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October 4th 2009:
Basecamp placed UP in the Spitsbergen Mountains.
My livingroom tent UP at the basecamp place.
During August/September 2009 I spend 35 fielddays in the Spitsbergen mountains to set
out depots and to place all the necessary equipment/food for the first 2 months (January & February) close to my basecamp.
It was great to get in action after so many months of preparing at home and in Norway.
After 4 long sails with a fully loaded zodiac I got al the equipment/food (about 1700kg) at the right place.
It was great to have the big Vaude Arena Dome tent at camp 1 close to the fjord to sort out all equipment inside the tent.
Camp 2 was close at the glacier, I used my orange Vaude tent (Mark 5) at this place.
See the pictures below.
My livingroom tent UP at the basecamp place.
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Camp 3 was placed on the highest point of this trip, on the glacier at 700 meters a.s.l..
The Vaude K2 tent was having a hard time here, but it did survive a fast incoming bad weather front of 10 hours heavy winds with ice-rain.
See the pictures below.
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On camp 4, which is my basecamp in 2010, I used the small Vaude Space Explorer tent and the big Arena Dome tent. This big tent will be my living room tent for next year. See the pictures below.
With a normal backpack you can walk/ski in one day to my basecamp. But with 500/600 kilo equipment/food it takes much longer time and another approach is needed to be successful. On every campsite the tent was up for 10 days or longer.
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I was super motivated to reach my basecamp with all the equipment/food. I did feel that I was getting stronger after the first weeks out in the fields. This was great. The views were awesome. I did get all the summer and the first winter weather. It was great to see how fast the landscape can change during 35 days in the field. The winter did start in the mountains, at fjordlevel the rivers started to dry out or became frozen, the birds were leaving Spitsbergen.
The livingroom tent with one of the expedition flags, Gizeh & Tarantellen mountain at the background.
I knew from the start that it would be an enormous job to bring everything up to the basecamp, and it was, but ended very successful.
Almost everything is in place now, the 2010 trip can start...........
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