The drama continues - final push to Kangerlussuaq

Here's Anna's promised update outlining the final few hours of the team's marathon journey. The message came through to Patricia MacCormack despite a very dicky satellite phone.

Here I am sitting by the window struggling with the satellite phone that is behaving erratically.

Normally, the rainfall here is 25mm but it is raining now and there are millions of those little insects, called mosquitoes, buzzing around. Their bites are not pleasant!

To say that the past three days have been horrendous is an understatement.

The day before yesterday we probably covered 10kms as the crow flies but, in reality, it was a lot more. Likewise, with our final 4kms, the most challenging of the lot. Imagine ice-walls bigger than a tall house!

The terrain was really rough, with rivers in between - and Karen being so low to the ground she was scared as she approached puddles of water. The others were skiing across springs. Karen kept falling so I took my skis off and put my crampons on. There I was for two or three days, running behind Karen’s chair and holding on to stop her falling. Several times I landed face down, looking into a crevasse, or just stopping myself from falling down a crevasse. Sometimes I landed up to my thighs in a river. It was terrifying.

We were, of course, pulling our pulks. Sometimes Andy would be pulling, not only his pulk, but Karen as well. As we went up and down on the rough ground the pulks kept overturning or crashing into us from behind. I am covered in bruises. We made it through.

One hour after we reached land we saw the Foxy Ladies, sponsored by the Sun, who had kited from west to east and back again but who were hampered by lack of wind. They had to fly back to London today. Andy and I went up to help them down yesterday. Then one of them, Cathy, and I went back up for two pulks that we had to leave behind.

Yesterday as we stood on land watching the Foxy Ladies approach, a four-wheel vehicle drove up full of international tourists - including people from Pakistan. They saw us with our pulks and Karen’s ski-chair and asked if we had been in an accident and then they watched the Foxy Ladies. They had great value for their money with all the extra excitement thrown in free.

These four ladies had very different equipment from ours in their lycra leggings and with two sets of everything. They had 17 kilos of food laid out in their tent. They had actually had only two hours of kiting due to the wind situation. They had been dropped on to the ice from a helicopter on the east coast . And who was on the ‘copter but our friend, Ben Saunders! See www.bensaunders.com (See his name on our team website).

We are staying in an old military base, sparse and spread out. We will be spending the next two days sorting out our kit before flying out to Reykjavik on Wednesday. Mum is going to try to sort out flights for the six of us to London for Thursday.

It was good to have a wash last night but the eating place was quite a walk away.

Although I say it myself, this is a big achievement. The last three days have been horrendous. Two of the pulks got broken with all the turning over.

Now we just hope our aching bodies will mend quickly.

Love from us all.

Anna
Monday, 5th June, 2006