25th July

Frostbite, frost nip, freezing toes, and whoops it gets deeper! Today Nikki led the river crossing workshop, with Sarah as her stagehand. This meant a lot of cold YL’s and high pitched yelps. Tim provided a sturdy support for our group crossing although much practise was needed to get us all in time.

This evening Steve, Katie and Tim have headed up to our advanced base camp at the bottom of the glacier to do a food drop, whilst the ‘ladies who lunch’ have stayed back to clean the camp!

Hopefully tomorrow night we will be at the advanced base camp ready to hit the glacier Monday morning. The whole group is very excited!

Today was all about the nervy bees! We spent much of the day working on the slopes to practise rope skills and other means of helping those we may lead who might find the route difficult. Sid, Katie’s mascot (see photo), was a dab hand at the old belaying. By the end of the day all of us were feeling much more confident in our ability to help others. Slightly overwhelmed with overhand knots, stopper knots, figure of eights, fisherman’s knot, double figure eight…

Tomorrow is all about the river dance!

23rd July

Tim out-shone us all! Today we learnt about bushcraft, whittling spoons from silver birch and making fire from fluff. Sadly the only truly successful member of the team was Tim. He is now making us a ladle and has produced numerous spoons since. Steve was not far off with his keen whittling skills and fire hands, typical boy games!

Sarah, Katie and Nikki decided to venture forth into the freezing stream for the first wash of the trip. Apparently screams could be hard 800yds away back at base camp! But least we have clean hair.

A “Safety on Steep Ground” day tomorrow. We are heading up the one side of the U-shaped Valley

Sarah

22nd July

The YL’s got to within reach of the Oksfjord glacier today. Some of us slightly too tired to actually step on the ice however; the team were kind enough to bring some back for us to touch. Mind you we were only 200m away!



Sadly our bivvi plans had to be put aside due to logistical issues. Still, we spent a good day exploring the valley we are based in. Steve, Katie and Nikki managed to conquer the largest boulder first, however, Tim and Sarah claimed they had sneaked up behind on the conquering of the boulder opposite. There could have only been millimetres in it!

Tomorrow we plan for a day at base camp practising bush craft skills.

Sarah

Message from main party...no rain so far!!!

Jamie

1st Update from the team!

Arrived at Base camp finally at 11.30pm, tired, cold, and all we craved was our down sleeping bags and thermarest. Woke up after a leisurely lie in this morning, WOW! 10am, to see how amazing our base camp is. We are currently situated in a beautiful valley about 3 hours walk away from the glacier we are hoping to explore. At the foot of the valley in full view of base camp is the beach in which the YE’s will be kayaking off.



Today was spent organising and setting up our base camp. Food and toilet were our main priority. This involved much lugging of rather heavy kit approximately 1km uphill, our fitness is already being put to the test. We have all seemed to establish our food time jobs Sarah and Nikki as culinary genii, Master Stove Mender has fallen to Tim, and our Pot Shiners are Steve and Katie with the “frost bitten” fingers. No baths here the water is freezing.

Tomorrow we hope to head up the valley on a recce of a new base camp specifically for us Young Leaders. We are hoping to bivvi under some nice boulders or in a cave. Our only friends the reindeer.

Arrival in Alta

Just a quick update to let you know that everyone has arrived safely in Alta.

Main party depart

So, early this morning 5 Young Leaders set off from Gatwick and are currently winging their way to Norway. Everyone turned up with their passports and excitement was in the air.
We look forward to following their progress in the next few weeks...