Day 26 - Back to UG?

The weather is superb again here - no wind, bright sunshine and clear blue skies. However there is a bit of concern about the weather at UG so we have calls at 9am and 10am where we again confirm the quality of the conditions here. No final decision on the flight has been made as yet but the plane is being loaded and fuelled so that it is ready to go once a decision is made.

No longer able to pass the responsibility for the decision onto us we are told to call back at 11 to see whether the plane has taken off or not. If they have taken off it should be here for about 3 and then we should be back in UG for a late supper at 8. That leaves us a couple of hours for photos, lunch and taking our tents down. We meet the Incelanders behind Arctic Trucks who provide support vehicles for many of the expeditions out here - and hear a great story how they started out by perhaps exaggerating their experience to the Top Gear team and so getting their first contract for a polar driving expedition.

 



11:20 - the plane is ready and take off is imminent although it has not actually happened yet. It should go ahead and hopefully now there is just the will we / won't over the flight back to Punta. This will give us a couple of days of gluttony in UG before heading out on 29th.

12:20 - just received confirmation that the plane is on its way and will be here at about 15:45. Unfortunately the temperature has really dropped and the prospect of popping out for some final photos is no longer quite so appealing! In the half hour it takes to get to the actual pole, take a couple of pictures and get back to the mess tent my fingers and face get really cold.

In the early afternoon the cloud starts to come in and visibility reduces - there are a series of concerning calls and the pilot starts getting a bit twitchy. The old adage of 'if you can go, you go' remains true and I just hope we don't come to regret not flying yesterday or early this morning when there was such great weather here.

The tone of the calls then gets more positive but the plane seems to be arriving later each time. But we get a final message that the plane will come in at 4 so to be ready for then. The plane finally arrives at 4:30 and then they announce that in fact it will not be returning to UG tonight so we need to go and set up the tents again. It has been really cold for a while and we have only just warmed up from taking down the tents so we are not best pleased with the incompetence of messing around in the morning and so missing the weather window and now this inability to communicate with us.

Not the best conditions for flying in after a wonderful morning

Don't worry we are told, we will be flying out first thing in the morning so it's not that bad! Ah, have you seen a forecast for tomorrow? A wag asks. No, they admit, then realising the hollowness of their prior reassurance. Again, not very impressive.

Everyone then crowds into the mess tent and I chat to some Icelandic drivers who, it turns out, were the chaps behind the Top Gear challenge to the North Pole and have some interesting stories - the photo of the truck above was taken in the morning which just shows how conditions have changed.

Cosy and rather full mess tent

There is a second mess tent that has been erected for the future groups and some people are using this as a dormitory tonight as they can't be bothered to out up their tents again. I am just convinced that with all those people there is bound to be some heavy snoring so decide to put up my tent to get some sleep.