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Winter 2004It was time to purchase the equipment for the expedition. Most participants didn't have the equipment needed on this kind of trip so we had to get almost everything from sledges to glacier equipment. The sledge we chose is Fjellpulken transportpulk, 440 litres, 9kg. It has enough capacity for four weeks journey and it is proven to be durable enough. The skis we bougth were Madshus Glittertinds and Pellestovas with Rottefella Riva 3 bindings. Boots are Alico doubles. All these were bought from Freeheels, the store that offers the best quality for the best price.
Ruskovilla promised us their woollen underwears, which has proven to be absolutely the best underwear in the arctic conditions. The test trip Our test trip was on February. In the beginning there was four of us heading north, towards Kilpisjärvi from Hetta, Lapland; Petri M, Olli-Pekka (OP), Heikki and Eljas. We had two weeks and the rest of the group (Vesa, Seppo Virtanen, Sami Nytorp and Petri V) who only had a weeks winter holiday, would meet us in the midpoint at Karesuvanto. Before that we had some problems. On the second day Heikki had to drop out because he was of ill and his friend Eljas left as well. And so there were two of us; OP and I, continuing towards our meeting point. On the way to Karesuvanto it OP got two nasty blisters on his foot. We tried to cure them, but as it became worse, OP decided to drop out and so there was only me, alone in the wilderness… It wasn't long until I encountered the rest of the group near Karesuvanto and we continued together towards Kilpisjärvi. The rest of this journey was great. Temperatures reaching -36C, wind and darkness gave good circumstances to test the equipment and ourselves. Spring 2004On March I had a talk with Pertti Arjanne, who told that he was planning on a journey to Svalbard on may 2004, from Longyearbyen to Ny Ålesund. It was a great timing for us, because this way we were able to get current information and Pertti promised to tell us everything about his journey after he came back. Summer 2004We had our second meeting on the 28th of May. Present were Sami Nytorp, Vesa Luomala, Seppo Virtanen, Petri Vuorenmaa, Olli-Pekka Lahti, Pete Mäkelä and "staff" Jami Kangasoja and Heikki Lindgren. On the agenda we had these web-pages, sponsorship, new budget, marketing, shooting and climbing training, publishing the expedition at SkiExpo 2004, permits, transportations and physical and mental health and well being.
It was clear that we will travel by a car to Tromssa and fly from there to Longyearbyen, from where we would be transported by snowscooters to Billefjorden, the point where we begin our ski journey, if ice-conditions will allow it. Our skiing route will be Newtontoppen-Perriertoppen-Åsgardfonna to Verlegenhuken and back via Wijdefjorden and Lomonosovfonna, 50km from Newtontoppen where we will be picked by snowscooters. 450km of skiing, from which 330km on a glacier and 120km on sea ice. Snowscooter transportations were nailed down on summer and permits were in the hands of Sysselmannen, the authority of Svalbard. Fall 2004On autumn it was time to concretize the sponsorship deals and it was started with Sasta Oy. Sasta wanted to participate as the gold sponsor providing us all the clothing, excluding only the Ruskovilla woolen underwear. We also got Bridgedale, Nelcomp, Nature's Best and Minigrip to sponsor the expedition. On September 25th and 26th we had our third meeting. It was a training camp where we practiced shooting- and climbing. We also had a change to hear Pertti Arjanne's presentation about his journey to Svalbard, which was absolutely a great chance for all of us to learn about the environment where we were going next spring.
