One week to go.

Ok, so now I'm getting butterflies.  I always get like this before a trip especially If I'm going without my wife.  I think it's a mixture of stuff.  Excitement at going and the knowledge that when I say good bye to home and my lovely wife, I'll have a huge knot in my stomach.  Once I'm out there, I'll be fine again and they days will go quickly and before I know it I'll be home again boring everyone, including my wife, with tales of high adventure. 

With just a week to go before I fly out to Greenland, this is the time to start checking the weather forecast, which actually looks pretty good at the moment.  This helps to inform those last minute choices about clothing.  I'm also doing some last minute checks of kit and will probably pack and repack all my kit and food a couple of times over the next few days. This is partly to make sure everything fits into the pack and partly to become more and more familiar with where things are.  

You can check the forecast here too. The photo below is of all the kit I'll be carrying. I'll post a kit list in the next couple of days.   

View Detailed 10 Day Weather Forecast for Kangerlussuaq, webcams, weather maps & more at Weather-Forecast.com

The Arctic Circle Trail

Preparing for The Arctic Circle Trail
It is drawing closer to the time when I will need to pack my trusted rucksack for another adventure.  The spare room is amass with equipment all to be packed in a bag I'll carry on my back for nearly three weeks.  The vast majority of the cluttered kit pile consists of packet after packet of dehydrated food. 

One of a handful of tiny camping huts on the ACT

This time, I'm not backpacking from one town or village to another able to feed myself from a plethora of roadside steamed, boiled or roasted delicacies.  Nor will I be able to rest my head in a range of hostels or guest houses.  For this trip, I will need to carry every bit of food I need with me,  I will need to carry it and cook it myself.  My choice of food will range from one dehydrated meal to another dehydrated meal with some porridge for my breakfasts in between.  

The food needs to be light, easy to pack and quick to prepare for eating. I will rest my weary head and legs wherever I decide to pitch my compact one-person tent.  There will be no fences between me and the wildlife and there won't be a decent toilet or a shower for miles around.  Temperatures could be as low as minus 4 degrees Celsius or as high as 19 degrees Celsius. It could rain every day all day, it could blow up a gale from the North pole just a few miles north.  It could be very pleasant, or I could spend every waking moment swatting midges and scratching insect bites.   This is the joy and the uncertainty of 'doing' Greenland's Arctic Circle Trail.  

The only guidebook to the Arctic Circle Trail (ACT) that I could find was the one published by Cicerone which starts with the ominous warning: 

"walking across the remote Arctic tundra can be a dangerous activity carrying the risk of personal injury or death".  

That's a good start then.

Greenland is a vast country with an area measuring approximately 2,175,600 square kilometres.  That really is enormous.  So big in fact that it is the largest island on earth which is not classed as a continent in its own right.  And yet, it's one of the most sparsely populated places on earth with a population just under 57,000 and approximately 85% of its landmass permanently covered in glacial ice.  I say 'approximately' and 'permanently' but, of course, the sad truth is that the glacier is getting smaller.  

Being mostly above the latitude of 66° 33' 39" otherwise known as the Arctic circle, this is also the 'Land of the Midnight Sun'.  To be more accurate it is only known as this in the summer when the sun hardly drops below the horizon. In winter, it's the opposite with the sun hardly showing its face. 

A beach along one of the many lakes. 

Whilst geographically speaking, Greenland is part of the North American continent, politically speaking it has been more closely associated with Denmark which maintained sovereignty until granting home rule in 2009. 

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Inuit were the first to arrive in Greenland about four to five thousand years ago. Their presence built up over several waves of migration from North American and Canada.  The Norse settled in Greenland at the time of Erik the Red in the late 900s AD and appears to have coincided with the last influx of Inuit settlers.  However, and for as yet unknown reasons, the Norse settlers disappeared in about 1500 AD.   Despite a number of expeditions to Greenland from England and Norway in the 16th and 17th centuries, the only other contact with outsiders was with a handful of European whalers during the 17th and 18th centuries.  Today, the culture and appearance of native Greenlanders is most definitely Inuit and I hear that their welcome is both genuine and warm. 

The journey to Greenland from the UK is far from being straight forward and, if one is working to a tight budget, the flight tickets appear to be relatively expensive. So, to arrive and be welcomed by smiling Inuit faces will be a bonus. The Easy Jet flight to Copenhagen leaves me with thirteen hours to kill before my Air Greenland flight leaves for the small town of Kangerlussuaq where the ACT begins. The flight from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq takes just over four hours so sleep and food will already be in short supply when I arrive. I don't sleep well on planes.

