For over two years now, the Arctic dream has been occupying a large portion of my life. In this period I have also moved from Oslo, bought a house in the countryside of Nøtterøy from the 1920s and our second child was born 1 1/2 years ago. It has also been a lot of work related travelling after the move, since I commute 100 kilometers to Oslo three days per week and also travel inside an outside Europe to meet with work clients. This has had tremendous consequences in my daily life, both positive and negative. Finally it came to a point where I had to choose what was most important to me, and I started questioning myself why I really wanted to fulfill this quest. In the end, I could not see any other reasons to complete the expedition but “looking good” and building a public reputation. These were simply not good enough to outweight the impact the preparations and expedition itself had for my Family.

I must admit that I really was afraid to tell Terje about my decicion, this late in the game. How would he take it? Would he be able to fulfill his dream? It has been four weeks since I informed him, and a lot of things has happened since then. Obviously, Terje was dissapointed, but I strongly feel that he understood and accepted my decision. We have discussed several scenarioes and Terje is not exactly the guy that postpones things.

Luckily, Terje is still going to cross Greenland in May 2010 and the Expedition has got a new member. I’m still 100% commited to support the Greenland Expedition 2010 and I wish for a successful experience without the big surprices.

Since March 2008 I have got into a training routine from not exercising at all for years. I have spent dozens of nights in tent, majority of them in Vinter time. In total, I have spent weeks hiking and skiing in the Norwegian mountains and countryside, I have attended Glacier training and later experiences. I also got my “Brattkort” in-doors climbing certificate last autumn, and I have been climbing weekly since.

Note! I may still publish blog posts here in the future if Terje allows me to .

- Petter

Thanks Mia!

(Photo: STML)

We learned a lot during this trip. We had plenty of issues with our equipment. Petter was struggling with his footwear and sleeping mattress. Myself with the satellite phone. Our new tent is smaller and a bit claustrophobic compared to the previous one. We intentionally did not bring enough fuel to actually heat the tent in the evenings. Because we have been training routinely at a higher pace than we usually hike in on skis, we moved too fast and expended ourselves too fast. We worked too hard with our sleds and became sweaty the two first days, resulting in both of us having trouble keeping warm during our brakes. But worst was our mistake during the planning. We had miscalculated the distance from start to finish. It was twice as long as we planned for. As we realized that we were not going to make it to the end point on time, we had to abort the trip early to avoid being stuck in the middle of the mountain without supplies the night before we planned to return to work.

All of these factors weighed heavily on our morale through the whole trip. At one point, energy reserves completely depleted, we briefly discussed if we actually had any business on the Greenland ice cap at all. Luckily – that type of attitude evaporates when one gets a warm meal and some rest. At this point we consider this a great learning experience and head on towards our goal undaunted.

You can see the few pictures we took in the photo album.