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March 2003
Stepping onto the ice | |
|  | | The frozen landscape of Iceland - view looking west over Vatna |
| | Staffordshire student Hugh Deeming is preparing to embark upon an expedition across Europe's largest ice capto commemorate the death of his sister and raise money for a cancer charity. |
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| | Hugh Deeming's journals:
03/03/03
More Training, and Getting The Food Right
Well what a fortnight. The progress has been fantastic. Things started, shortly after I submitted my last entry, with ‘Icelandair’, the country’s flag carrier, offering to fly Jonathan and I to Iceland and home again.
We have been given seats outward on 8th June with a provisional return on around the 5th July. This will give us a few days to acclimatise to life in a tent before we actually set off across the ice, and some spare to get out of the Central Highlands when we finish the crossing. The flight tickets were one of the major expenses that we faced and to have been given them is brilliant news.
On 20th and 21st Feb. Jonathan and I were in Aviemore for two days refresher training, courtesy of Rob at ‘Mountain Spirit’. On the Thursday we went into the Coire an Sneachda with a British Mountain Guide called Rob Wills.
We spent the day going over rope techniques and the preparation of ice axe belays, vital skills that need to be second nature when walking through glaciers’ crevasse fields. Rob also had a wealth of experience in expedition preparation, having worked in Alaska, his common sense tips and advice were priceless.
On Friday we met Nick Etheridge, a local Telemark Ski instructor. He gave us the opportunity to get used to handling the ski-mountaineering equipment we will be using for the crossing. Once we’d mastered the, very sticky, skill of putting skins onto the ski bases we set off, skiing uphill (thanks to the skins) for the Cairngorm piste.
I was delighted at the ease with which we were both able to…(I won’t say master!) …progress with the techniques. I did though feel very guilty when Nick had to leave us to go to a physiotherapy appointment (running injury, not skiing). He had explained earlier that he had lost his Mother to cancer fairly recently. He had clearly (and painfully) put himself out for us, as a way of doing his bit for cancer research. A kind man indeed!
Returning to Stoke I realised that a research vehicle was about to be shipped out to Iceland on a ferry, prior to a team flying out from Keele University later this month. Last Monday was therefore spent madly racing around the ‘cash & carry’ buying the, very unappetising looking, staples of our high carbohydrate expedition diet.
These were then itemised, boxed, packed on the Landy and are, as I write, on their way to Reykjavik. Phew! Another tick in the ‘done’ box!
This week will be spent preparing proposals and essays, both for my course in general, and more importantly for the snow studies I’ll be carrying out during the expedition. More of that in the future! I shall also be continuing my hunt for sponsorship, and I am moving up the gears in hunting out pledges for the Royal Marsden. Three months and five days to ‘D’ day.
Read Journal Instalment 1 here - 16/02/03 | | | |
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