is very excited about the fact that I’ve got Spag Bol for dinner and she has Beef and Potato Hot pot. That’s her highlight of the day. Its a a far cry from home cooking but its quite a lot to look forward to when your out here. And that’s about it really. We have to go now as we’ve got Katies worse job of the day, which is melting all the water. It takes us about half an hour to melt the snow into drinking water and Katie gets really cross because she has to handle the snow into the pot for half an hour!.

Apart from that all is well, spirits are high, we’re quite chilly. Our sleeping bags are looking a bit damp and frozen but apart from that we’re all well.

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

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/2009/08/29/disney-film/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/08/29/disney-film/#comments Sat, 29 Aug 2009 05:12:28 +0000 Katie-Jane http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=513 Going to be quite brief as the Sat phone keeps cutting out. If any one knows how to stop this please contact our project manager and she can let us know. It rained very heavily in the night, we’re camped by a lake and the lake rose 6 foot and we nearly floated away! Didn’t though quite thankfully. It carried on most of the day so heads down didn’t really speak to each other, just so much rain making life unpleasant.

It cleared in the afternoon and we’ve come into a huge change of scenery, we are through all the vegetation now onto the steep scree slopes of the mountains, heading up a valley along a waterfall. Right now we have just reached the snow line. We’ve climbed up a steep channel, over all the boulders and scree and just popped over the top and we can’t quiet see the glacier but we’re hoping in about 20 minuets in the morning it should peep over the horizon and we’ll see it, but it got quiet dark tonight so we have called it a day.

We’ve seen some Patagonian deer, I think their called Melan – although that may just be a Disney film about a dragon!! ***PM note. I could only find reference to a Pudu or the very rare nuemul, so lets hope they got some pictures!!*** But their Patagonian deer, stunning, and they have no sense that humans could be a danger to them and they just wondered out stared at us and all our kit, apparently their quite rare so that was quite exciting.

We’re in our tent now repairing our torn trousers from all the thorns and puncturing blisters, you know normal expedition stuff.

In general were pretty pleased with our progress, we’re on schedule and tomorrow hopefully we should be on the ice. All for now.

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.

We hoping to start the expedition itself on the 23rd of August and from this point on we will send back audio podcasts, as well as written versions, daily. Although once the expedition gets under way Tarka and I will not be able to see the website itself, we will have daily contact with our expedition manager. She will pass on messages or questions from emails, message wall, or twitter, and where possible we will try and get replies back to you. Receiving messages have a far greater impact than you may imagine, they allow a very remote and harsh wilderness to feel a little less lonely during those really hard times.

Before we depart I just want to say a few thankyou¹s to those who have got us this far. We feel incredibly privileged to be sponsored by such a host of exceptional market leading brands and we thank them greatly for sharing in the vision of Rivers of Ice. Our parents have also been invaluable in their effort, time and finance towards the journey and a simple thank you doesn’t seem enough. I just hope we can be successful in our quest as a way of a return.

There is also a team of people who¹s efforts are really only just starting, but we would like to give them a huge thank you in advance. Sadie who is project managing the expedition has an epic amount of work ahead of her. And considering a few months ago she agreed to my request of whether she could just check a few emails for us, maybe 5 minutes maximum a day. I now feel incredibly indebted to her, as her work load has escalated to website updating, logistics, press, weather forecasting, etc etc and for freeŠ.she¹s amazing, a great friend thank you. The rest of the team Sarah, Hannah and Caroline are equally, carrying out sterling work on our behalf¹s, and I would like them to know that their efforts are greatly appreciated and we couldn¹t do this without them.

I believe the ‘why’ for each particular journey changes slightly, but also changes greatly from person to person. There are many expeditions happening right this minute raising money for particular charities, raising awareness of climate change and carrying out groundbreaking work in the name of science. So when your reply to the ‘why’ is none of the above, you are met with a sense of confusion followed by a look of “ well what’s the point, why are you only doing it for yourself, that’s selfish!”

We have worked with both charities and scientific bodies on previous expeditions, but to be truly honest, they are never the reason ‘why’. They are an added bonus.

George Mallory describing his motivation for reaching the summit of Everest:
“For the stone from the top for geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man.”

The best way I can describe the ‘why’, is that these are our Olympic finals, we have just happened to choose a sport a little less conventional than the 400 metres. No one questions why Olympic athletes are there, it is obvious, they want to push themselves to their limit in a bid to be the best they can possibly be in what they do.

