April 15th

April 15th (Day 14)
It looks like we may have cleared the worst of the rubble! We managed to link together a number of flatter pans of ground and make some progress today. Trust me – that’s quite exciting for us!

The flatter sections of ice allowed us to pick up the pace and Becks has started to struggle a little more. Certainly the rest of us have had time to condition more over the last couple of weeks so hopefully she will soon settle into the rhythm. But to make things worse Becks is also having trouble with one of her fillings which is causing her a lot of discomfort. The cold is very unforgiving on fillings!

I broke another binding today. It is becoming a worry as we are running low on spares. The terrain is certainly the root of the problem but it doesn’t help that the bindings are not big enough for my feet - even on full adjustment. Tonight I cut the back off one of my bindings and built a new strap from Velcro – this gives my foot more room. We'll see if it works tomorrow.

April 14th

April 14th (Day 13)
It’s a beautiful bright sunny morning today and I was far too hot pulling the pulk. I guess it was about -15°, maybe colder, but I had to strip down to just my base layers to keep cool. We all have sun burnt faces from the light levels; right now there is 24 hours of daylight so there is no escape!

During the day we had to go to high ground to find the best way through the rubble - but by 4.30 we still could not see the edge of it.

The journey has been tough on us and on our equipment. Ian has frost bite on one of his fingers which is causing him some pain. We have also bent a number of ski poles and broken an alarming number of bindings – it’s a bit of a worry.

April 13

April 13th (Day 12)
We all managed to get a good night’s sleep despite the eerie and surprisingly loud noise of the ice cracking as the tides and pressure changed. It’s a particularly disturbing sound when you’re sleeping on it!

In the morning we were straight back into the rubble, using the high points to search for open spaces and pick our way through as best we could. But there really isn't an art to this kind of crossing – just brute force and luck. Because of the rough terrain my pulk ended upside down a few times and both Phil and I broke bindings because of the strain of moving our pulks.

Becks has begun really well and is managing to cross the rubble easily with her lighter pulk. We passed more bear tracks all day but still no sightings yet.

We called it a day in a large clearing and set up camp. I am sitting on my pulk in the evening sunshine writing up the blog. Mark is cooking dinner tonight for me and Phil; we'll be having extra sausages in preparation for a big day tomorrow.

April 12th

April 12th (Day 11)
The day began flamboyantly when one of the stoves leaked some fuel and set the tent and my glove on fires. This was particularly annoying as I was wearing my gloves at the time. The one good thing about being surrounded by snow is that it’s very quick to put out a fire, so no harm or injury done. But we did have to apologise to Mark for scorching his tent. After this little drama we packed up an headed out to sea.

Within 2 miles we began seeing polar bear tracks - including those of a mother and cub (probably the most dangerous combination if you get too close). But no sign of the real things yet – don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed about that.

We had good sea ice for about 5 miles and then we came up against a mass of rumble (?rubble?JH) which stretched to the horizon on both sides and as far as we could see. With no way around we began to pick our way through the maze of broken ice. We made camp tonight in amongst the rumble - how long it will take to clear it we don't yet know.

April 11th

April 11th (Day 10)
We started the day 7 miles from the coast heading east. Becks was due to join us this morning but there is a blizzard in Resolute so we set off without her.

Visibility was good and the pulling was ‘easy’ as we were crossing ice lakes. For some reason I was hungry all day and was constantly thinking of cheese burgers as I pulled. It’s a bad idea to drool in the Arctic – it freezes fast.

Around mid day we passed some deserted Inuit fishing huts but we didn’t take a detour to investigate as the pulling was going well and we were keen to complete the island crossing before night.

Around 4 o'clock we climbed a final summit and suddenly saw the frozen sea stretched out before us for the first time in 10 days: we had crossed Cornwallis Island. This was a biug moment for us and we were elated. After hugs all round we set up camp on the Northwest Passage!

Despite a storm blowing up around us Becks arrived on the back of a skidoo – it had taken her hours of traveling to catch us up. With the words ‘be careful this is bear country’ the skidoo left and the team was reunited at last - and ready to head out for Devon Island tomorrow.

ANY QUESTIONS?

If you have any questions for Ryan please do email them to me and I will encourage our intrepid explorer to answer them through the blog!

jon.heggie@arqiva.com

April 10th

April 10th (Day 9)
The beautiful frozen lake we had camped on was so large that it took us 2.5 hours to ski the length of it this morning.

We had good visibility in the morning but later in the day visibility dropped to around 50ft. This made it difficult to pick the best route. As a result we ended up climbing straight over the summit of one of the largest hills in the area; we are almost certainly the first people to have ever climbed over that hill which was some small consolation for the enormous effort it involved - getting down was not easy.

While we were doing this my mind wandered to home (always dangerous) and thinking of all the things I missed (very dangerous). I decided that the two things I miss most are my girlfriend Laura and sitting in pubs.