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.
Hi everybody. I just…I don’t even know where to begin with today’s epic adventure. The long and the short of it is that we have managed to descend almost 1 1/2 thousand meters and 4.6 kilometres. It is one of the steepest glaciers that I’ve ever seen. I can well understand if nobody else has ever been down here and we are the first then I can well understand why and I would well recommend anybody else that comes here to steer well clear of it. The good news is that we are down at sea level pretty much. We’ve been going for 12 hours now and we hurt from head to toe. I mean it’s just been absolutely epic with the culmination right at the end within 60 meter abseil just get off the last cliff face. But, we did it we’re down. Unfortunately Patagonia being Patagonia and all things brilliant. The fact that we’re down at sea level hasn’t help us quite yet. I do believe that this is a very sheer faced glacier at the mouth and the boats won’t be able to come close enough to pick us up. So, we’re actually gonna have to try and find an exit point somewhere else even though there are vertical cliffs all around as you’d expect from the base of the glacier.
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.
HI every one tent bound again I am afraid really strong winds and no visibility, yesterday we had some visibility and it was still a terrifyingly dangerous day through the terrain so we just don’t want to risk it today. Yesterday was pretty hard core mountaineering for a beginner like me and I spent most of the day scared out my mind but obviously desperate to get off the icecap with the equipment not being in full working order, so we just kept going, gritting my teeth but not really happy about it, especially since it’s the first time I ever fell down crevasses. Hopefully now in the summer Mont Blanc will now be a bit more of a doddle having experienced the stuff I have here.
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.
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
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 Golite tent which is 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.
