Kev's Ramblings

After a good nights sleep we had coffee and toast for breakfast and continued sorting through all the kit and equipment.  One important area being the rations that we will carry on the trip, this ranges from freeze dried Chicken Korma to Spaghetti Bolognaise which will sustain us through the long days of man hauling our pulks. During which we will be burning between 6-10,000 calories a day, whilst only carrying 1kg of food a day which equals about 6,000 calories. One of the key jobs today for us was filling freezer ice-cube bags with Olive Oil, this once frozen can be added to our rations and gives the calorific boost needed later during the expedition.  In addition to this we will also be introducing butter into our diet with 25g and 50g portions added to our main meals during our journey.

This afternoon we took a trip to the airport to confirm our pick up from Isachsen at the end of our journey, this will be by a 'Borek Air' Twin Otter aircraft, timings location and also our 4 legged passenger 'Skunk' all have to be factored in.  We also managed today to get across to 'South Inn' to meet members of the North Pole expeditions that are in their final preparation stages.  This evening we have been practising lighting the stoves in the extreme temperatures which we will be working in. This involves pre heating certain areas of the stove with a candle to warm it up, practising such a simple task makes it intuitive when we are tired and are not as sharp as we would want to be.  Worryingly this afternoon there is a blizzard warning here at Resolute, which has reduced visibility and also lowers the temperature even more with its wind chilling effect.  However we will continue with our preparation tomorrow and will also be meeting up with Skunk. 

Finally tonight we had a reciprocal visit from the 'South Inn' North Pole teams, Matt knew most of them from his previous time up here and was busy chatting to them, I played the host, with limited resources I managed to rustle up some tea and coffee and some home made biscuits I had made this afternoon - much to Matt's surprise. This visit was filmed by a Japanese television crew who used the last 30 seconds of spool tape to interview me and commended me on my ability to produce filter coffee and home made biscuits at short notice. Finally as I finish this blog tonight you will all probably not be surprised to know that the temperature here at Resolute is higher than the number of Twitter followers that I have, yes its -32.