Heather, Dale and Michel have arrived in Longyearbyen. They were met at the airport by PolarExplorer guides Keith Heger and Dirk Jensen, who have been in Longyearbyen for several days preparing gear, food, and other details for the expedition. Everyone is excited and reports of ice conditions are good (we always like to hear that!). Today the team acclimitized by doglsedding to some beautiful ice caves near Longyearbyen. They also spent some time checking out their skis and a few other equipment items. The expedition officially kicked off with a welcome reception and dinner. Everyone is excited and eager to get the show on the road!
Heather writes... "What a day we had today - Easy start with wonderful breakfast at the Hostel where we are staying. Then we went down to the large uninsulated shed to look at the gear. We sorted the skiis and bindings and made sure we had what we needed. The sleds have a smooth contoured bottom with heavy material screwed in for the top, kind of expandable, so we can take what we need and shrink down as we eat! - 109 lbs of food (that is before it is rehydrated - OMG). More on this later....
"This afternoon we went up and met Tom - he has 17 husky sled dogs. We put two sleds together 11 dogs on one, and 5 on the other. The sled with 5 dogs was smaller and each of us had a chance to mush! It was exhilirating - no words can adequately describe it. The landscape all snow, rock and mountains, no trees. We took a circuitous path up and around the mountain working the sleds up the hills helping the dogs. Our destination was the ice cave.
"We put on our helmets, and our headlamps and in we went. Wow. We were in the bowels of the glacier. Apparently we took the expert route, ladders, ropes, and 10 foot icewalls that we went down, ice slides. We went a long way down into the caves, beautiful untouched ice sculptures naturally made. The trip came to a halt when Tom went down a slide and coaxing me down I got wedged in the ice - a Norwegian WEDGIE! Well a bit unusual and quite stuck! Eventually we extricated me and figured that was far enough for us to go. We then had to haul ourselves out by rope, grunting and sliding along. Magic. We mushed back to Tom's place and had wonderful coffee and cookies. Back to the Hostel and a hot shower.
Check back tomorrow for another update!
Heather writes... "What a day we had today - Easy start with wonderful breakfast at the Hostel where we are staying. Then we went down to the large uninsulated shed to look at the gear. We sorted the skiis and bindings and made sure we had what we needed. The sleds have a smooth contoured bottom with heavy material screwed in for the top, kind of expandable, so we can take what we need and shrink down as we eat! - 109 lbs of food (that is before it is rehydrated - OMG). More on this later....
"This afternoon we went up and met Tom - he has 17 husky sled dogs. We put two sleds together 11 dogs on one, and 5 on the other. The sled with 5 dogs was smaller and each of us had a chance to mush! It was exhilirating - no words can adequately describe it. The landscape all snow, rock and mountains, no trees. We took a circuitous path up and around the mountain working the sleds up the hills helping the dogs. Our destination was the ice cave.
"We put on our helmets, and our headlamps and in we went. Wow. We were in the bowels of the glacier. Apparently we took the expert route, ladders, ropes, and 10 foot icewalls that we went down, ice slides. We went a long way down into the caves, beautiful untouched ice sculptures naturally made. The trip came to a halt when Tom went down a slide and coaxing me down I got wedged in the ice - a Norwegian WEDGIE! Well a bit unusual and quite stuck! Eventually we extricated me and figured that was far enough for us to go. We then had to haul ourselves out by rope, grunting and sliding along. Magic. We mushed back to Tom's place and had wonderful coffee and cookies. Back to the Hostel and a hot shower.
Check back tomorrow for another update!
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