Almost exactly 125 years ago, in August 1888, Fridtjof Nansen and his men left on their pioneer expedition trying to become the first ones to cross the Greenlandic inland ice. Their motto was literally “West coast or death” because they knew that nobody would come and rescue them if they didn’t reach the West coast. They started from Umivik on the East Coast and reached the Ameralik fjord on the West Coast 40 days later.

Now it’s only one week left until we leave the Norwegian spring to start our four weeks’ adventure across the Greenlandic inland ice. Us, that is a group of fourteen people: Eleven of which are born with skis on their feet (read: Norwegians), plus one Dane, one Swiss and one German. Three guides and eleven rookies. Six ladies and eight gentlemen. And one polar bear of course – my fluffy friend Mr Nansen is joining the trip as well.

Since our first training meeting in September, we have been preparing for the expedition. The most essential part of the training was pulling old car tires in the Norwegian woods – the closest you get to pulling a sled. Fortunately, we had a long and cold winter in Oslo with plenty of opportunities to go skiing as well.

Another part of the preparation for myself was eating as much and as rich in calories as possible. That includes chocolate, potato chips, popcorn (with lots of butter), some extra butter/oil/cream in every meal, Coke and Solo and so on. The idea is that some extra fat (or should I call it blubber?) both protects you from the Arctic cold and provides an energy reserve on exhausting days which is important since it is almost impossible on the trip to feed the body as many calories as you burn during the day.

Every one of us will have to pull two sleds over Greenland, and we will have everything we need on the expedition with us (food, fuel, and personal equipment). In adventurer terminology you call this kind of expedition “unassisted” (no external supplies or depots) and “unsupported” (using only muscle power – no kites etc.).

Our route goes from West to East. On Tuesday next week we will board a plane from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq, and on Wednesday we will start our trip from Kangerlussuaq. We will be driven to the edge of the glacier from where we will start to ascend the ice cap. The first few days have the most difficult terrain. After a while the landscape flattens out but we will still gain altitude every day until we reach the highest point at approximately 2500 meters. From there we continue towards the East coast, and after 26 days and approximately 600 kilometers on skis we will hopefully reach the small settlement of Isortoq.

This time I have no chance to update my own blog. We only have one satellite phone, but you can follow us on facebook under “Grønland 2013”.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/Gronland2013?fref=ts

Different routes over the inland ice – ours is the blue one from Kangerlussuaq to Isortoq