We were advised to apply for a permit at least 3 months before leaving (Biomedical expeditions 6 months, expeditions to the National Park by Dec 31st of the previous year). In order to issue the final expedition permit you will need signed radio/firearms/insurance/airdrop permits.

At the beginning and end of the expedition you should contact the Greenland Command (tel: +299 691911/ 691955) to inform them that you are entering/leaving the expedition area. In the event of a distress signal being picked up by Ammassalik radio, the police are the first to be alerted.

Plane Charter. We hired a ski-equipped plane from Air Iceland, as we did in 1999 (see above for address). Plane charter is the most expensive part of the expedition. There are several ways to reduce this cost:

1. Group size. 8 people (or multiples of) is the most economical, unless you want to try squeezing another person in (pretty tight!). The payload of a Twin Otter with skis to the Lemon Mountains is 700Kg out and 1000Kg back. The payload of a Piper Chieftain (airdrop) to the Lemon Mountains is 500Kg. This was just enough for our food equipment and ourselves. We didn’t skimp on food like 9 person expeditions.
2. Sharing with other groups. Contact Paul Walker or Fridrik at Air Iceland. If another group flies back as you fly out you can split the cost
3. Flying to/from the coast. There is an airstrip at the coast at Sodalen (68°13’N, 31°23’W). A Twin-Otter without skis is cheaper and has a larger payload. However it took Steve Brailey’s expedition 6 days to walk out to the coast, due to poor glacier conditions.

Landing sites. We had planned to land on the Chisel Glacier, however the pilot wanted to land on the Cocker Glacier (in July 1998 the Chisel glacier was too crevassed to land on). This year both the Sarah and Chisel glaciers looked fine for plane landings; however we had to ski to and from the Cocker glacier which took 8 hours.

Dinner Sir? How about some tuna-and-blackcurrant-jam-mash with mayonnaise-and-chocolate-powder sauce?

The Piper Chieftain is a good plane to use for an airdrop because it is much cheaper than a Twin Otter and has a rear door that can be opened for the airdrop (boxes should have a cross section of no more than 50x50cm)

In 1996 we left 10 days in between dropping and finding the boxes. On this expedition we could still see the craters 4 weeks after the airdrop and despite 3" of snow. Derek Fordham has made a number of airdrops.

Airdropping fuel. We packed our fuel into sigg bottles, which were bubble wrapped before putting into the box. Unfortunately 30% broke. We weren’t prepared for this since in 1996 and 1999 only 2% broke! For better results we should have used large bubble wrap (we only used thin bubble wrap), and between each layer of fuel bottles put 2 layers of triply corrugated cardboard. Most of the breakages occurred from the lids of the bottles shearing off against each other, so extra bubble wrap around the lids would be a good idea.

We shipped our freight to Iceland, delivered direct to Isafjordur. We found two companies who freight to Iceland:

1. We used Samskip, The Maltings, Silvester House, Silvester Street, Hull HU1 3HA (tel: 01482 322399, fax: 229529).
2. The other company is Eimskip whose UK agents are MGH Ltd. Middle Platt Road, Immingham, South Humberside. DN40 1AH (tel: 01469 571880).

There are other shipping companies, however they mostly sell space on these ships plus a commission. 6-700Kg of freight will cost » £250 one way, insurance is 1% of its value.

Expeditions to the Greenland National Park (N Greenland) are required to bring firearms and polar bear deterrents. Within the National Park a firearms licence is mandatory, outside the park a licence is only needed for expeditions of over 3 months.

Licences are issued by the Chief Constable, PO Box 1006, DK-3900 Nuuk, Greenland (tel: +299 21164, fax: +299 24194). The permit costs DKK840 for semi or fully automatic weapons, otherwise it is free.

We hired a gun from Air Iceland, however it is debatable whether we needed one. Polar bears are usually found on the coast where they can find food (seals rather than humans?). Since we were not skiing to the coast there was a very low chance of seeing one. In 1996 we did not take a gun.

