After a night of icy howling wind, I emerged from the safe cocoon of my fleece lined sleeping bag to a surprising calm morning. The snow walls protected everyone’s tents brilliantly!

I’ve been asked what the daily routine looked like so here goes:

❄️ Wake up at 7am.⏰

❄️ Try to drink 1L of water before breakfast.🥤

❄️ Help reboil the snow we melted the night before and filled our thermos flasks with to have 2 -3 litres of water supply for the day.🧊

❄️ Breakfast: porridge - I’ve decided that I’ll opt for a savoury breakfast in future.🍚

❄️ Morning ablutions, putting in contacts, applying medicated talcum powder instead of anti-persperirant and changing into our ‘daywear’.🪥

❄️ Pack up our pulk and sleeping bags, dismantle the tent and pack our sledges.⛺️

❄️ Quick group powwow.💬

❄️ Ski for 50/45 min with a 10 min break, except for lunch which was a slightly longer break.⛷

❄️ Lunch: part of our snack bag for the day and hobnobs. My snack bag contained my chopped home-made energy bars, chopped protein and granola bars, dried fruit, dark chocolate, seeds and nuts.🥜

❄️ End the day with enough sunlight to put up the tent and sweep bits of ice away off the tent floor.🧹

❄️ Assemble the stove and take turns melting snow for our water supply.👩🏽‍🍳

❄️ Change into our ‘evening wear’ aka dry clothes stowed in dry sacks/in our sleeping bags.👚

❄️ Hang and dry our wet base layers, socks and hats – who knew that filling a water bottle with hot water and then pulling socks over it could them so quickly and entertain us as well!🧦💨

❄️ Eat, evening ablutions and sleep aka my fave part of the day! 🛌

Day 5 was quite special. We decided to eat our dinners together as a group rather than in our individual tents. So, whilst some of the group was boiling water others were helping to build an open igloo/ seating area for dinner. Helen and Morton entertained us with polar bear stories and tips on how to tell the difference between a disinterested polar bear vs one that has decided to have you for dinner 😂😳.