Expedition Reports

Pre-expedition Reports
Iceland Transfer
Walking In
First Reports
Second Reports
Final Reports

Iceland Transfer Reports

Monday 19th July 2004
Transfer Report 1 written by Jayne Fitzsimmons

Well it is day 2 and the team has both made it safely to Iceland and survived a night of extortionate beer prices! Our journey started very early on Sunday morning with the drive to Glasgow airport, one or two of the members battling against the aftermath of their ‘send-off’ the night before. Mant thanks to Ash, Helen and Joe Snr for driving the buses.

With luggage weights all in order (phew!!) group photos taken and duty free purchased. Our next stop was Keflavik airport. From there we travelled by Paul Sanday tours to Hafnafjordur where we gained our first glimpse of Icelandic life, ‘very quite’. After dropping off kit at the comfortable hostel, where we were to spend the night, groups headed along the coast road into the town to investigate facilities and reported back that it cost over £5 for a half!

Rumours of a much cheaper bar in Reykevik, a 15 minute bus journey from the hostel, quickly spread. Most of the team ventured back into town to try out the local pizza and steak house, others decided to recce the culture that the city has to offer. An evening of 16” pizzas in town and Viking & Guinness at one of the city’s Irish Bars ensued. It was certainly a novelty to find that sunglasses were still required at 9pm! As the last of the team returned at midnight merry from the recitals of Pink Floyd & Jeff Banks by the live band, they were shocked to see that it was still daylight.

Despite a slight change in logistics, involving Chris, Andrea & Dick heading straight to Milne Land today rather than tomorrow, everything has run smoothly so far, as we currently wait for our Fokker 50 to take us to Constable Pynt, Greenland. So whilst the rest of the team spend an evening fighting midges, the advance party of three will camp out on the beach of the island, taking turns with the rifle to watch out for Polar Bears!

Transfer Report 2 written by Trevor Morton.

One of most peoples ideas of coming in to land on an island in a cold climate Is flying over frozen fjords full of icebergs, and for us this was very much the case! Once we left Constable Pynt we were generally above the thick cloud base. It was then after we descended bellow the clouds to land that we saw ice bergs below. We touched down on a sandy landing strip and after emerging from the Fokker 50, collected personal gear and set up a camp 100m away from the hangers by the landing strip. This left a small crew to load an amount of gear on to the soon to land twin otter light aircraft. Once camp had been erected the otter flew in and soon left with Dick, Andrea and Chris to Milne land to establish base camp on the korridoren glacier and fend off polar bears. The remaining 26 sorted through food and gear and made three piles to go with people the following morning. Once the food for the travel to base camp was issued and we had all been fed and watered we all had the evening to relax. Temperature is around 9C and drizzle soon started once we started cooking. We are all hoping for a good day tomorrow for the two day walk-in.