Finally, on October Svalbard's governor gave his permission to our expedition. The permission requires either an insurance of 100.000NOK or a deposit of 100.000NOK. Now no longer need to worry about the permit issues. At the end of October happened three things happened. First Aamulehti, a local newspaper, decided to follow the planning of our trip and wanted to have a couple of interviews during our journey via satellite phone. Secondly Sbs-cityradios decided to follow the expedition too. Reports from a journey will be delivered every Monday-, Wednesday-, and Friday morning. Third was my meeting with Priitta Pöyhtäri in Rovaniemi, where she told me everything about the route, conditions, polar bears and things that interested me in Svalbard. This meeting was essential to make our expedition successful. Priitta also promised to be our contact person in Svalbard. 1.11.2004 www.svalbard2005.com pages are launced. It's been really hectic with planning our trip and arranging things. I have hardly had time to drink a cup of coffee now and then; usually it has cooled before I have had time to finish it… Last week we have managed to arrange two essential things. Retki Finland will be with us sponsoring our team with their products and Vesa managed to reserve the flights for all of us, which, I can tell you, wasn't an easy job because of a very hierarchical business culture of The Braathens, the flight company. 8.11.2004 SkiExpo 2004 is over, according to organizers there were 44.000 visitors in SkiExpo and DigiExpo. It was nice to talk with all those people who visited our stand. There were lots of questions about our Greenland trip and lots of questioning about our Svalbard2005 journey. The equipment also was a frequent topic with the visitors. That is an all-time-favorite topic. During the next months we will publish our list of equipment and get our English pages up-to-date. We will update the logbook on a weekly basis before the expedition starts and during the expedition it will be updated on a daily basis.
Until next week! Currently, we are waiting for snow. Meanwhile we try to keep our condition up by running, swimming (indoors :-)), bicycling and weightlifting.
Fortunately we are going to have some minus degrees this week. Here in Helsinki cross country skiing is not boring at all. During one training session one can
follow ski-jumping and after that meet a camel, but it requires quite a lot of cross country skiing then. And this is not a joke, I have done it many times! This winter I will expand the set of animals met during the training session from camels to lions and tigers, if possible. Keep the thumbs up for my goal! V.L
Weather forecasts by Vesa didn't quite match my own evaluations. Last week there was a heavy snowfall in Helsinki while here in Tampere there is hardly any snow. Heikki Lindgren fixed our snowmobile transports from Longyearbyen to wilderness (and later back). We don't start our expedition from Longyearbyen but want to do it in 'no man's land' right from the start. The costs will be (for about 200 kilometres with snowmobiles) around 250 euros/person. The other reason is that without this transportation the total trip would have been 600 kilometres, which we evaluated too long compared for the time we have in use. I and Petri Vuorenmaa were accepted to members of Finnish Arctic Club last saturday, nobody of current members were against it. I also kept presentation of our previous trip to Greenland 2003. At the meeting there was two other expeditions announced. LJK is trying to Mt. Everest 2005 and to North Pole 2006. There is a Finn rush hour coming to the edges of the world. About our sponsors; we have added a page about them. Some critics has arised for using sponsors. Of this expedition's five participants four has children and possibly bank loan for apartment. Also, this trip will not make our wallet thicker. It should not be the purpose of doing expeditions, but I still has 12000 euros bank loan of my Greenland 2003 trip. Anyway, it was still 100 times worth of that loan... P.M. Now we have some snow and freezing weather here in Helsinki, even though we had rain one day. The consequence of that rain is that everything is covered with slippery ice, which is quite normal in my home town during winter. Previously I talked about cycling as a training method. I was doing some face lifting for an apartment and I cycled with ten litres of paint at my backpack in new snow, which I think was quite hard. My bicycle didn't like this method too much and assisted me by cutting its chains in the middle of nowhere. I waited for taxi about an hour in minus ten degree celsius. At least some of the equipment were tested. About sponsors: because this is the first time for me in a trip like this, I think it is quite interesting to test the equipment we get from the sponsors and I hope
