Up and packing on an arctic expedition. ‘The morning ritual’

A poor night’s sleep

Turning, I make it through the night. To my mind, I lay on a different side every thirty minutes. Then again my back, then again my left side, then again my right side. No, you can’t say I sleep like I sleep at home. But then again, I’m not home either. I am lying in my sleeping bag in the tent and outside it is minus twenty-five degrees.

Every now and then I jolt awake. Then something lies under my back. My glove or a sock. The clothes I brought with me to dry do get dry, but also keep me from sleeping. Irritating is that. Sharing a sleeping bag with smelly clothes. It is no different.

Again I wake up. Do I really have to? No, you can’t. I don’t want to. No. I decide it is not so and sleep on. Five minutes later, I am awake again. Urge. Yes, it is real. I have to pee. But no, I don’t want to. That sleeping bag is nice and warm and outside. Well, outside it’s really mega-cold. No, I don’t want to. My body says go. My head says: stay. My head wins.

When nature calls…you have to go

For five minutes. This cannot go on. Will I now spend the rest of the night tossing and turning? I just have to get out if I want to catch any sleep this night.

I put on my hat and loosen my shoulder strap in the sleeping bag. I unzip the sleeping bag and quietly get up. To my left are my tent slippers. Fine to go out on that for a while. In the dark I can’t find them right away, and I don’t want to turn on a light to put my tent mate to sleep. Got it. I put on my slippers, unzip the tent and step outside. I zipped up my sleeping bag so the heat doesn’t disappear immediately.

View from the tent in the early morning during an Arctic expedition

Carefully I step onto the snow. The cold is actually not too bad. Well. I’m only 5 seconds out.

Pats, there I am. Clumsily, I trip over a guy rope with my sleepy head. Well, surely that one was there before me. My hand lands in the snow and clumsily I maintain the rest of my balance. Sigh … what a hassle. Get up, walk two steps and pee. I’m really not going to walk all the way to the restroom spot. I want to get back into the sleeping bag.

I look at my watch. Twenty to seven it is. Jeez. Only twenty more minutes of sleep. I wanted it to be two in the morning. Now I would have a quiet night ahead of me. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Peeing is fast. And before I get really cold, I crawl back into the tent. I open my sleeping bag and close my eyes for a moment longer. Another 18 minutes of rest.

Getting up at -20

At seven o’clock my alarm goes off. Both on my phone, which is next to my head in the hood of my sleeping bag, and my wristwatch. For example, I have to put out two. The greatest chance of waking up. Oh well, I was half awake anyway, so let’s wake up completely.

Getting up early during winter camping in Greenland

From my sleeping bag, I grab my food cup with my breakfast mix in it. I unscrew the lid and add hot water from my thermos. Put the lid back on and shake well. In five minutes I can eat. I use the time to take off my short T-shirt and put on my long shirt, which is next to me in the sleeping bag. Also, still in my sleeping bag, I put on my long underpants. And while my hands are with my legs, I also put on my socks.

Decorating in a cold tent

I grab my sweater. This has been under my head as a pillow during the night. Sweater also goes on.

If I move further out of the sleeping bag later, the heat will come from my sleeping bag and it will melt the frost on the tent fabric. If I do nothing against this, it will rain in the tent. Not tasty and downright inconvenient all that water on my stuff. To avoid that, I grab a small cloth and wipe down the inner tent. The frost sticks to the cloth and I shake the mix of snow and ice off the cloth outside my inner tent.

Breakfast in 5 minutes

My breakfast is ready. I deliberately added a little more water. So I get a drinking breakfast that I can drink right away. No spoon for it. I quickly drink the whole thing and grab my two coffee powder sachets. These I empty into the eating cup. Add water and shake. This is dishwashing “Arctic Style. Because the dinner cup is still warm from breakfast, the coffee stays hot for a long time. I take a sip and put the lid back on. The rest of the coffee-wash mix I drink during the morning when I’m busy doing other things.

Meanwhile, it is a quarter past seven. High time to light the burner. The water I used this morning I want to replenish. I want to start the day with two full and warm thermoses. I light the burner in the front tent and put a kettle of snow on the fire. I pour in the last bit of water from my thermos to speed up the melting process.

Meanwhile, I can take a moment to put on my pants. This one is next to me and my tent partner. My coat goes on as well. Finally, I put my down coat over this. In the morning it is still cold and I don’t move much. So the key is to hold the heat I have.

Easy to clean up and make your bed

Now it’s a matter of cleaning up. I put everything I need in the tent in my sleeping bag. My sleeping shirt, my tent slippers, my hot water bottle, my pillow. All of these things I keep in my sleeping bag. The arctic bed that holds my sleeping bag and mattress can now be closed.

I divide the rest of my gear between the tent bag and arctic bedding bags. My can of nuts goes in the compartment of the arctic bedding. My thermos will soon join that. I then put my second thermos in the main compartment of the arctic bedding. Just like my down coat when I move. I also put my mittens and gloves in my arctic bedding. In fact, this bed goes on top of my sled. So anything I want to have on hand quickly during the day I put in that big blue “body bag

My coat as a gathering place

In my coat I put my compass, pen and notebook, GPS and walkie-talkie. In the pockets of my pants, I stuff sunscreen and lip balm. I also put wet wipes in my pocket. 30 minutes after coffee I’m sure I’ll have to leave another big message. That’s when moist wipes that aren’t frozen come in handy.

