Day 23

Aside from being our last day onboard yesterday, a critical component was the arrival of our Danish compatriots and of course the team of Royal Navy sailors who would relieve our crew duties. However, expeditions are not meant to be easy and one must always be prepared for the unexpected! It turns out the journey from Tasilaq was far from straightforward with thick sea ice that made for slow progress. With only limited comms with the team we became increasingly concerned when the anticipated arrival times began slipping and slipping and slipping. However, this is when people come into their element and our skipper David was sat up late with us planning heroic rescue missions should they not arrive or indeed have to turn around and return to Tasilaq. But just as it was beginning to get dark around midnight, two small dots appeared in the distance and we were met with smiles and hugs. It sounded like a real adventure just to get here and credit to the relief crew to whom this expedition wouldn’t be possible! Everyone got up out of bed to meet the new crew and importantly feed them with Alex’s superb chicken curry. Never had the yacht catered for so many people at once - 25 to be precise. By now it was too late to go ashore to our beach camp and we decided to sleep on the yacht. Everyone managed to stuff themselves into every crevice of the boat. Myself, Tom and Marcus slept in the cockpit on deck and it just might have been the best sleep of the trip so far! Such was the hospitality that we were awoken at 0800 by David and met once again with coffee and porridge. The perfect start to the expedition! Once we said our heartfelt goodbyes, we landed on the beach and this phase of the expedition started in earnest.

The initial plan was for myself, Tom and Marcus to conduct a recce of the glacier. The beach backed straight onto some rough moraine and approximately 500m away the glacier began. This is the ONLY route up onto the icecap from the beach and we knew this would potentially be the crux of the expedition. Fortunately, we had some beta, or ‘gen’ in Jackspeak. We knew a previous expedition in 2008 had made it up but not how, but modern technology and military perks had conducted an air recce for us and potentially highlighted a route. From bottom up there were essentially two options, left or right. The problem was that carting that much kit to either would be challenging and time consuming and then once onto either side of the glacier we’d need to find a way to the top through complex crevassed terrain. Our mission was to find out which one was best and with that in mind we set out to identify the ingress routes to both sides and then an ascent route through the crevasse fields. After a big 8 hour day we had a much better idea of what our options were. They say time doing recce is seldom time wasted and this couldn’t be more true. Actually stepping foot on the ground is fundamental to informed decision making. The ingress to the left was potentially easier but involved a water crossing, and the left ascent route whilst initially a nice gradient for pulking would likely involve crossing some nasty crevasses. The right was a more challenging ingress and a steeper ascent for pulks but involved safer terrain and far fewer crevasses. A decision was not made at this point but we had an idea of a recommendation for Tony.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team had the unglamorous task of shifting loads to a new staging camp where both left and right routes were more accessible. This was no mean feat and multiple back and forth trips with fully laden bergens over loose moraine was met with a beautiful campsite location on a flat section next to a melt water channel. During all this activity Discoverer departed and apparently blurted out their genuine best wishes on the tanoy followed by “for those of you who have done well, well done, for those of you who have done less well, well done anyway”.

Once camp was established and we were refuelling on Real Meals and Ritter chocolate the realization that we were properly in polar bear territory set in. The crew of the fishing boats that delivered our team had told us that two locals had come into this bay at a similar time of year, last year and there were two polar bears on the beach! We deployed the bear fence for the first time along with maintaining a bear sentry throughout the night. I relieved Tony at 0200 and there was something both earie and exceptionally peaceful about being awake in the middle of the night knowing a polar bear might be close. The plan for tomorrow was to move up the glacier and we had a decision to make!