North Pole 2006 - Dispatches

Minor issues
9 March, 2006 83.28333N,74.1000W
It’s the evening of the 9th March. We achieved 2.6 nautical miles north in 7.5 hours through very testing ice rubble, with us again having to carry one pulk at a time through the tricky sections. I’ve had a couple of minor setbacks: my Nikon SLR Camera has stopped working because of the cold and my inflatable mattress has a slow puncture that makes for chilly sleeping. The slightly bigger issue is the fact that I was a bit rough with one of my sledges in the ice rubble. I have split the base from end to end, which we wired together this morning. It has not however impeded progress. It was much warmer in the tent tonight at -33ºC outside and I’m enjoying the weather cocktail of milk and whisky. Richards route finding was brilliant today as he has an uncanny knack of finding the easiest and best route through this very tricky terrain. All is well with both Richard and Conrad.

Very hard going through ice rubble 8 March, 2006 - 01:56

Today we struggled for 7 hours and only gained 1 1/2 miles north! The main problem was the terrain, which was ice rubble, with blocks of ice up to a metre square. We had to ferry the sleds one at

Expedition has started! 7 March, 2006

Arrived to Ward Hunt Island on the afternoon of the 4th March and carried the equipment and dog food for another expedition to the hut used by Ranulph Fiennes on his North Pole attempt. The next

A step nearer the start... 2 March, 2006 - 17:26

Dodging incredibly mild weather and blizzards we finally departed Iqualuit on 28 February and arrived in Resolute (pop 250) to await our flight on to our start point.
Hoping to fly the next m