Post 1: Greetings from the Arctic!

09.04.2011 – 2nd day on skis

After a great hassle on both airports – Helsinki-Vantaa and Oslo – we managed to get ourselves and all our gear to

Longyearbyen at Thursday afternoon and were greeted with -14 Celcius, strong wind and spindrift. Getting rooms for everyone in Mary Ann’s was a bit difficult as the hostel was full of people heading to Barneo ice station and to ski the last degree to the Pole. They should have left before we arrived but the runway of the ice station had apparently cracked in half which caused the hostel to be over-booked. Dispite the problems we got rooms, did some shopping, put the gear into a warehouse and ate tasty and expensive (everything is expensive in Longyearbyen!) hamburgers. In the evening some of went to adjust their gear, some went to bar and some did both.

Friday started with a breakfast in the hostel. THen we did once again some more packing and were ready to leave at midway. We loaded our gear – around one metric ton all combined – to a bandvagn and started a three and half hours drive towards Fredheim. THe ride was nice as the heater of the vehicle worked. At Fredheim we unloaded the gear and after lunch we jumped on our skis around 16:30. Tempelfjorden was forzen enough for us to ski across it. The heavy sleds tipped and jammed constantly in the rubble ice but made it across. On the opposite shore we skied on broken ice floes that moved with the waves. Quite an experience! After five legs of skiing we arrived at the mouth of the Gipsdalenelva river and set camp on the sea shore which meant a night with bear guard duty. Unfortunately (?) we didn’t see any bears but there was a spectacular sunset! During the evening the temperature had risen from -8 Celsius close to zero and wind had died causing me to roast in my very warm Cumulus sleeping bag.

The dawn broke with light snow, varying visibility and mild temperature. We broke the camp at 11:00 as agreed because of the late arrival on the previous evening. We skied six legs in the aforementioned conditions through a beatiful mountaneous valley of Gipsdalen covering some 15 kilometers for the day. Dispate the fact that our sleds weight about 80 kilo each, they feel surprisingly light! It doesn’t feel much different than 40-50 kilo sled that I am used to haul. This is partly because of the mild temperature as there is not that much friction to slow the sled. I’d hope that the temperature would drop a bit as skiing in these temperatures is sweaty job! Though I don’t miss the wind at all..

At the moment we have eaten, melted snow and are having some good time p reparing for tomorrow. Tomorrow we will have over 500 vertical meters of ascent with the sleds so it is a though day a head!

We have some technical difficulties sending pictures, so you have to wait for them for a while. When we get things running there should be pics updated daily to the official expeditions blog.

All well for the expedition.

The game is on!

Everything should be packed now. At least I hope so and the amount of gear is very impressive.

I finished sewing some last minute velcro patches on gear and I am now leaving to Hollola to check gear with my tent partner Matias and from there will leave to Helsinki-Vantaa airport around 03:00 tomorrow night. On the way to Hollola I’ll visit a shooting range at Utti to do some last minute rehearsals with a rifle. Because of some cancellation I am now designated rifle shooter of our expedition, so that means another luxurous five kilo of weight on the sled…

I’ll update Twitter while on the cellphne coverage, so remeber to check http://twitter.com/korpijaakko!

What is going on at the moment?

This sticky post is here to briefly inform you about what is going on at the moment. See posts below for recent updates!

I am a member in the Ultima Thule 2011 expedition led by arctic veteran Kari “Vaiska” Vainio. Starting on Thursday April 7th I am at Svalbard on a three-week long arctic skiing expeditions and I will return back to Finland on April 29th.

Ultima Thule 2011 expedition in a nut shell:

The Ultima Thule 2011 expedition consists of 12 people with different backgrounds but with a shared interest in the Arctic and in challenging expeditions. We will spent three weeks on the arctic wilderness of Spitsbergen covering some 300 kilometers on our skis unassisted and unsupported. The main goals of the expedition are to:

1) to cross 79 degrees Nothern latitude,
2) to climb on top of the highest fells in Svalbard the Newtontoppen (1713 m) and the Perriertoppen (1712 m),
3) see a polar bear in its natural environment from a safe distance,
4) …and have a good time.