Melting snow and boiling water during winter camping

Water boils. Quickly I grab my thermos and put in the just-boiling water. I don’t want it to boil all over. Before you know it, the tent is then turned into a Turkish bath. Moisture everywhere and cold as a result.

Immediately I refill the kettle with new snow and put this back on the fire. My tent partner also wants water.

Preparing tea and soup for the day

I put a tea bag in a thermos bottle. Just a bag for a cup. If I let that sit for an hour, that’s enough tea flavor for the whole bottle. In the other thermos, I put a bag of cup-o-soup and a bouillon cube. Better now than later. Now I am still in the tent and can do everything easily. If I am outside then the cold makes it more difficult and slower. And imagine if the wind blows hard? Then I’m glad I worked a little ahead. While I’m still drinking and eating, I put another energy bar in my pocket. Better to be shy with it than to be shy with it.

Well. I’m actually kind of done in that tent. Quarter to eight and now it’s waiting for the snow to melt for the second thermos.

Dry shoes with VBLs

I already put on my vapor barier liners over my socks and put a thick sock over that.

This whole thing I put in the inner shoe of my shoe. I’ll be curious to see how long I have cold feet today. Now my feet are still warm. But the cold liners and then the cold shoes are only too happy to pull that cold out of my feet. When the liners are on I slide them into my expedition boots. Tie laces and close zipper. So. I’m ready to go. On to the outside.

When I go out, I take my tent bag with me. Don’t walk empty-handed.

I put the tent bag two feet from the tent. Carefully I also pull the actic bed out of the tent. I don’t want it to knock over the burner that is still happily cooking.

I look around and see some movement in the rest of the camp. Many tents are still closed. Further on, someone is peeing. Good idea. I also go again.

The stoves did their job

When I return to the tent, my tent partner has just filled his thermos and turns off the burner. Quarter past eight. Wow, that’s almost a record. Meltdown went quickly today. Within an hour, two thermoses filled and one more warmed up.

Next to me is my sled. A thick layer of snow came over it during the night. I actually only recognize it because I knew the sled was next to the tent. Carefully I kick it to see where the sled’s outline is. Found. I pull the sled out of the snow, take out the sled bag and carefully shovel off the snow. I distinctly remember doing this once at minus twenty. I kicked a little too hard and the cold caused the sled to split in two. Not a good action.

The sled is clean of snow and I put the sled bag and tent bag on it. I also put my arctic bedding nearby. But since the tent has to go with it, I’m not securing anything yet.

Tent after a night in the winter cold of Greenland

By the way, my sleigh bag holds the stuff I don’t need in the tent. Consider food for the rest of the trek, trash, crampons, pickles, glacier rope, repair equipment. But fair is fair. My tent bag is the heaviest. In it is food for two days (In case I wake up and there is a snowstorm), communication tools, power bank, first aid kit, clean clothes and my toiletry bag.

Tearing down tent n the winter cold

I walk around the tent and already unhook the pegs of the outer tent. If it is windy, I leave the pegs on the windward side in the snow as long as possible. And in storms I don’t untie anything but stay in the tent.

My tent partner empties the large IKEA cabinet that the snow was in to melt and puts the burner, pot and kettle in here. The fire blanket and burner board also go in this bag. This in its entirety disappears into his sleet bag. Safely stored in the sleigh bag. There should actually be no unloaded items in or on the sled. If the sled falls over, the chances of something falling off and disappearing i the snow are very high. Sin to lose some and not necessary at all.

I enter the tent again to check that it is empty. That’s it. The brush to clean clothes and shoes and the cloth for the frost are as again in the transport bag for the tent. With my gloves, I go over the inner tent. The snow and ice that comes loose falls in front of me on the groundsheet and a little falls into my neck. Brrr. Pretty fresh. With my gloves on my hands, I also wipe the ground of the tent clean. Before we clean up the tent any further, we want it as clean as possible. Snow in the tent can melt during the day and then freeze again. With the worst case scenario resulting in the inability to pitch the tent.

Rolling up the tent, not folding it

We break down the tent. Remove the pegs, detach the tent fabric from the inner tent and put it in the transport bag beforehand. We loosen the tent poles at the end but do not remove them from the tent. We slide the poles and the tent side by side, and on a third of the pole we pull it apart slightly and fold the pole inward. Once this is done, we roll up the tent into a small package that can easily fit into the transport bag. Tent in. Zipper up. Done.

Sleeping bags are drying in the snow in the morning

I put the transportation bag on my sled. Arctic bedding on top and I fasten the sled’s straps. Four straps hold the whole thing in place. Bags, transport bag and bedding. I try to keep everything as compact and as low as possible. During the day, this saves the chance of this whole scaffolding falling over.

Cold start for winter relocation

I’m actually ready to go. I grab my skis and knock the snow out of the bindings. I open the binding and place the skis side by side in the direction in which I am about to leave. Sticks I poke next to it in the snow. Ready for battle. I zipper up the arctic bed and take out my mittens. I have these on during the day. My gloves disappear into the arctic bedding and at the same time I take off my down coat and put it into the arctic bedding as well. Ready to grab again during the break. I put the cord of my gloves around my neck. Gloves on. My belt is about this. The ropes of the sled are still attached. I kick my one shoe against the back of my other shoe. In order to get the snow out of the sole. I click my boot into my ski, bend over and snap the binding closed. My other shoe I kick clean against the ski I just put on. I also secure this shoe. I grab my ski poles and stick one in the air. As a sign that I am ready to leave. Ten to nine. Pretty neat time.

Cold start in Antarctica. Down coat off Sweater on.