News from HQ

Written at 1900 BST yesterday: The area that we are in is a disturbed blue ice feature with extensive ice upheaval. This creates unpredictable crevassing in terms of location and orientation. GPR is producing a confused set of data due to the multitude of fractures lines within the ice. Reconnaissance on foot has taken us 1.8km south and this also has not identified a viable safe route. We hav…

Image by Ian Prickett After two days of painstakingly surveying and preparing a route across an especially difficult crevasse field, the Ice Team was finally able to get on the move again today and overcome the treacherous terrain. The team has spent most of the last two days identifying and filling in large holes in the blue ice with the Cats to enable safe passage and this comes with it a fair…

Tales from the Ops Team – by Tris Kaye Blue ice: mile-long sheets of exposed, frictionless, traction-less icy hell. I hate it. Every time I hear over the sat-phone that the team is approaching another patch of the stuff, my heart sinks and I hate it a little more. Besides crevasse fields, blue ice is probably the worst sort of terrain to stifle progress. In the persistent winds, cold enough to…

Fiennes, right, with team mates before getting frostbite Co-leader of The Coldest Journey, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, said today that he had every confidence that the Ice Team would make the best out of any difficult situation after we revealed yesterday that the team had suffered a series of setbacks in recent days. Whilst the Ice Team were making good progress today in difficult conditions (report…

by Hugh Bowring, Operations HQ Ian welding under the living caboose – by Brian Newham. The last week has proven to be a very testing time for the Ice Team as they have had to endure severe weather conditions and a series of mechanical set-backs. Taken individually these challenges would have been hard enough to deal with, but collectively they have put great pressure on the guys and have pushed…

The Ice Team made the final runs to the fuel depot successfully yesterday and now the entire Ice Train is together at S72 31′ 50.2″, E023 27′ 01.7″. The plan from here is to move south and into unchartered territory for the team. Before that can happen, however, there are a number of important checks, modifications and repairs which need to be carried out to a number of different components of…

The Coldest Journey App has been selected as one of the Top 20 apps of the week by the Guardian. Good effort Ben Mawhinney and all of the guys at ModeEight who put it together for us free of charge. Click here below to see the Top 20 and download our app for…

We now have 9,500+ likes on our Facebook page. This is a great following and we would like to thank everyone who follows us on Facebook, Twitter and this website for your on-going enthusiasm and support, which is invaluable. On days like today when the team is stuck in a ferocious blizzard it must be easy for them to see themselves as a tiny dot on a huge, barren and deadly landscape. For them to…

Minus 29C, 25 knot winds and drifting snow: things are starting to get tougher for the Ice Team, the true test of their resolve is nearly upon them. It was slower than usual to get the Cats moving this morning, but this is always to be expected with the lower temperatures. This pic was taken whilst Spencer and Richmond were dancing the hydraulics to get them warmed up. Low sun and drifting snow…

Well, so does The Coldest Journey’s Operations Manager, Tris Kaye. Inspired by Ian Prickett’s jokey jazz hands at the start of the expedition, Tris got into the groove himself during a recent ramble in Glen Coe – and this is the result! It is an absolutely stunning photo and the cameraman has sensibly positioned Tris just far enough to the right so that you can crop him out of it…