On April 7th we will fly from Helsinki to Oslo and from there to Longyearbyen in Svalbard. There we will do the last preparations and in the morning of April 8th we will take a bandvagn ride along Adventdalen to our starting point at Fredheim. From there we will start the skiing (hopefully) by crossing the frozen Tempelfjorden fjord and climbing over 1000 meters to the Lomonosovfonna ice plateau. Then we will continue to North to Newtontoppen and Perriertoppen, descent to Austfjorden fjord, ski from there to the abandoned Russian city of Pyramiden and cross the frozen Billefjord back to our starting point. There are many variables and plans may change but that is the plan and it is quite certain that we will return to Finland on April 29th.

The map is courtesy of the Czech Centre for Polar Ecology. Click to open a bigger version!

To get an idea about the expected conditions see my previous post about The average day in the arctic. For additional background information there is also a bunch of expedition related posts in my blog under the category Ultima thule 2011.

Follow the expedition!

We will carry a satellite phone and a laptop powered with solar panel, so we are able to send daily updates about our progress. The official expedition blog is in Finnish but I intent to sent few dispatches a week to my blog in English. You can subscribe to the blog to get the updates or follow me on Twitter to get notification about new updates from the ice or just visit occasionally to check how we are doing. Unfortunately I am not able to read blog comments or answer them during the trip. See links below for more information!

Useful links:

- The official expedition homepage (in Finnish and in English).

- The official expedition blog (in Finnish only). This would be the recommended read for April for those who are initiated to the dark secrets of the Finnish language.

- My blog. Yes, the very site you are reading at the moment. This would be the recommended read for April for those who prefer English.

- The weather in Svalbard by yr.no. This is the weather forecast we will be watching while out there.

Expedition food

As most of you already know I am soon leaving for a three-week arctic skiing expedition and for a such trip, you need to have chow food to keep you going.

Energy dense, light and tasty

Hauling a sled is hard work. Hauling a heavy sled is even harder work. Hauling a heavy sled and gaining a total of few thousand vertical meters of elevation  is even harder work. And in addition the cold weather requires some extra energy just to stay warm. This all means that I, being a large young male, will consume quite insane amount of energy during the trip. I have seen people of my size and age document energy consumption of  over 7000kcal day on a similar expedition. Hopefully that should only apply on the hard days with lot of ascent but I still expect to consume an average of over 5000kcal a day…

Most of the food for two people for a three-week expedition. Missing from the picture: more butter, more hard rye bread and load of bacon.

As we have to carry all the food required for the three weeks, food should be energy dense and light. The basic of planning goes about like this: Protein and carbohydrates have energy density of about 4kcal per gram where pure fat has 9kcal per gram. This means that fats are favored – but only to a certain extent as the body needs also proteins, carbohydrates and starch to stay functional. In addition too large quantities of fat can cause diarrhea which is wise to be avoided in those conditions.

The unassisted ans unsupported modern polar skiing expeditions often rely on a diet with fats making around 60% of the total calorific intake. This requires long-term adaptation started weeks or months prior to expedition and in addition possibly taking some digestive enzymes. So I am planning to eat a bit less fats and more carbohydrates and protein which is wise every other way but weight-wise. And as we wont be eating too much salad or fresh vegetables I will take care of vitamin and other micro-nutrients with the help of a daily multivitamin pill.

In addition to being energy dense the food should also be good and easy to eat as I have to cram in over 5000kcals worth it a day.  And it should be also relatively easy to cook as the cooking facilities are somewhat limited. As we will sleep and work as a two-man teams, we will take an advantage of this by cooking shared breakfast and dinner at the camp. During the days both will have their own snacks and lunches. The size of shared meals of the day  is mostly limited by the volume of our cooking pot which is a bit over two liters. Other cooking gear will include a bigger pot with heat exchanger for melting snow, lids for the pots, a frying pan (pancakes! bacon!), two white-gas stoves, an aluminum box for the stoves and kitchen utilities, etc.

