10 May

An early morning start after finishing packing the night before. James and Jessica picked me up at 6am to take me to the airport. It's just possible to get to the airport by public transport at that time in the morning, but it leaves no margin for error. Given the sort of error I made last time I went to the airport, I decided a friend's car was much safer. J & J have a New Beetle. I did wonder if the skis would go in, so I had taken them around the night before. They did, but only just. The beetle also has a tiny boot so my two big sacks were a problem, one going onto the back seat.

I checked in without a problem. I never got to see the weight, but I must of been way over the weight limit of 20kg. My flight was a SAS to Copenhagen and then an Icelandic Air to Keflavik. One of the other expedition members was also on the flight from Copenhagen so I asked the check-in person if she could seat us together? Nope, she did not have access to flights from Copenhagen - I would have to get my seat changed in Copenhagen. As usual skis cannot go via the normal luggage conveyor so I had to put them onto an outsized trolley. It's the wrong time of year for skiers so I did wonder if I would see them again in Iceland and what the repercussions of them not turning up would be. It all turned out OK though. A quick wander around the duty free shops - I'd lost my pen knife so needed by buy another Swiss Army one. That's no problem in any Swiss airport. A little harder was trying to get some black and white APS film. I had only recently found out it existed at all. It was mentioned on Kodak's web pages. Sometimes mountain scenes look good in back and white so I though I would try a roll. One of the camera shops had some and it does not cost much more than colour. It's interesting technology. It says on it that it's developed using the same process as colour film, so that will keep the development costs down. Makes sense really, given the low volume of black and white nowadays.

It's a short flight to Copenhagen; 1 hour 15 minutes. My feet got warm inside plastic boots. They are big and bulky and I already had my ski boots as checked luggage. Another pair of boots would of definitely given me weight problems. Copenhagen airport never seems to change much. I've been to that airport probably a dozen times now, but never as a destination, just transit to somewhere else. I should visit the city sometime.

Petter was easy to identify. I said I would be the one with plastic boots and a slight limp. He turned up also in plastic boots and with a big camera slung around his neck. He flashed his Gold SAS airmiles card at the gate desk attendant and quickly got his seat changed. He is a lecturer at the University of Bergen in Norway and runs his own Hi-Tech business. He does lots of travelling around and had lived in the States for a couple of years. While travelling around on business he climbs what ever mountains are near. He was also a National Cross Country Ski Champion in his younger days. He must have been in his mid fifties. My first impression was that he talked a lot, wanted to impress upon people all the mountains he had climbed and how good a skier he was. My first impressions weren't wrong and at times everyone else just wanted to escape from him to get some peace. He was put into his place at one point though, in terms of the mountains people had climbed.

Landing in Keflavik was into bad weather. There was a large amount of cloud and on the ground it was misty and drizzling. Visibility must of been about 1km. You could not see one end of the runway from the other. A big change from Switzerland, where it had been a hot, sunny morning when I left. Keflavik used to be the US airbase in Iceland. It was used as a way station during the wars on the way over to Europe. It's only in the past few years that it's been handed over to civilian use when the Americas left. Its 50km from Reykjavik, out on a peninsula. There is a regular bus services to the old airport which is on the edge of the capital and still services the domestic flights. The literature for the bus is funny. It claims the bus is "frequently on time" - well it took us to Reykjavik without a problem, depositing us at the domestic airport. From there we took a taxi to the guesthouse. The rest of the group bar one, another six, were flying in from Glasgow a couple of hours after us. Petter and I just waited in the guesthouse, waiting for their arrival, I even managed to get enough of a break from the talking to get a bit of sleep. I had been working hard at work to get the project into a state it was easy for the others to pick up once I had gone. I needed the sleep after the early morning was combined with the previous few late nights.

Around five the others arrived. They had had a few problems with their luggage on the bus. They had loaded it onto the bus and then found there were not seats left on the bus. The driver said no problem, just get onto the next one and the luggage would be waiting at the domestic airport bus station. When they got there, there was no luggage. There was no bus. It had gone on a tour of Reykjavik dropping people off at posh hotels. Fifteen minutes later it returned and, much to everyone's, relief it had all the luggage.

