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11.4
Location: 79 35.79 15 48.32 During the morning legs we saw a couple of ice bear tracks, and that kept
us all alert. As we skied forward we were constantly searching for the
sea ice with our eyes. Finally we reached a point where we had to make a
decision, either to continue and hope for the sea ice or to start climbing up.
We decided to continue and soon our decision was awarded when the long
awaited sea ice opened before our eyes.
As we passed the Nordbreen glacier, we saw that without the sea ice we would have been forced to climb back up to the same glacier we just came down from, just as we thought. Soon after arriving to the sea ice we saw two polar bears. They were approximately 1 km away from us leaning to each other minding their own business. However as soon as we had passed them they started to run towards us. We stopped and took out the rifles and the flare. And again we had to use the flare to scare them off. Today was such a sweaty day, that I decided to change my underwear and my socks. It is a bit embarrassing to do it this often. There have been all kinds of washing attempts going on in this group. Vesa and me washed our hairs at Mosselbukta. Sepe told us that OP had done the same and then called us all ladies. Vesa used his washing gloves just now and at the moment he is playing with his toothbrush. I bet he will floss in next. OP is an "every morning and every evening" guy on taking care of his dental hygiene. I personally settle for just pushing the "leftovers" further back in my mouth every now and then. Sepe hasn't washed his teeth so far; "too busy" is the explanation. Now we have 80 km of flat fjord ahead of us, or do we? At least today the sea ice was very sticky and progress is slow with our rock torn sledges. But we are running out of time and fuel, so no time to waste. Vesa and me have 4,5 l fuel left and the neighbours have about 6 l. We should be okay if use it economically, but the neighbours don't want to even hear about it. Hmmm... P.M. 12.4
Location: N 79.27.03 E 15.53.35 13.4
Location: 79.15.60 16.02.57 Last night we got bad news about the ice situation around here. According
to the report the fjord we are skiing is largely melted half way trough.
In the evening we had to get up to see is there open water somewhere on
sight. There wasn’t, but the ice is not in very good condition anymore.
The open water won’t be able to catch us anymore. The ice situation that
awaits us in the Lon-gyearbyen bay is another story. We just have to wait
and see.
I listened to music all day today on the mp3-palyer. The guys tried to talk to talk to me, but I heard nothing, because I listen to my music on 11 on the scale of 1-10. The best vibes I got from the fast punk songs Jami had loaded to the player. I don’t even know all the artists of them. But fast music with rough vocals was what worked for me today. One song rose above all the others Kim Wilde’s Kids in America. "Somebody" has written 'Home for the elderly' to door of the neighbour's tent. The two oldest guys live there. These pensioners are also slower than our Natures Best Sport Super Plus team. In the morning we have to wait for them to get out their tent. During the day they complain about too long days. Today went as far as suggesting a 1-2 hour break in the middle of the day in "some nice place". We at the NB SSP team didn't want to even hear about it. And since we have been in charge of leading (opening the track) almost ever since Sami left. We kept such a speed all day that hurt even ourselves. The result was that we managed to break the 20 km magic barrier. I almost forgot. Last night two polar bears visited us near the camp: a mother with her cub. We watched them with our binoculars. They were playing right in front of us about 400 m away. I figured that the mother would never bring the cub near the camp and we went to sleep at ease. In case we haven’t mentioned it before, we always camp on the shore in this fjord. P.M. 14.4
Location: N 79.06.07 E 16.14.48 I’m tired. In the morning it feels like I could stay in sleeping bag
and sleep for a hundred years. But no can do, the sledge doesn’t move by
itself. So we have to move and the faster the faster. So that we can get
home someday. I have recently started thinking about home and my civil
life is-sues. Sometimes my mind is at home and an entire 50-minute leg
just flies by.
