Day 13 - A Perfect Day

We had a fantastic day today, a big kiting day. For the first time in Bear Dodging Spitsbergen history, the wind blew and the sky was clear. Thank you, Chris from Ozone! After our despairing call to you a couple of days ago, lamenting the weather, you have obviously been putting your magic powers to work. The conditions were perfect, the weather incredible and everyone kited really well. We kited all day, our longest day so far, and are almost back at our starting point. Up here on a huge ice plateau, with mountains on both sides, and the sun circling all around us, it is absolutely stunning; we are feeling extremely lucky to be here.

We have dropped in altitude so the temperature is a little warmer, though it still feels very cold. It is around -14°C, yet feels closer to -20°C.

Talking of cold, we thought you would like to share in the intimate details of our tent drama. Now, in polar places you want an all important pee bottle for your tent, to avoid any unpleasant trips outside to the cold in the middle of the night. It is so cold, however, that ours have frozen solid. In fact, everything has frozen solid. Left with aforementioned unappealing option (a), we had to try and be a little more resourceful. We came up with option (b) - re-use of our dehydrated food bags; altogether far more pleasing. If you would like a little more detail, we then put them outside and they too freeze pretty quickly. We are sticking soundly with option (b), and also not ruling out a proposal to the Norwegian company who produces them, that they market them officially as ‘dual purpose’.

We are heading towards Longyearbyen now, as Dan enjoys his last day on the expedition, and will then make our way south, for more adventure.

We would like to wish Cynan’s sister, Vicki, a very happy birthday for tomorrow, 20th April!