Another aspect that have to be taken into account while planning the food for such expedition is water. There is no running water available, except sea water and that wont work, as you know. To make our food as light as possible (or nearly as light as possible) we will rely mostly on dried or freeze-dried food that requires water to make it edible. The water is gained by melting snow on the stoves in the tent. We will melt some 4-6 liters of water per person per day so it will take quite a while and most of the evening will be spent melting water in the tent. The water needed for the next day is stored in Thermos and Nalgene bottles. The Nalgene works also as a hot water bottle in the sleeping bag during the night. And Thermoses keep the water hot for freeze-dried lunches and hot drinks. I am personally taking two Thermoses and two Nalgenes but plan to carry “only” three liters of water during the day. I will have one liter of sports drink, one liter of hot chocolate and one liter of hot water for lunch and some extra to speed up the snow melting when in the camp.

Based on these points and on my previous experiences I have made an expedition menu that should fulfill the prerequisites of giving me enough energy, being tasty and easy to cook.

My menu for the rest of the April

The morning will start with breakfast consisting of tea, hard bread and butter and oat meal, rice porridge or müesli with berries and powdered milk and likely some more butter. I believe that three different breakfast options should keep the breakfast interesting enough for the duration of the trip.

During the day I will snack with 100g of chocolate, an oat biscuit, some Pringles and beef jerky. And of course drink a liter of sports drink and a liter of hot chocolate. At he halfway of the day we will have about 30 minutes lunch break and I will eat a commercial freeze-dried meal of varying sort. I have taken lunches from several different manufacturers to avoid getting fed up to a certain brand.

185 freeze-dried meals from Fuizion. I am taking some with me to Svalbard.

At the camp we will make a dinner, the main meal of the day, from dried ingredients and butter. In addition we will have some coffee and cookies and basically eat trough the evening if we just have anything left to eat… I have also some extra desserts for about every other day and some special delicacies including some quality spirits to cheer us up after tough days and celebrate some special occasions.

This all should give me average calorific intake of 5090kcal per day. It is a lot but I still assume to lose some 4-6 kilos of body weight during the expedition. This should be no problem as I can afford it but being hungry is not fun, so I am prepared with some spare food for the second and third week. (My experience is that my appetite rockets at the end of first week of hiking or skiing.)  But I do not intent to eat the spare food if I do not feel especially hungry or miserable with the planned diet. Weight-wise this is somewhat stupid, but I want to make sure I’ll have good time and on the other hand I want to find out if my body can scope prolonged exercise with the planned diet.

Weighting and packing breakfasts.

And quick look on the numbers:

- per day: 5090kcal and 1212g
- total: whopping 106900kcal and 25,5kg of food!
- 40% of total energy from fats, 50% from carbohydrates and 10% of proteins. In addition 45 grams of startch and a multi-vitamin pill per day.

And those who take this stuff far too seriously (like I do) can find a detailed pdf-file with all the nutrition and weight information (there are minor mistakes and some numbers are more or less guesstimates but it should be good enough) from here: UltimaThule2011_food.

So, what do you think? Is that enough food for a 25 year old 100 kilo male? Have I forgot something important or am I having something redundant?

A test post!

This is a test post to try the possibility to update my blog from the ice while on skiing expedition in Svalbard.

We are leaving in the morning April 7th from Helsinki. From there we fly to Oslo and continue to Longyearbyen in Svalbard. We will spent the day in Longyearbyen getting paper work done, buying the last supplies and eating a last proper meal for a while. Next day we’ll take a bandvagn ride to our starting point and then start our three-week long skiing expedition. We have a satellite phone and a laptop with us, so we are able to keep contact to the outside world and we will send daily disbatches (in Finnish). In addition I’ll try to send few updates to my blog (in English, of course) if everything works as planned.

Before leaving I’ll write something about the food I’m taking with me and I’ll leave a sticky post on top of this page with information about what’s going on and some usefull links.

Things are getting pretty exiting…