Today was the perfect spring day we had been waiting for. No wind and snow was like made for skiing. I had to ski with out my Gore-Tex overcoat. I hope this weather continues a few more days, because we are only few more days. We have been planning the rest of this journey. At the moment the plan is to reach the end of this fjord tomorrow, on Saturday will climb up to the glacier, on Sunday we will ski down to Pyramiden. Pyramiden is an old Soviet Union coal-mining town, which is now abandoned. There should be a lot to see. On Monday and Tuesday we will ski to opening of Sassennfjorden where the snowmobiles will pick us up. We saw a lot of seals today, or rolls as OP calls them. They are really easily frightened you when you about one km away from them they dive to safety. We met the Ausfjordenin recluse today. The man has lived on this fjord since last summer alone! And it is the second winter on a row for him. It must be tough with the months that the sun doesn’t come up at all and everything. You have to be in peace with yourself to spend all that time alone with the polar bears. When we got his hut his hunting seals on the ice. We only saw him with our binoculars. We heard bang and the seal was dead. We had a brief conversation and then we continued. The expedition is in excellent condition! V.L. 15.4
Location: 78 54.04 16 23.04 I’m hungry. I’m hungry all the time now. I keep stealing chocolate and
cookies from myself. The only one who will miss them is me in the future.
Today on the seventh leg I was so hungry it ob-scured my eyesight. I
almost fainted. I keep thinking about food all the time. And this happens
even though I’m eating all of my daily 5000 kcal. I estimate that I have
stolen from myself around 500 kcal per day. And still it is not enough.
Because we some extra cocoa powder, I have been making cocoa “shots” for
my self. They consist of half a mug of cocoa powder and a little drop of
water. Then you stir it and eat with a spoon.
The picture shows our electronic equipment. It is the equipment that enables us to contact with the rest of the world and it consists of the solar panel, charging case (made by Sami), laptop and the satellite phone. We use non-rechargeable batteries in our cameras. The power the solar panel produces is a lot less than the manufacturer promises, because we so far up north. Luckily due to the sunny days we have had our batteries are all full now. We no longer need use the power for producing light as the sun is only three hours below the horizon any more. That is actually funny, because the vernal equinox was just when started this expedition. In the beginning the night were dark. So we have power in our equipment, but how about the men. At the moment our problems are sweating feet and sunburned faces. At least the scenery brings some relief. Tomorrow we will move to a glacier from this fjord. Thank you for all the messages, it is really nice to read them after a hard day. P.M. 16.4
Location: N 78.46.53 E 16.43.16 This was a hard day. Ascent of over 400 meters, and it means that it was the last
ascent we had on this journey. We met a Norwegian snowmobile group on our way and
saw the so called "lost lake". There is a lake on a glacier on the map, but it looks
like it has been blown away. According to locals it just disappeared. Hope you get a
some clue of the photo. We don't know the reason for the disappearing, though.
Even though you might think that we only eat, sleep, ski and empty our bowels, it's not way we behave in real life. Every day, at an unexpectable time, we hear lectures from the professor of general science. The governor of Pyramiden shares his ultimate knowledge covering everything from ancient mountain ranges to specific altitudes of random points in Finland. Usually stundents listen to these lectures very quietly, because impugning these statements might lead into an hours-long reasoning. You might also think that this kind of hiking is expensive with all wings and things. This is not true either. Let us introduce to you two inexpensive, yet useful items: pee-bottle and clothes brush. Because there's usually lots of snow in the tent when we wake up (moisture freezes into the tent ceiling), using the brush is helps the situation. You can sweep the snow off before it melts and you can keep the places clean. Pee-bottle, which cost some two euros, is a good item in freezy conditions. When "number one" catches you at night, you don't need to rise from your sleeping-bag to the -30C freezing air. You just need to open the cap, flick the snake into a bottle and enjoy. After the event screw the cap tightly to prevent the liquid spilling to your sleeping bag. This is true, and there's even models for women too. We don't know how they work. We are planning on descending to sea ice and continue to the city of Pyramiden tomorrow. To be continued! V.L. 17.4
Location: 78 39.27 16 20.85 We brought The Governor of Pyramiden to his very quiet home city. The city was
suddenly abandoned year the 1998. The rumours tell that coffee in cups were still warm
when the city was totally empty of people. We took a short walk around the city;
sports hall, swimming hall and one block of flats where has lived some of the
inhabitants. We saw workshops also -you could have built a working tractor of those
parts. Of course here is statue of Lenin and a huge mast that you can see in a
picture. We are camping under that mast this night.
