Frozen Five at AGU

This week, the Frozen Five education & outreach project was unveiled in the largest gathering of geoscientists in history, the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). With about 15,000 registrants, and keynote speakers of Al Gore's (made famous through the movie documentary "An inconvenient truth", apart from having been "the next president of the USA") calibre, the scene was perfect to present our project.

Kim attended the week-long conference, presenting a Frozen Five poster as part of an "Education & Outreach during the IPY" session. Through the positive comments the poster generated, and the liaison with other IPY projects, we aim to make as many high school students aware of our expedition by the end of February. The website, which will shortly include an educational component, will serve as a reference point for all global students, without geographic restrictions to the schools where we plan post-expedition talks.

Needless to say, the AGU poster will be available for download in the media section shortly. Greetings from San Francisco!

Kim

Frozen Five are Five again, and no longer hungry

Over the past few weeks, the Frozen Five project has been steadily picking up steam, probably fuelled by the now traditional Thursday morning Skype meetings (Wednesday evenings for our European contingent, lucky buggers that don’t have to get up). Almost too much has happened to update you in one blog, so expect a few more blogs coming this way as we try to re-capture the happenings.

Definitely the most important change concerns the team. Due to unfortunate circumstances, and unavoidable university commitments, Jirka will not be able to join the team for the traverse. This was a big blow to the rest of the team, since Jirka’s experience, good humour and culinary skills (he makes the best Czech dumplings ever) will be missed. Jirka is still heavily involved with the project, having volunteered for perhaps the most demanding job of all, getting food for a bunch of hungry Arctic wanderers. About 50 kg of Czech food was bought (okay, maybe chocolate bars and instant soups are not the exactly “food”) and is currently en route to Svalbard where it will be sorted and re-routed to our food depot at Hornsund. Thanks Jirka!

Sponsorship by Göteborgs Kex!

When you set out on expeditions, big or small, it’s of great importance that you have enough of cookies and biscuits with you. We estimate that we will eat three packets of cookies per day. That makes 210 packets for the whole trip! Well don’t worry; we will have loots of chocolate, nuts and dried fruit as well! The famous Swedish cookie producer Göteborgs Kex has promised to help us out with the cookie problem. However, it’s not an easy task to decide which cookies you will take with us. Kim’s favourite is the plain old Guld Marie (produced since 1888!!!), Ulli would rather take the Brago Pepparkaka (ginger style) while Mats and Lucas likes the Safari Cookies best. But all in all it’s about the calories inside. The higher energy/weight ratio the better =)

Sponsorship by Shelby!

We are proud to present our first full sponsorship partner: Shelby. Shelby will provide us with nice 100% merino wool 1st layer long sleaves! For activities in a cold climate merino wool is the very best option to have close to your skin. Wool have an exceptional capacity to keep you warm for a long period with out the unpleasant smell that use develop after a few days in synthetic 1st layer clothing’s. You might think that wool would be too itchy to have as 1st layer. However, the nice thing about merino wool is that it doesn’t itch at all! Merino wool is also, according to Mats, the best material for boxers both in arctic conditions and in warmer conditions like Australian rainforests!
Shelby provides heavy gear fabrics for all outdoor activities and will soon also start providing clothing’s. Since Mats likes to make his own skiing jackets and trousers he ordered some fabrics for reinforcements on knees, shoulders and bum from Shelby (Action Cordura and Reflective Cordura®).