The Danish Polar Centre issues a statement that you have to persuade an insurance company to sign. They require Search and Rescue insurance for the expedition as a whole of DKK500,000 (DKK900,000 inside the National Park) and in addition require air ambulance cover for DKK250,000 per person. The companies we approached were the following:

The main map series (Dansk Geodaetic Survey 1:250 000) was surveyed in the 1930s with little change since then, so they are pretty inaccurate. The area is covered on 68 Ø.3 Kangerdlugssuaq. Amazingly enough you can also buy them from Stanfords in London (tel: 0171 836 1321)

Aerial photographs of the area were taken in August 1981 and are good, however the lens used is quite wide angle so mountains near the edge are distorted. We used photographs 778 and 396 in the 68 Ø.3 Kangerdlugssuaq area.

We laminated our maps in A4 sheets (back to back), to stop them disintegrating.

Magnetic declination is a huge 35° W in East Greenland!

We used Aviation fuel in 1996, however the stoves were constantly getting blocked. Steve Brailey’s group had the same problem in 1998. Unleaded petrol worked much better. The fuel was airdropped in Sigg bottles. Because of the fuel bottle breakages we were rationed with 1L of fuel per day for the group, but this was not enough to melt snow with. We got around this by melting snow in barrels in the sun. I would recommend 1.25-1.5L per day for 8 people.

For 8 people we needed 2 stoves, 3 3L pans (and occasionally a 2L pan) to cook our menu.

We were lucky to be given most of our food for free. We are very grateful to the following companies who supported us:

A list of equipment taken on the expedition is given in an appendix.

We are very grateful to the following companies for supporting our expedition:

We were delighted with the clothing and equipment they supplied, which is reviewed below.

We took three Terra Nova tents (2 Quasars, Quasar etc) and a North Face West Wind tent. All had snow flaps added. In 1996 we had quite serious blizzard conditions, with strong winds and enough snow to completely bury the tents. As a result we recommend the following features:

• Geodesic design. This prevented the tents collapsing when buried in snow.
• Spacious. We slept 2 to each of these tents, so it would be comfortable to be tent bound. Being able to sit up is nice
• 2 entrances. Usually one side of the tent gets buried first.

By hollowing out the snow underneath the large bell end of the quasar etc. you could actually close the inner tent before you stepped outside

The tents were not tested by the weather this year. All performed well, however we preferred the Terra Nova tents to the West Wind for their strength.

Made by Steve Fisher and designed to be large but lightweight: it has no poles. We dug a 2m deep pit, which was 1.5m wide by 3m long. Snow bench seats ran along the hole and there was a sloping entrance at one end. The tent was just a roof with lightweight ripstop nylon walls (1.5m high) held up by 50cm snowflaps and 12 guy ropes.

We stuffed shopping bags with the foam packing to make warm seats.

This formed a very friendly (!) communal room which got hot from the sun and from the stoves. It kept the chefs warm when they were cooking and was a shelter in bad weather. I don’t understand why these tents aren’t more widely used.

Snow remover. The disadvantage of a flat topped tent is that in bad weather, snow builds up on the roof, which eventually makes the tent collapse. It is very difficult to dig the snow off the roof without falling in! To overcome this we took another nylon sheet the size of the roof, with handles at either end, which we placed over the tent. When the roof had 6" of snow on, you simply lifted off and replaced the sheet.

Each expedition member had a sledge, rather than taking rucksacks for load carrying. We took 4 Snowsled sledges, 2 Fjellpulken and 2 other fibreglass pulks hired from Air Iceland.

• Snowsled (260 litres). These were the sledges of choice. They were the largest and strongest and had the best harnesses. The metal traces fix directly into the harness rather than via a clip. This means the sledge doesn’t jolt you as much as you walk along. The sledge bags are closed with a zip so you can seal out bad weather. The sledges have carrying handles on the side so you can more easily carry the sledge over meltwater streams.
• Fjellpulken (180 litres). We didn’t rate these as highly as the Snowsled, missing the features above. However they are still decent sledges. Their two advantages are that the runners on the sledge are the same width as your skis so it is nice to follow in their tracks and because the sledge trace is clipped to the harness the sledge ‘locates’ more easily in the tracks you are following.
• Hire Pulks (150 litres?). Hired from Air Iceland. They were fine, although not as large or quite as robust as the Snowsled or Fjellpulken pulks

The sledges doubled as wardrobes and drying racks at camp, by propping up the traces with your ski poles.