• Easy Jet return flight from LGW to Copenhagen - £117.98 return with addition weight allowance.
• Air Greenland open jaw flight from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq and return from Sisimiut - £448.00. 

The town of Kangerlussuaq is situated about 37 km from the glacier (known as Russell's Glacier). As you walk out of the arrivals area of the airport, you can turn left and start the walk immediately albeit cheating a little bit.  Or you can turn right an go and start the walk from the very foot of the glacier, the official chilly start line. Assuming you decided not to cheat, the walk from the icy start point is a mere 165 km from the finishing line in the picturesque coastal settlement of Sisimiut.  

Map showing the route of the ACT

A hundred and sixty five kilometres may not sound that far to some people and it's not that far in the grand scheme of things, but this is entirely through the stark and wind-battered wilderness of the Arctic tundra.  Once out of Kangerlussuaq there are no opportunities to resupply, there is no mobile phone signal and no road access.  If you lose some of your rations, you go hungry; if you injure yourself, you have a long wait for help to arrive. 

Due to its remoteness and isolation, very few people actually attempt the ACT which is regarded as one of the world's classic long distance wilderness walks.  In a good year, only about 300 people will attempt the walk and most of these will come from North America or Canada.  It is highly possible that any trek along the trail could see myself as my only company. 

The challenge of the ACT is not the mileage or the terrain, although it is physically challenging in its own right.  The main challenge, for me at least, is the psychological one.  How will I deal with the complete sense of openness, remoteness and isolation? 

Part of me is fearful of spending so much time in my own company and yet part of me is raring to go and experience it.  Perhaps it will enable me to understand myself and others better.  Maybe it will help me make sense of the world or at least the space within it that I occupy. Maybe I'll have a greater understanding of the meaning of life.  Or maybe, Ill just have a damn good walk, take some nice photographs and develop a unhealthy collection of blisters and midge bites.

This sort of challenge cam be viewed as being made of of three distinct psychological phases.  The planning phase, the participation phase and readjusting back to normality phase.  Each phase has it's own distinct characteristics.  

The planning phase can be a bit of a roller coaster ride of feeling confident that you have thought of everything and then panicking about why you forgot to add that vital item of kit to your ever-growing list.  The planning phase can be great for organising not only your kit, but also your state of mind.  

Psychologically, you are already leaving work, friends and family and getting ready to take your first steps on the trail. This phase comes to end once you have passed the point of no return (at least not until the trek is complete). This is the point when you have closed your front door behind you, kissed your loved ones goodbye, and are so far from home that to go back for a forgotten item would mean that a missed flight would be a dead cert. Essentially, if you haven't packed it, it ain't going. You are now in the participation phase. 

The participation phase kicks in.  You realise that this is it, you are now on your own.  If you mess up, you mess up, there is nothing you can do about it. You are in complete control of how you perform.  You make all the important decisions about how you live your life on the trail.  Like a turtle, you become comfortable living out of a home that you carry on your back.  

During this phase you have to adapt to whatever the environment throws at you.  You have to be disciplined to make sure you eat the right foods in the right amounts to maintain your energy levels, you have to maintain your hydration by drinking enough and you have be disciplined with your personal hygiene to ensure you don't go down with Ds and Vs (diarrhoea and vomiting) sixty kilometres from the nearest proper toilet or medical help. 

You enter a zone of inevitability where you face up to the fact that there is no turning back.  You become centred in the place and the task and you just have to get on with it.  You don't miss home too much, you just focus on the task in hand which is putting one foot in front of the other for several hours a day.  
For me, this phase only stops once I am on the last leg of the homeward journey.  The point at which I can relax, the point at which I will yearn to see my beautiful wife again, the point at which I begin to drift into the readjustment phase.  

One of the few marker stones showing the route. 

The readjustment phase is characterised by a realisation that you are going back to your normal life, the people you love, and the happy, comfortable mundaneness associated with everyday routine tasks that you usually take for granted.  

This is similar to what is experienced by troops returning home from war zones.  You sort out, wash and dry your kit.  You enter into conversations about buying milk from the corner shop or the holiday that some relative has just booked.  You'll try hard to behave as if you were never away, but deep inside you your muscles and sinews are aching for just one more day of foot pounding and your skin feels almost unnatural without the engrained grime and dirt of the trail.  

Every now and then you might get caught staring into the distance reliving, in your mind, a particularly fine day of adventure.  You'll be asked "are you ok?" You'll be tempted for just a moment to respond with "you wouldn't know, you weren't there man" like some dope-head of a GI from a Vietnam War film. Instead, you respond with a simple "yeah, I was just thinking". If pressed, you can elaborate by saying that you were just thinking about how much more room there is in the spare room now you've eaten you way through the large box of dehydrated expedition food.  Secretly, you're thinking about the next adventure.           

