Arctic Kites

SPENT THE DAY PACKING FOOD BAGS. THERE IS A LOT OF EATING TO BE DONE, INCLUDING 2.5KG EACH OF BUTTER!

RACHEL AND CHRIS HAVE JOINED RONNY IN TASIILAQ WITH ALL THEIR BAGS. VERY GLAD TO HAVE ARRIVED!

After years of dreaming and more recently 18 months of planning, preparation and training the time has finally arrived! With one sleep left to go (and some of you will remember when there were several hundred!) we set off for Greenland this weekend to cross the second largest icecap in the world. We plan to start the 640km crossing ~Wednesday next week from Nagtivit on the East coast, and weather permitting, we should arrive in Ilulisat on the west coast ~mid May.

We have been humbled by the level of support that we have received in preparing for the expedition and we are very much indebted and grateful for all the help and assistance that people have provided to get us this far.

We will be taking a satellite phone on the expedition that we will use to keep the blog up to date and you will be able to keep track of our progress on this map that will be updated with our latest position! You are also able to send messages to the team via email!

While Chris and Rachel have been dragging tyres through the snow in the woods, Flip has been dragging tyres along Bondi Beach in Sydney! To find out more about Flip’s aspirations click here!

Click here to catch a glimpse of the team training over the past week!

We woke this morning to a winter wonderland and couldn’t resist taking the tyres out to play!

14 days to go and counting…! This week the final items of equipment arrived in the post, including a satellite phone from G-Comm and the tent floor insulation underlay from Multimat.

The I.T. has been sorted and we are now able to post blog messages with the satellite phone, as well as receive emails from the web-site on the satellite phone .

The tent flysheet has been modified with extra large snow valances sewn onto it to help prevent the tent from being blown away by the katabatic and pittarak winds!

Chris went shopping for his favourite snacks this week and we now have hundreds of tracker bars and fingers of shortbread in the house! Training is ramping down, which is helping the team to put on weight and Rachel is still managing to put on 1kg a week!

British Airways have kindly agreed to support the team on the final leg of their journey.

Polar explorer Jim McNeill kindly gave his time today to advise Chris and Rachel on arctic environment medical conditions including hypothermia, frostbite and snow blindness. With over two decades experience of Arctic travel and hundreds of polar bear encounters, his insight and knowledge were found to be invaluable.

Unbelievable pictures from Antarctica show penguins in a whole new light! We’ll be seeing them in the Arctic next!