Hiring Sledges. Sledges are not cheap, so we looked long and hard for places to hire them. You need to ask early as the sledges may be stored in another country and groups tend to hire them well in advance.
1. Arcturus Expeditions hired us Fjellpulken sledges at £40 each. Conveniently for us they were kept with Air Iceland in Akureyri. Catherine Cartwright, PO Box 850, Gartocharn, Alexandria, Dumbartonshire, G83 8RL (tel: 01389 830 204)
2. Fridrik at Air Iceland has several sledges to hire from Akureyri
3. British Schools Exploring Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR (tel: 0171 591 3000)
4. Snowsled. Sometimes they have sleds for hire.

Ortilieb bags. These rubberised rucksack liners made perfect sledge bags. The sledges got wet inside during bad weather and these bags kept our spare clothes dry. The bags have a special closure system and are made from heavy-duty material that makes them completely waterproof, even if immersed in water. Several people had a 100L bag (£20).

4 expedition members used Asnes Sondre Telemark Skis with Rotterfeller 3-pin bindings, the other 5 used similar metal edged telemark skis hired from the Free Heel Ski Co at Glenmore (01479 861253) with a Salomon SNS cross-country binding. Generally they worked fine, however we had a few problems:

• Rotterfeller bindings. You need to be careful to locate the 3 pins into the holes in the boot. After 3 expeditions of ‘gopster’ style, Rupert's pins ripped through the front of his boots and the skis fell off regularly. Ideally, a Riva binding or a Rotterfeller binding with cables would prevent this happening. …otherwise look after your boots!
• SNS bindings. These are weaker than the type above and all 4 bindings broke after falls where the boot twisted out of the binding. Repairs were possible with wire.

Rupert’s skis had fishscales which allowed him to ski up moderate inclines. Because he didn’t have to stop to put on skins or wax, he moved faster on the way to the climb.

Our 35mm Pomoca skins were perfect for the job. However we needed more skins glue! Two or three large tubes would have been the right amount for 6 weeks.

We used the Royal Marines wax system: wet and dry! This is simple to use and cheap (available from most Army Surplus stores)

We didn’t want to be restricted to certain routes because we were short on gear, so we took fairly large racks:

Members also each brought an Alpine Harness, 2 screwgates, belay device, long and short prussik, 2 climbing axes, crampons, rock boots, chalk bag and helmet

Since we found ice routes up to V, Vertige axes are a good idea for this area. Most people took Grivel 2F crampons, which were fine, except for the usual balling up problems. 350m of abseil tat would have been enough (we used 300m).

Because different people have their favourite clothing system, everyone took what they were used to. Clothes suitable for Scotland or the Alps are fine for Greenland, if anything it is warmer than you expect! A full personal kit list is given in an Appendix.

Because we didn’t need rucksacks for load carrying most people used 50L Alpine sacks. It was nice not to have to carry the extra weight of a large sack.

Lyon equipment kindly donated us 8 pairs of Julbo Spectron X8 glacier glasses, which we used on the expedition for skiing and climbing. We were very pleased with the glasses: they were comfortable to wear (e.g. Tom opposite on Haystooks), the lens colour was neutral and pleasing to look through, and they were well ventilated for skiing. Their only problem was that the side flaps had flimsy attachments that broke on 4 pairs.

East Greenland generally has fine stable summer weather. In 1996 we had 16 days of tent-bound weather during 8 weeks: this included several rather nasty blizzards. In 1999 we had 8 tent bound days out of 4 weeks. This year we had good weather with only 6 days tent bound in 5.5 weeks

According to folklore, the early summer in Greenland is more stable than the late summer. Several successful expeditions have visited the area from mid-May. We were advised that generally the latest time to visit the area is mid-August, after which the weather begins to deteriorate. However our expedition just north of Ammassalik in 1996 lasted until the end of August; we had our best weather then.

Note: the weather was recorded when we were climbing, which sometimes was at night. See Appendix 1 for details

At the end of the expedition the weather closed in two hours before our scheduled collection, so it was good to have a satellite telephone to confirm the Twin Otter was not coming! We were then snowed in for 2 days…

The weather was quite warm during the expedition, which gave poor north face snow conditions. Generally snow conditions were stable (even if soft), with few avalanches; however warm weather on Jul 1,2 caused numerous North face avalanches during the ‘night’.