13th March 2010 – Day 3 – Dom Larose

After a much warmer night, we awoke to the snow Jim described in the last dispatch. After a pleasant breakfast, hot blueberry and granola (tastes so good out here) and brief musing of what might be happening at home, the rugby sweepstake will have to get settled next week. We set about the day’s chores; our first training exercise included fanning out from our position to locate the best direction for a runway. On a real expedition we will get picked up by a twin otter aircraft on skis. As well as visibility, wind and precipitation concerns we need to ensure an obstruction free landing strip of about 1200 feet. Picking a strip with an ice boulder or a major crack would not be good and is not unknown. Having established our runway we then marked it out, exercise complete. Sadly no plane to whisk us away to a frothy latte appeared. We then made steady progress with Lee setting the pace and Claire navigating. We had our first experience of boulder ice and picking our way through, we also came across refrozen sea ice. Jim tested the ice with Lee, Claire and Simon following after which we quickly moved on and completed 7km before striking camp. As I write we are now near an area of open water so Jim will be able to complete our cold water immersion training tomorrow, all being well. I have been nervously anticipating this for years ever since my polar dreams began and it seems that I am not alone, in fact it could well be that Jim wants me out of the way for some peace and quiet from the volume of nervous questions about cold water immersions! On that note it appears that another snowy night awaits and so I will sign off with love to all expedition members, friends and family back home – goodnight.