Of the seven I knew one, Paul. Paul was at Lancaster at the same time as me. He was in the Physics department doing a Ph.D. when I was PostDoc. We have climbed together, 2 weeks in the Swiss Alps two years ago and some bits in England. I had got Paul interested in this Greenland trip and then he had found out that one of his colleagues at work, in BNFL, was already on the trip. This colleague is John Starbuck, or more commonly known as Stary since there were two Johns. Stary is in his early 40s and has been on many expeditions all over the world. This was his 7th to Greenland so he knew the goings-on well. He has also done 6 of the '7 Summits'. These are the biggest mountains on each of the 7 continents. He just has the big one, Everest, to do. At this point he was already in Greenland on another expedition and would join us the next day.

I will introduce the others now as well. The second John is a Kiwi. Strange guy. He talked in bursts. He would be silent for a while, not taking part in a conversation, he would then chip in a noisy sentence and then stop dead for a long time. Also what he contributed was not always relevant. Over time we realised he was intelligent, full of facts and figures, mostly useless, but totally incapable of original thought and reasoning. How he managed his dairy farm I don't know. He also had done 6 of the '7 Summits', just missing the one on the European continent. He plans to do that later in 2000.

Alan was in his early 50s, a retired Higher Education Institute Administrator. He now lives in Hebden Bridge so he knew Haworth, my home town, etc. He had been to Greenland once before a couple of years ago and had been on many trips to Norway ski touring between the huts. He was probably the second best skier, after the Norwegian. He is an avid photographer and carried his medium format camera most places. Greenland is good for photographers because the sun is low in the sky for a long time in the evening giving good lighting conditions.

Glen comes from the South and runs his own tree surgeon business. Again he had been to Greenland before, once to do the biggest summit in Greenland, plus other peaks in that area and a second time to cross Greenland East to West over the Ice cap, from coast to coast. He has also done stuff in the Alps, Himalayas, and Northern Canada. He had the best sense of humor in the team and often had us laughing.

Gordon comes from Scotland and is thought to be 75. For his age he is very active and fit. He had been on a couple of trips to Greenland before, both ski touring/mountaineering and dog sledding. He is very quiet and quiet when he speaks, extremely polite, and puts his own capabilities down. We quickly came to realize that he was a bit slower than us, but he always got there, was confident he would get there and was happy to be left to get on with it at his own pace. An all round nice guy.

Last is Scott, the expedition leader. Leader is really the wrong word. He was provided by Tangent to run the show and is also a fully qualified mountain instructor. He was on hand to provide advice etc, but each member of the expedition was responsible for themselves and could do what they wanted. Scott lives in the Lakes and is a freelance instructor. He is quiet and laid back, but good at keeping things organized and doing what needs to be done.

Scott had an envelope for me. This contained the missing documentation I needed. It included a copy of the insurance, vouchers for the hostel, a map of Reykjavik and a letter. The letter was unexpected. It explained that there had been an accident on a previous expedition. A group of two Norwegians were on an independent expedition with Tangent. They had used Tangent's services for logistics, things like flights, getting equipment out there and food etc. They had flown out with another Tangent expedition that had spare seats on the plane and then gone off to do their own thing, separate from the group expedition. While skiing to a mountain they intended to climb, one of them had fallen down a crevasse and died. A rescue was in progress to retrieve the body. The letter also stressed the importance of practicing crevasse rescue techniques and being roped whenever crossing any ground that could be crevassed. It also said that solo trips were not permitted because off the unacceptable risk involved to the solo person and the extreme difficulty in finding such a person if something were to happen.

After introductions we went out for a meal in Reykjavik. Someone recommended a place called "Pots and Pans" and gave us a rough idea where it was. We eventually found it after hassling a couple of locals. This was our real first try at using English outside of the airport etc. and it turned out quite successful. I think that virtually every Icelandic person I talked to spoke English to a reasonable degree, much better than in Switzerland. You could hold a reasonable conversation with people in English. I never bothered asking if anyone spoke English, I just assumed they did. The food at the restaurant was good. It consisted of a salad bar with soup and bread and then a main course. You could eat as much from the salad bar as you wanted so, since this was probably the last 'real' food we would have for a while, we made good use of the unlimited fresh vegetables etc. For a main course I had a lamb steak which was really good. Lamb is rare in Switzerland for some reason and expensive so it made a nice change. I think we all avoided alcohol. It's very expensive. A half-litre bottle of beer is around 5 pounds!

Back at the hostel it was an early night. Most of us had had an early morning to catch flights and we had another early morning ahead of us for our first flight of the day. We had to be ready to leave at 7 o'clock so I set my alarm for 6.45.