Starting problems

After some adventorous airport travelling with 4 huge pulkas and kind of overweighted hand luggage we arrived in Longyearbyen. The first view was astonishing, with white mountains, sea ice and rough glaciers everywhere. It looked like beautiful weather, too. Unfortunately, the weather became a blizzard the next day (up to 18m/s wind) and snow fall, so we have to stay 2 days longer at the campsite. It is a bit more relaxing for all the planning issues in Longyearbyen, but we start to get bored and the polar bear watch at the campsite is tiring, since we can't follow our own sleeping rythm. I really hope, tomorrow we can finally start. The East coats should still be possible, but time is running out. Also one message about Petra who got injured during their first trip to Barentsburg causes some unexpected problems.

Glacier rescue training

Since we will walk most of the time on glaciers with sometimes quite a lot of crevasses we wanted to start some glacier rescue training. Unfortunately, there are no glaciers or snow in Bremen. So, we had to find a big tree and pretend that the branches are the edge of a crevasse. The following pictures give an impression how we tried to get up the tree.

The Group

---

Tobias Vonnahme
 
Tobi first fell in love with Svalbard when he went adventuring there in 2009 after completing his military service to put his newly acquired survival skills to the test. Since then, he has returned whenever time and money allowed it, both for the sake of adventure as well as to study the microorganisms in and under the glaciers and sea ice at the University Centre of Svalbard and at the Czech research station in Petuniabukta, a passion which eventually led him to study Marine Microbiology at the eponymous Max-Planck-Institute in Bremen, Germany.

---

Clara Flintrop 

Clara's first major adventure in sub-zero temperatures involved climbing a volcano in the Ecuadorian Andes. The same year, she got the opportunity to work as a field assistant in the Western Canadian Arctic for the summer season. When she met Tobi in Bremen and realized he was a fellow adventurer who in addition had the necessary experience and was a planning a trip to Svalbard she jumped at the opportunity.

---

Petra Eulert
Coming soon

---

Tereza Švecová
Coming soon

---

Nina Heinzmann
Coming soon

---

Matthias Bartlau
Coming soon

---

Money and Funding

(written by Clara)

One of the first things I had to learn when we started planning for The Adventure was this: Expeditions to cold places are expensive! As anyone who has ever been to an outdoor store can confirm, there is no upper limit as to how much can be spent on equipment. The tricky part is to know

• where to best buy things,  
• what you really need vs. what is nice to have, and   
• when to save money, and when to jump in the deep end of the pool and invest in high-quality, no "no-name" gear. 

 All of this takes countless hours on the internet looking at price comparisons (which is especially tempting during revision time), a voice of reason that tells you when to quit buying things (C: "But what about this super handy microfiber travel towel, it's on sale for only €29,99!" T: "I usually take a kitchen towel.") and, as was the case with some expensive but necessary gear such as the sleeping bags, enough shamelessness to call up the sales manager and ask for a discount, which is really fair enough given that they earned around a thousand bucks with a single click and that we freed up about a third of their storage space, because those things are HUGE!

Another problem I encountered was that after looking at three-digit prices for a prolonged amount of time, you lose perspective of what's a good price and what isn't and start thinking of a €30 cotton sleeping bag liner as a good deal (it's basically a bed sheet, but with less fabric on it so you can fit it inside your SB). I call this phenomenon the "You probably don't have enough real problems"-Syndrome.

Another way altogether to approach this subject is to try to get some funding/sponsoring from charitable funds and/or companies. Again, I quickly learned some basic rules. Rule no. 1: To apply for grants you have to plan well ahead of time. We started seriously looking into this in mid-January I think, by which time we had already missed a few good opportunities just because there are only one or two deadlines every year and quite a few of them happened to be between November and January-ish.

However, we struck lucky with the Scottish Arctic Club who awarded us a small grant coupled with an invitation to attend their annual gathering in Fort William in November to talk about The Adventure so that of course is extremely exciting! The SAC has been around for 45 years and one of their main reasons for being is to "[...] make modest awards to encourage young people to explore the Arctic", which I think is really fantastic. They also seem to have a really cool library but I guess you would have to visit Glasgow to check it out. Take a look at their website for more info (www.scottisharcticclub.org.uk).