There's been lots of questioning about our equipment and how they work. As said many times before, every piece of equipment has been tested carefully (all but the laptop car charger). Especially during the first two weeks in harsh conditions I expected that something would fail, but nothing happened so we can see that everything has been tested and chosen well. Vesa's broken zipper of his sleeping-bag is the worst that we have encountered this far. Now that our sledges are pretty empty it's time to find out if there's something that is not needed. We haven't used our climbing stuff at all, ice screws excluded. They can't considered unnecessary though, because the fact is that we would have needed them during the first week on crevassed area. Skins of our skis has come to their end. The reason is the sea-ice that we skied along for one week. One question was about sleeping bases. We have these Z-rest and Karrimat combination and for the whole tent-floor we have a 1 cm thick cellular plastic. It's a very good combination -I felt cold coming from ground only once, when there was -25C and wind was blowing cold air under our tents. Very rare situation though. The reason for extra consume of fuel is in unexpectable cold weather. Now that Sami had to leave, the problem was solved by itself. We have still rationed our consume and we have counted that our fuel will last 'till wednesday. Maybe then we are close enough to the civilization. We have now 40 km to the pick-up point and the snow on the ice is very squashy, so there's still a couple of sweaty workdays left. Temperatures are near zero so it won't help our truding. P.M. 18.4
Location: N 78.27.32 E 16.19.36 It's a very rare situation that you wake up from enclosure of block of flats on an
arctic expedition, but that was the case this morning. I admired the Soviet
architecture, but Lenin's head we couldn't see to the camp. It wasn't long until I
saw two helicopters coming -a Russian and a Sysselmann's one. Later I heard that
they brought signs to prevent people taking items from the abandoned city, because
they are still Russian property.
Last evening Pete decided to go to the city to see if there was disco this evening at the hotel (we are the only one's here). Scene from movie "The shining" came to my mind, where Jack Nicholson goes to a bar in the empty hotel and it's full of crowd. Good movie, but nowadays I get nightmares watching it. I've been thinking what is the most that I miss in civilization. It's shower and clean clothes, not getting to warm anymore. We've got +25C in a tent everytime when the stove is on. Yesterday when I put a hood on my head I wondered what is the smell that comes to my nose. Then I realized that it's a familiar smell from Helsinki's public transport. The smell of bum. The same smell is everywhere, but it doesn't matter. But I'd rather drag my smelling sledge to a dumping ground when I get home. Tomorrow will be the last skiing day. After next 17km we don't need to ski before next winter. On wednesday we'll be transported to Longyearbyen by snowscooters. Pizza and beer, I love it! Everything's fine with us. V.L. 19.4
Location: 78 21.02 16 55.42 The journey gets short before it ends. The last push ended just a moment ago to the
bank of Tempelfjorden. We are in Fredheim at the moment and there are two cottages and
one shelter made of turf here. We will be picked up from here tomorrow morning so this
will be the last diary report. The photo is taken from front of the hut and as
you can see, everyone has grown beard and Sepe still has his theet.
