Training

We meet to discuss the trip and our equipment and then head out for a few days on the snow around Longyearbyen. Luckily, but probably unhelpfully, the weather is in general superb with clear blue skies and sunshine. It does get down into the -20s one evening and so becomes a bit chilly when we are in the big mess tent discussing the expedition that evening. We won’t be taking this to the pole and so will only need to warm our smaller 3 man tents instead.

The most important part of the training is to get used to skiing with the sled and try various systems to cope with the cold and the wind that we are likely to experience at the pole. Unfortunately, sun and blue skies mean that I am mainly skiing in sunglasses and a headband which won’t really work at the pole.

This is also a chance to get to grips with more mundane issues like the cooking with the stoves and putting the tents up – but whilst none of us have used these models before, we are all (save Carl who has decided that the North Pole is a good place to have his first ever go at camping!!) fairly experienced and so adjust with little difficulty.

Food – as expected the food is standard for extreme conditions. Freeze dried food with snacks / energy bars for lunch. I have brought out about 30 or 40 of these bars to have in addition to those provided – I don’t normally eat much lunch on such trips so it will be interesting to see whether I make a net energy bar gain on this expedition.

The US addition here is the importance of bread products. We have bagels and tortillas to fry with butter and then grated mozzarella to melt on top – if you can carry the extra weight they are a superb addition to the diet.