The Purpose of this Blog

(written by Clara)

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.  Earnest Shackleton, 4 Burlington St."

The story goes that this is what the advertisment said that Ernest Shackleton posted in the London Times on his search for willing recruits to join him on his Trans-Antarctica expedition. Comparing our upcoming Adventure to Shackleton's epic expedition would be utterly pretentious, but I want to use his (alleged) quote to make a point about why we are writing this blog and why we invite you to read it.

1. It will be cold. "Bitter cold" is fairly subjective, but we expect average temperatures in the double-digit sub-zero range, excluding wind chill. 
2. There will be some danger. Most of you will be aware of the fact that there are many polar bears (Ursus maritimus) on Svalbard, who occasionally clash with the human inhabitants- sometimes fatally (more often for the bears than for the people). However, there are other dangers that I personally am more aware of than bears: As the main intention of our trip was to go off the beaten track, we will be crossing glaciers, sea ice and other terrain where crevasses, avalanches and other instabilities occur.
3. There will be no monetary compensation for our efforts. On the contrary, we have invested considerable amounts for appropriate equipment in order to make a safe return likely, not doubtful as was the case with Shackleton and Co.

 All things considered, I would say that joining us on our Adventure by reading this blog is a much safer and definitely more comfortable bet. We are also aware that not everyone has the same privileges that we enjoy, andby writing this blog we hope to share as much as possible with the people who would like to do something like this, but for whatever reason are unable to so (at least this time round). At the same time I guess this is our best chance to gain some recognition- even if it is not an OBE.

Since it happens to be International Women's Day today I would like to put forward my own personal theory as to why Shackleton ran into so much trouble on his trip: he was exclusively looking for Men to join him on his trip, completely disregarding the achievements of female explorers who have done (and keep doing) things many of us can only dream of. Luckily, we will not be making the same mistake- Svalbard, here we come!
   

The aim of the trip

The trip started originally as an adventure on a route where we can explore the most remote and untouched areas of Svalbard with the most impressive Arctic Landscapes, such as glaciers with Nunataks, and Sea ice with ice bergs, glacier fronts and polar bears.

After some time different motives became more and more interesting for eveyone in the group.
For the individualy expectations you can find some motivations on the participant profiles.

Overall, the group consists of 6 adventurer with 3 marine microbiologists.
Thus, one of our motivations is to not just explore the landscapes, but also to ahve a deeper look and see what is actually living there.

The forming of an idea

(written by Tobi)

I first got the idea for a ski trip like in 2013, while studying Arctic Biology at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS). During plenty of Snowscooter trips we explored as much as possible of this amazing island. However, I felt like something was missing: everything was too quick, the noises and tracks of Snowscooters everywhere were an eye sore and we hardly had time to really explore the landscapes and details within. That's how the idea for a long skiing trip through scooter-free areas in the most exteme glacier and sea ice covered areas developed.

Initially, my plan was to ski from the East coast over the large frozen Storfjorden onto the island Barentsoya and back over Olav V land. Unfortunately this did not work out in the end: the sea ice conditions were not safe for a trip like this and eventually we put the plan to rest. 

In 2014 I wanted to try again and put out another call for like-minded people, this time to do a trip to Svalbard's highest mountain called Newtontoppen, choosing a route across the inland ice caps and glaciers. I was thrilled when Petra first agreed, and everything seemed to work out this time round. But again, there was a last-minute change of heart and we ended up going to Hardangervidda in mainland Norway instead. That year, I returned to Svalbard for another scooter-based trip.

Now, in 2015, the original idea is finally becoming reality. Petra and I figured out that the only place where we can avoid scooters or any other signs of human activity is to go to Heer Land, which is teeming with polar bears and sports huge glaciers and plenty of sea ice. We even found more people who wanted to join, so that we now are a group of six, with different levels of experience and from two different countries (Germany and Czech Republic). Again there were some hurdles to overcome, including flights times and prices, permissions and insurances from the Governeur (Sysselmannen), possibly scooter transportation to and from the area and accommodating the needs and wishes of everyone in the group. 

You can find a preliminary planned route on following link:

Klick