View Article

So what do three people find to talk about when they’re holed up in a tent for days on end? Martin enlightened us on just a few of their recent topics of conversation:

Mackerel fishing; where to go on holiday; exam results; personal failures; naked table dancing in Russia; snoring (it has been noted that whilst all of the team started the expedition snoring, none of them now do, which they find quite peculiar); fathers; mothers; future projects; relationships; Arctic sea ice; polar travellers; public speaking; office personalities; Catlin Arctic Survey member Ian Wesley (“the superhero who never wears his superhero suit on the outside of his normal clothes”); the project’s objectives; Martin’s toe (largely because of the smell coming from his sleeping bag); vitamin supplements; Café Nero (?!) and food.

The subjects they haven’t spoken about are politics, religion and, most notably, current affairs because they don’t know what’s going on in the outside world. Their world is a tent – a bubble – but they are running low on ideas, so are looking for suggestions.

From a logistical point of view, the main area of consistently bad weather at the moment is over the mid-way refuelling point, rather than at the team’s location or at Resolute. That being the case, the pilots at KBA and the London-based Ops team are currently looking at the possibility of putting in a new fuel cache, so that the aircraft can take a slightly more circuitous route to the team if necessary, in effect bypassing the original refuelling point. The possibility of an airdrop is also now being considered