                  

Arctic Survival Skills

Arctic Survival Challenge

Instructors accommodation.

If it ain't -26 it ain't training.

A stunning Arctic sky.

Back in January, I was lucky enough to be asked to help deliver an Arctic Survival Skills course in Northern Sweden.  This meant working for the wonderful and the one and only Nigel "nobby" Startin of Intrepid Expeditions. The "customers" all came from Devon and had signed up for the challenge as a result of an appeal by the local radio station, Palm FM.  As a result of this challenge the group raised over £30,000 for charities in the local area which included a hospice and the RNLI.  

Working as an instructor on such a challenge means physical work for long hours in extreme conditions. At times the temperature was as low as -26 degrees. The rewards are worth it though.  I met a lovely group of people and they all seemed to really appreciate the contribution the staff team made to their experience. 

Hmmm Breakfast courtesy of Grass Hopper Foods.

Porridge for Breakfast

Lovely Husky dogs.

Some of the group build a shelter. 

My early morning face.

Ready to go.

After several months of preparations and training, I think I can safely say that I am ready to go. The trip has turned into a three week fact finding mission. Not only will I be walking the Arctic circle trail, but I'll also be looking at the pros and cons of potentially offering a two week hiking trip on the trail on a commercial basis in 2014.
I organised all my food a couple of days ago and I can tell you that about half my pack space will be taken up with food.

Near the summit of Carnedd Llewelyn

Blisters

Blisters

Blisters

Blisters are essentially a burn.  They occur where friction has built up between the inside of your boots and the skin on your feet.  The body reacts in the usual way for a burn.  It produces plasma and makes a section of the skin swell and fill with fluid (plasma) in an attempt to cool the area.  Blisters can be very very painful as some of you found out on the practice walk. 

Stage 1: Reddening of the skin. Early signs of a blister.
The red area would feel hot.  

You should never burst a blister unless you have sterile equipment, know how to do it properly, and have the materials to keep the area clean afterwards. The best thing is to avoid getting blisters.  Prevention is certainly better than the cure. 

The good news is that blisters can be avoided by following these simple tips:

Stage 2: The "hot spot" develops into a full blown blister.
The area swells and fluid builds up under the skin.




1. Instead of wearing one pair of thick socks, wear one pair of medium weight woollen socks with a thinner pair underneath.  This can distribute any friction between the two pairs of socks and not to the feet. 
2. Make sure you keep your feet dry.  If they get wet, stop and take a few minutes to sort your feet out.  Give them a dusting of foot powder and put on dry socks. 
3. Stop and treat any "hot spots" the moment you begin to notice them.  Make sure your socks are pulled up properly.
4. Do not wear those stupid trendy ankle socks. They are a sure way of getting blisters.
5. Make sure your boots fit properly.  Do the laces up reasonably tight so that the boots don't move about on your feet.  
6. Put a small amount of Vaseline on the parts of your feet which you normally get blisters on. 



Stage 3: The blister has burst tearing the skin and
exposing raw skin.
This will be very sore indeed. 

7. Make sure you wear proper woollen hiking socks.  Sports socks tend to give people blisters.  

The best way to treaty a blister is to let the air get to it so it dries out.  Only in extreme circumstances should you consider bursting it with a pin.  If this is unavoidable, cleanse a needle or a pin first by holding for a few seconds in a flame.  Clean the area of the blister with an alcohol wipe (you should have a few of these in your first aid kit).  Have a blister dressing ready.  Using the pin/needle,make a small hole in the bottom of the blister and another small hole at the top of the blister.  Using your clean hand, apply a small amount of pressure in a downwards motion to squeeze the fluid out of the blister.  Once you think you have squeezed most of the fluid out of the blister, wipe the area clean again.  Allow the area to dry for a few minutes.  Now dress the area to keep it padded and clean.  Check you blister again when you make camp and try to sleep with the blister exposed to air.

Welcome

Hi and thank you for taking the time to come and have a look at my blog.  The idea for this blog is to talk about some of the expeditions and trips I'm involved in.  I love to travel and I love to challenge myself and I thought I would share some of my experiences.  I hope to post articles about the practicalities of organising short and medium length expeditions, the right sort of kit to take, the right time of year to go and what sort of welcome to expect. As well as the practical advice, I hope to try to write some travel articles on which I welcome your constructive feedback.