We battle with ourselves both physically and mentally to understand our limits, to grasp what we are capable of and discover parts of ourselves we never knew existed. We dream and chase our dreams. If we fail, we learn from it and try again. If we succeed, well the elation and memory will stay with us forever. We will also have something to look back on in 50 years time, to know we made the most of our allotted days. This is our ‘WHY’!

In addition to our own personal quest in Patagonia, we will also be gathering observations along our route for a glaciologist and volcanologist. We will be passing 4 volcanic complexes on the ice cap, which have proven extremely difficult for the experts to get to and work at regularly, so the images and observations of activity (hashes, smoke steam etc) we can gather on their behalf will hopefully prove to be very useful. The largest and most active volcanic complex is Lautaro and Mimosa Volacnoes and they are expected to be guilty of the extremely fast advance of the Pio XI glacier, so we will do what we can to be of use.

The final reason for our journey is to make a documentary film. We have been passionate about travelling through remote parts of the world for sometime, but more recently this passion has developed into capturing our experiences and the landscapes through which we travel onto film. We strive to make enjoyable and exciting films that allow others to live our adventures vicariously, whilst keeping them factual. We hope to bring home footage that shows a true representation of the environment we have endured, allowing those who may  have seen little about this particular part of the world, a taster of its harsh beauty. The inner depths of the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap have yet to be even mapped in any detail, let alone over filmed!

Only a Person who Risks is Free†

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach for another is to risk involvement.
To expose your ideas, your dreams,
before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To believe is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the
greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The people who risk nothing, do nothing,
have nothing, are nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow,
but they cannot learn, feel, change,
grow, love, live.
Chained by their attitudes they are slaves;
they have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.
- anonymous

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 majority of the conversation with Thomas was based around the Fella Reichart. We have always known that this part is going to be truly terrifying. In fact with the knowledge that only 2 groups have ever managed to navigate safely through the mass of ice, I wake up regularly at night in a cold sweat. The few photos and satellite imagies have told as a far amount but, confirmed first hand by Thomas, attempting it in bad weather is quite simply suicidal. This simple and yet rather unnerving statement has really bought home that we need to stay on schedule more than ever, in fact we need to reach the Fella Reichart ahead of schedule to allow us to wait for a weather window.

As brilliant as it seems having increased our food allowance, our packs are now simply too heavy to ski with efficiently. So we have opted to take 2 tiny (1m) kids sledges which fit perfectly over the outside of the backpacks and only add 1.5kg to the pack weight. What we hope to be a small price to pay up the Jorge Montt , for the amount of effort they will save us later on.

To update you on the paddle situation we have decided to take two untreated wooden paddles through the first fjord and lake section. Just before we head up the Jorge Mont we will dry our kit around a nice fire (if not a slightly expensive fire!!!). Then on the other side of the ice cap we will be using our shovels, or if it gets really bad we will create something in the spirit of MacGyver.

We were very sorry to hear yesterday that Linda and Rob had to turn back before being able to complete their journey across the ice cap (www.icecapjourneys.com.au). This bought home just how tough getting up the Jorge Mont t Glacier will be, even more!.

For all you kit junkies out there, our Neo-Airs have just arrived and they are simply amazing. Not only are they tiny but they are seriously comfy. The other pieces of kit that arrived today were our TISSOT-T-Touch Experts… AMAZING. Aside from the initial panic on their arrival at finding that a box containing two watches weighed in at 2.5kg! I’m pretty sure that by tomorrow the watch will be updating this page for me it seems to have so many functions!

]]> http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/07/24/change-of-tactics/feed/ 0 http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/07/18/testing-out-the-pack-raft/ http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/2009/07/18/testing-out-the-pack-raft/#comments Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:55:53 +0000 Tarka http://www.rivers-of-ice.com/?p=448 If you have read through the website and had a look at the equipment page you will know that we are carrying a pack raft with us over the whole ice cap. The first 73km of our journey from Caleta Tortel to the base of the Jorge Montt Glacier are through the river networks. Its then a bit of a hack through heavy (and sharp) shrubbery, over a few small lakes and to the base of the ice. This section isn’t exactly world class rafting and we even have a separate food supply in the boat so if we take a few extra days its not the end of the world. Then there is the tiny issue of navigating the ice cap!!! After we come off the last glacier we then have to get back into our raft and head down the rivers and rapids out into the fjords and 93km to the finish line.

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.