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

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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.

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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.

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Petra Eulert
Coming soon

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Tereza Švecová
Coming soon

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Nina Heinzmann
Coming soon

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Matthias Bartlau
Coming soon

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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!