we can affect the products with our experiences. So it is not only financial/commercial reason they are with us. V.L. Today it is the independence day of Finland, and they are showing the movie about the war between Finland and Soviet Union 1941-1944. Thanks to our grandfathers, we won the war in one sense even though the rest of the world thought we lost. In the movie one man asks: "Damn, we are grown up men. Why in the hell do we have to pull these sledges around our forests?" (Finland is mostly covered by thick forests and has very tough winter at least in north and east part of the country. It's mainly this fact that saved us from overtake by Soviet Union). At the same time us, children at time one can have almost anything he wants, we voluntarily pull our sledges, which usually are too heavy, to the edges of the world and our only enemy is bureaucracy and customs between the countries (and, of course, money). We have different "voluntary" tasks in our project. One of them is maintaining this website and the other one is cooking and drying meat for the trip. It really gives a good smell for one's apartment! Sami will have this task for the tent group of me, Sami and Vesa, and we will need 600 grams of fresh meat per day. Seppo will cover this same task for tent of him and Olli-Pekka. Everybody has done his own trainings to keep in fit. For example, Sami has gained 10 kilos of weight since last winter but no fat at all. He has pulled his home-made sledge around the forests of Nokia. Some of his neighbors think that maybe his physically in good condition but not mentally. We'll see who has the best condition during the trip! All the pulling equipment for the sledges we use is made by Fjellpulken. Sami and Seppo tried to make home made equipment but they gave up after Pertti Arjanne told that they had lot of difficulties with home-made equipment during their trip last year. That's all for today, have a nice independence day! P.M. Currently we spend the darkest month of the year, which means that there is approximately 6 hours of daylight in Helsinki. When you go to work it's dark and when you get back home it's dark. During the weekend, if you're lucky, one might be able to "see the light". As a bonus sun is usually behind thick clouds, which makes the darkness even worst. There is a similarity to the view from North-Korea's capital Pyongyang, which I was able to visit last summer. The only difference is that here we have some electric lights but at Pyongyang, due to lack of electricity, there was total darkness at night. It was quite absurd to walk in the city at that time. Darkness has its' effects to everything related to expedition. Training, maintaining this website and other things goes with routine but not with great passion. Maybe it's better to relax and wait for Christmas. At January training continues with full speed. We have our climbing and shooting camp at January, small training 'expedition' at February. In addition to this everybody has his own trainings. By March we should have everything ready and start to enjoy... V.L. I have made a lot of phone calls lately and it can be noticed from my phone bill, which has been steadily rising. I might not interfere with everything related to the expedition, but what can you do? Our team member Seppo Virtanen has it easier, he is the one of the last Finns not having mobile phone. I had to use all my manipulation skills that he agreed to start to use email. Last week I contracted out a few shields for our weapons. Rifles need to be able to function all the time but fully protected against weather. Shields are made of waterproof material and it looks like a tube, which opens wholly from velcro. Matti Tavast, who, for example, made the tents for "Huurre" North Pole- team, made them. I think we are in good hands. Olli-Pekka has fixed our insurance things for the trip. The company is a subsidiary company of finnish insurance company Tapiola. Everything else went fine but our budget for this was not like planned. I thought it would cost 500 euros and 800 euros at maximum to cover this 100 000 NOK insurance but it was 1170. Of course, this is not one of the thing to complain about. Finnish woman living at Svalbard, Priitta Pöyhtäri, reserved us some accommodation for the few days we spend at Longyearbyen. She has been a great help for us in every sence. We'll, this week it will happen a lot of important things. First of all, after Tuesday we will start to get more and more daylight. At Wednesday, it is exactly 3 months to the start. And at Friday Santa Claus will visit us! Svalbard 2005 team wishes you all happy Christmas! P.M. So, Christmas is over and everybody has relaxed a bit. I think most of the team has gathered some extra weight for our expedition but not me. I was sick and was not able to eat too much. My uncle thinks this has been a tradition for me since I was a little boy, if I ever have been 'little'. The reason is that I'm usually so scared about Santa Claus. It's kind of an 'event' while eating Christmas dinner to start to talk about me and my past year sicknesses. How I enjoy those moments! I have given a lot of thought about how to keep condition level up during the trip. The man of my size will always have some difficulties with so called muscles, when there are a lot of hard expedition days in a row. One must figure out something new in addition to normal eating and sleeping things. Maybe stretching would be a good way to avoid collapse of condition. Another tip given by Timo Polari, famous Finnish explorer, is to wash yourself almost everyday. This is done by pouring some hot water to Minigrip plastic bags and then using towels made for expedition use to sweep you over. First upper part of your body, then lower one, in this order. Fortunately, we will not have lack of Minigrip bags, since Minigrip is our sponsor. They will give us few thousand bags. Last week we wished all you readers happy Christmas. I think now it's time to say happy New Year. See you next year! V.L.
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