Last day was like dragging a stone-sledge, because of the water that had risen on the ice. This kind of salt-water is not the best option to make sledges and skis slide better. Our feelings are quite neutral, even though we are at the end of our journey. Maybe it started to end already on 80th latitude and we were just trudging homewards. Now we can count what we have encountered this far. We skied 377,1 kilometers and it means that 100 kilometers in a week is a very realistic distance in these conditions. Our plan was to ski 450 kilometers, but setting Perriertoppen aside and getting a snowmobile ride further than we expected saved those 70 kilometers. I haven't mentioned the polar bears anymore, but we still come up with these now and then. Today we saw fresh tracks also. I hope that they will come to our camp this night, because that has not happened yet. And I'm still lacking that close-up photo... We have seen lots of animals since Mosselbukta. Six polar bears, Svalbard reindeers, seals, arctic foxes + two blue arctic foxes which represent only 7% of the population. Thousands of birds, like storm birds and Arctic puffins. We couldn't have identified many species, because Vuorenmaa isn't here with us. Now that the expedition is close to its end, we agreed with Vesa that we will update both our own sum up on the weekend. If there's any questions, please ask by e-mail and we'll try to answer to as many as possible when we are back home. Svalbard clams up for a moment. P.M. 24.4Vesa Luomala's testament on 24.04.2004 This last report is written from home. I'm currently laying at sofa. Me and my sofa, we have found together some kind of a deeper universal connection, it is kind of a symbiosis. My toes have felt a bit cold for few days, so I filled a bucket with hot water and put my feet there, now they start to feel better. During our last night at Svalbard we met a group, which had skied to North Pole from Borneo flying station, located on ice some 100 kilometres from the Pole. Because of the lack of skiing experience they had walked this trip. All the others were in good shape, but one man had got bad frost bites. His nose was turning into black color and his fingers were in a bad shape too. Also walking seemed to be difficult. Everyone of them had paid 16000 US dollars for their trip. I guess number of expeditions like this will increase in the future when people from wealthy countries want to make their dreams to come true. We also met a few other legends of Pole expeditions. We had a small chat with them, friendly guys all of them. To me it became clear that it would be nice to have expetitions like this in the future, too. I have had a dream to be able to do something similar at Antarctica. I have had thoughts about that place for a long time. It does not have to be a Pole trip, just want to do something at that continent, there is so much to see (is there other things than pure ice?!?!?!). I guess I have to put some dollars to the line to do that. But one can also enjoy the nature in Northern Finland too, and it is a lot cheeper. I want to give thanks to all of the people who have followed our trip for interest and many greetings
we got through email. It was one of the best moments of the day to read the emails. Thanks also for
our sponsors, who made everything a lot easier. Thanks also for Jami and Pete, who were our webmasters
and Heikki, who translated our stories to english during our trip. I want to close my writings with story
copied from the cover of CD made by Finnish band called "Lapinlahden Linnut" (can be translated as "Nuthouse birds").
I thought about this story every now and then during the trip. Almost everything in the story is closely related
to our trip, even starting from the name of the band. See you during our next expedition. Bye! V.L.
"At the beginning they were six. They walked in an endless desert. They walked and walked, and pain and humility were shown from their faces. Suddenly, on one day they heard a Voice. Voice asked: --Who are you? --We are we, we six, answered those six frightened. Voice decided to put the men on a test. --OK, it said, I have a price for one of you. It belongs to a man, who really earns it. After saying that Voice disappeared. A price! Imaginations of waited fulfilment were running in their minds. -- A bucket full of champagne!, dreamed the first. -- A real hydroplane!, fancied the second. -- A share majority for a bank!, sighted the third. -- A harem!, feasted, the fourth. -- A magic stick, that gives you three wishes!, craved the fifth. -- A railway carriage filled with Keratin hair water!, said the sixth. But now they were confused. -- Of course the price will be given to the one, who is the best of us, they thought, and I am only a ragamuffin like this. Their minds were blurred by greediness and incoming envy sealed the decision. -- I have to be something bigger and better than the others, I have to do something about it! So all of them slided to their own ways by using weak excuses. In the darkness of the night there was a movement. -- Stop, who