May 14

Breakfast followed the pattern established over the last couple of days, including Benny's "Bad news, no flight today, maybe tomorrow". I think that day we set the record for the longest breakfast. We just sat around talking about the possibilities for the trip, when we would get out of here and up north, etc. The weather forecast did not look good for the next few days so despondency started to set in, especially since the weather where we wanted to go to was good. We only left the dining room at 11am when the cleaner wanted to mop the floor.

We wanted to do something useful with the day so we decided to do some crevasse rescue practice. Given the little information we knew of the accident, it sounded like a good idea to practice as much as possible just in case. The members of the team who lived in the UK had already had one practice at the pre-expedition meet. I had practiced rescuing my rucksack over my balcony and done some reading so was reasonably happy I knew the techniques.

It's during practices like this you get an idea of the technical knowledge of people. Would they be able to get you out of a trouble if the worst happened? I was quite surprised with the results.

I paired off with Paul. Given that Paul is a member of the Wasdale Mountain Rescue team and had been in the Alps a few times it was just revision for him and me. Paul knew the ropes better than I did, because he uses the techniques for MRT.

We found a good place to practice. The air base has a big digger which had made a trench in the snow behind the accommodation block. The trench was 8ft deep and right angled sides. Paul just walked straight over the edge and fell into the trench. The rope between us came tight before he hit the soft snow at the bottom and I held him. I was surprised how easy it was to hold the fall. The rope digs into the snow of the edge which gives lots of friction. I could just lean back while I put in a dead man and attached the rope to it. A deadman is a metal plate you bury in the snow. They are about the size of a dinner plate but are surprisingly solid when in good snow. With Paul attached to that I could then move about freely to set up a pulley system to pull Paul out. Once Paul was rescued we swapped places so that Paul could rescue me. Using a pull system like this is normally the worst case scenario. It means the person cannot help himself out without some assistance from above. Normally you can climb out with the help of the rope. Another way out is to pass down two stirrups. You stand in one while the person at the top shortens the other. You then stand up in the shortened one while the other is shorted and slowly you climb you way out like climbing a ladder.

These were definitely the most realistic conditions I had practiced in. I've practiced in snow, or had a simulated fall over the edge to hold. Also the weather was deteriorating, blowing snow at us so it was all in gloves while trying not to get too cold. It was all very reassuring I could hold someone falling in without being dragged in myself and then be able to get someone else out.

The others were struggling a bit so Scott turned it into a lesson for them. I was surprised how little some of the others knew. Kiwi John has been up the biggest mountain on the planet and lots of other big ones, but he knew little rope work. He was even not sure how to tie the rope to his harness. He must of relied on the guides to look after him when rope work was involved. Glen quickly got the hang of the procedure. Gordon and Alan were OK, just a bit unsure of themselves. Petter claimed he knew all sorts of rescue techniques but when it came to it, he was not so good and got it wrong a couple of times. I came to the conclusion that if we were going into badly crevassed areas I would want Paul, Scott or Glen on the other end of the rope.

Glen is down the 'crevasse' and John sets up to rescue him with words of advice from the others.

After lunch we did the second thing to make the day productive, rifle practice. To get a Permit to go into the Greenland National Park the expedition had to carry a rifle. The Danish authorities insist on this. Polar bears live on the Coast of Greenland and a number of people have been killed by bears. Apparently most Greenlandic people won't leave home without a rifle. Then again most Greenlanders live on the coast. The bears don't go inland too far since their food source is in the sea. There is no food inland, except in towns. Dronning Louse Land is a long way inland so we thought it would be safe, but still the permit required we be capable of using the weapon. So we asked Benny if it was OK to hold the practice at the edge of the base.

The rifle we had was very old, 1920s! Paul Walker, the expedition organiser, has a friend who lives in Scoresbysund, a school teacher. It was one of his guns we had. Trying to take a rifle in and out of Iceland is supposed to be a paperwork nightmare so Paul avoids this by using a weapon from Greenland. We had 20 rounds of which one each was allocated for a practice shot. We used a box and some tape to form a bulls eye target. This eye had been watching too much TV, it was a square, a much easier shape to make with tape. Since Petter had done military service when younger he put himself in charge of the rifle. We had already found out the safety wasn't safe - if you wiggled the trigger enough the safety would release itself and the weapon would fire. The age of the rifle suggested the mechanism was worn. Petter striped down the workings but could not make it any better. We had decided it was not safe to leave a shell in the barrel, we just loaded four into the cartridge. It's easy to load one into the barrel, just pull the bolt back, a shell pops up, push the bolt back into place and it's ready to fire.

Given our lack of experience with rifles we decided a range of 10 metres was realistic. More than that and it was quite likely we would miss the target and waste a shot. Closer than that and it's unlikely we could reload the rifle ready to take a second shot at the polar bear before it was on top of us. Petter took the first shot and was a little high of the bulls eye. With the rifle then safe, the empty shell in the barrel, he passed it over to Scott. Scott then reloaded the riflee, or tried to. He could not get the bolt back. It would rotate but not move back. He tried a bit more force and it would still not move. Petter took the rifle back and decided to strip it again. After taking a couple of screws out from the bottom he decided it was too cold to work outside so we all went inside. I put the kettle on while the others decided what to do. I was just taking a tea tray into the lounge when they discovered they had lost one of the screws! I decided to drink my tea rather than get involved in a needle hunt in a hay stack. It was snowing, so I guessed the screw was probably lost. The first search did not find anything. Then Glen had a bright idea of using a brush to brush the path and the area we had been standing on and actually found the screw.

Still that did not solve our primary problem, the jammed weapon. More force was applied to the bolt and is suddenly came out. Glen found a small piece of metal which he initially thought had caused the jam. We then realized the empty shell was still in the barrel. The little piece of metal had broken off the end of the bolt. It was the catcher, which is used to eject the shell from the barrel. The catcher hooks around the edge of the shell and pulls it out of the barrel when the bolt is pulled back. The shell had jammed in the barrel and we had applied sufficient force to break the catcher off rather than pull the shell out. We tried to push the shell out, with a straightened coat hanger down the barrel, but that did not work either. In the end we decided the rifle was useless and needed a gunsmith to repair it. Pity - the nearest was probably in Iceland or Nuuk, on the other side of Greenland.

Glen had an idea what had happened. The other shells looked worn. The shells are quite expensive and if you do a lot of hunting etc, it can become expensive. So what some people do is collect the used shells up and reload them. Each time the shell is fired it expands a little and has a bit more wear etc. We think the shell that Petter had fired had expanded to such an extent that it jammed, or even split.

This left us with a problem, no rifle. Scott told Benny and asked if the base had a rifle we could borrow. He said no, there were none he could lend out. Scott rang Paul back in the UK to see what he could arrange. Paul said he would try contacting his teacher friend. If no solution could be found we decided to just the take the broken rifle. It was unlikely any Danish authority we came across out there in the middle of nowhere was going to inspect the rifle in enough detail to find the problem.