Greenland Expedition 2010

Since Terje’s knee has not improved after a day of resting and medication, we’ve had to make the decision to abort the expedition. As of now, Terje is not able to pull a pulk, and it is naturally too much for Christian to pull all four of them. We therefore have to be evacuated by helicopter. Right now the weather is not good enough for that to be possible, so we’re waiting for better conditions.

In the meantime we’re stuck in the tent, having a quite hard time, since we’re both feeling rather bad about not finishing the expedition. We’re corresponding with the authorities on Greenland, and we’ll hopefully be flown out tomorrow, if the weather allows it.

In the beginning of the day Terje’s knee felt fine, and we were very optimistic for the first stretch. But after a while it started getting worse, and after the third stretch we had to make a full stop and set up camp, since Terje was no longer able to move with the pulks at all. He then had cinsiderable pain in the knee.

We chose to take a resting day where Terje took Voltaren and rested in the tent. We’ve been in contact with the Danish authorities and informed them of the situation, and we’re keeping contact with them, discussing how to solve this. More information to come.

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The day didn’t turn out exactly like we expected. Yesterday Terje started to feel some discomfort in one of his knees. During today’s two first stretches the pain increased. By lunchtime, after 5 stretches, the pain was so bad that Terje couldn’t walk. Christian dug into the first-aid kit, and found Voltaren and Paralgin Forte. After 20 minutes the pain was still bad enough that Terje wanted to stop.

Then Christian took over one of Terje’s pulks. He struggled like an animal in difficult conditions and deep snow with the three pulks. Behind him Terje pulled the one pulk he had left. After six stretches it was again flat enough for Terje to pull both his pulks alone, but this only lasted for a little over one stretch before the uphill terrain was back. Again Christian took over one pulk for Terje. This time Terje had to call full stop after 20 minutes, since he was in too much pain to pull even one of the pulks, and we set up camp.

We are now discussing alternatives. The plan is that Terje will take a very high dose of Voltaren as an acute treatment, and we’ll see how it looks tomorrow.

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Today’s first stretch brought us out of the icefall. That’s worth celebrating. The icefall has been a bit harder than we anticipated, and we’re happy that we now have it behind us. After this we moved into an area that is tilted slightly upwards, and has a flatter surface.

We’ve covered 231 altitude meters and eighth lengths today, and we felt this in our legs tonight. During the day we passed crevasses big enough to swallow a bus, but the snow bridges are thick, and we feel quite safe. We steered towards DYE II today, and broke off 10 km before Dog Camp, a known point on our route. We’re now about 150 km from the abandoned radar station.

Finally we want to say thank you to Clara for the great cake, it really saved us today when we were about to set up camp and felt completely worn out.

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