is coming? shouted Voice. -- It is me, Juri Gagarin, first man at the space!, answered the first and came forward. -- It is me, Jacques Costeau, the tamer of Moby Dick!, horried the second and came forward. -- It is me, Erwin Rommel, the fox of the desert!, shouted the third and came forward. -- It is me, Artturi Iivari Virtanen, the inventor of AIV forage!, twittered the fourth and came forward. -- It is me, the dog of Baskerville, the most famous character of world!, howled the fift and came forward. -- Dont' you know me, the great patron, the famous composer Kaj Chydenius!, demanded the sixth and came forward. -- Give me my price!, they all shouted simultaneously. The desert was filled by silence. -- You Pharisee, look at yourselves!, Voice thundered and disappeared to the emptiness. There they stood, those six and fearfully they turned to look the others and themselves. Deeply ashmed they undressed their disguises and started a new walk. They walked and walked because they knew that after this endless desert there must be a small fountain surrounded with date palms. And at the fountain there would be someone waiting for them. They walked and walked, and pain and humility were shown from their faces." Story copied from the cover of the album "Lapinlahden Linnut: No shortcut for heroism"
Petri Makela's testament on 25.04.2004 So it all ended. Before we got to the real finish, we had to wake up from the tent one more time. The last time we packed our things and then were Johan Sletten there to pick us up. After few hours we were at Longyearbyen. Quick beers at basecamp hotel and to the airport with Vesa to deal with cargo. We changed our tickets to earlier date and went to Sysselmann office. We were a bit surprised, when they gave thanks about the information we gave during the helicopter operation. I was also a bit ashamed, because our smell was not that good. Finally shower and sauna a few hours later. At the evening we met Priitta and Tuomas and discussed about the expedition in general. Next day we flew to Tromso and drove to Kilpisjarvi, where we spent one night. Friday we drove all day and I opened my home door 2.00 a.m. During the trip from Tromso to Finland we discussed about the future plans. Vesa already mentioned some of his plans previously. Seppo is going to establish an expedition museum to the garbage bin located in their backyard. O-P has also promised to make some donations to this new museum. Both are going to continue their endless expedition career in Finnish lapland. I met Sami today. It is still not sure, whether he can keep his toes, but currently the situation is quite good. He thought that the reason for frostbites was that he had too small shoes. First his toes swelled by strain. After that his toes freezed. My own plans are related to Greenland. It would be fun to ski it from north to south, since I have already made it from east to west. 4 months
and 2700 kilometres. It would be fun to say to a friend: "Don't you remember what I talked about last month... sorry, two months ago!".
I have mentioned something about our equipment. I think we had almost the best available equipment with us. One thing I would like to see is other sledge suppliers than the current ones. There is not too much competition at that area. I would like to thank our web-team (Vesa forgot Mmka Rustari), our co-operators and especially teams at home. They have had to wait two years that we get this all done. I'm writing this at sunday night, tomorrow it is time for work again. From the old experience I can guess that there will be a new expedition in my mind very soon. Maybe already in the morning? Tampere, 24. - 25.4.2005 Pete Makela
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Today’s highlight was a visit to Villa Moen, which is an old small,
hunters hut. It is so small it barely sleeps three persons. We didn’t stop
there as we all (except OP) thought it will too hot for us to sleep in a
hut with a stove.
On our way over here in Peera I happened to read an issue of Readers
Digest. It had an article about “polar bear rides” in Canada. The idea is
that people are taken to see the bears in tank like vehicles whenever
somebody spots a bear. And then of to the next bear. I find this amusing.
I think I need to justify my view a little. On summer 2000 I made a trip
to New Zealand. There I partici-pated on a “whale cruise”. The idea was
that whenever one of these “whale cruise” boats noticed a whale it radioed
all the other boats and then all the boats rushed of to see the whale.
The whales stay 50 minutes under water and 10 minutes breathing on the
surface. After the whale dove again the boats moved to the next one. I
felt like a complete idiot and I also felt sorry the whales. There and
then I decided that I don’t need to see all the exotic creatures of the
world, if I happen to come cross them, great. If not, no worries. I don’t
want judge other people’s doings, but I certainly can’t recommend any
“special animal” events.
That’s enough of breaching for today, we’ll be back tomorrow. The group is
fine. V.L.
