in bed... no moving today !

30/04/2014, day 12

Distance today : 0 km

Total distance : 505 km

Position : same as yesterday

Confidence, patience, willpower, caution...

These are words that my partner Sylvie sends us.

For us they don't have the same importance, according to the situation.

The willpower is probably the keystone of a long and labourious expedition. Our daily 100km target no matter what are the conditions is not a light challenge, specially after today spent fully in the tent. We therefore HAVE to stay motivated and constantly revive our willpower. Often, just to gain a few kilometers even though we're already tired and finished for the day. It's everyday a pretty long process to get out of the sleeping bags, pack everything and get going. Longer that what one could imagine actually !

Caution, is certainly the most complicated for me, in this occasion. It's obvious that we have to be cautious, and we are ! The risk taken, the hazard management, is very personal ; we often have different opinions there.

Today again we are in the storm. Several times we both thought of maybe taking off. But the work it would have been to get going kind of calmed down our will. Did we miss anything ? The winds are still gusting stronger than 60km/h, and it's still very humid. We would probably have transformed into ice cubes anyway...

Riders on the storm

29/04 day 11
Position: 65.379 N 47.100 W
Elevation: 2180 m
Total distance: 505 km
Distance today: 70 km
Hours kited 3h00

For tonight, Marc our meteorological router had announced a gentle storm. His advice was roughly: "Get the work done early, when the winds are still light, and make sure to tie down everything in time to get ready for the storm."
And while we were happy for this advice, and took it very seriously, we were at the same time a little sick of laboriously looping our biggest kites to grind little distances. So we rather did the opposite and waited for the increasing winds to get out our Beringer storm sails.
In barely 3 hours we kited about 55 km on the Beringer 8 m2 in steady winds of 50 km/h and 15 km on the Beringer 5 m2 with gusts up to 70 km/h. When we stopped, it was not without regret, as we quickly logged kilometers. But with strengthening conditions we started to worry about the resistance of the suspension lines of the sails with the heavy sleds. And most importantly, we needed to make sure we are still able to mount the tent.

The night was up to the forecast and our expectations. Despite a decent snow wall to protect the tent from the high winds, no sleep without earplugs.

The image shows Mika in the developing light blizzard. Even with better resolution, there wouldn't be much more to see. Its one of the particular things about these conditions, that we were kiting under stretches of perfectly blue sky, with the sun and clouds clearly distinguishable, while the surface is covered by a layer of thick driving snow.

The winds should weaken tonight and tomorrow, and we hope to take advantage of the wake of the storm. For the moment however (30/04) we are bound to the tent.

Beringer Skisails? These 'kites', developed by Wolf Beringer at least 30 years ago, have the particularity that the bar is directly connected to the bridles of only a few meters in length, that define the canopy, and without additional lines. Contrary to most current kites, the bar acts on the angle of attack of the canopy, rather than on the steering/brake back-lines. The direction of the Skisails is controlled by the torsion of the bar with respect to the wing. The control of the angle of attack with the bar provides direct control on the power of the wing. In strong conditions, this has the huge advantage that all traction can instantly be released. In addition, it takes less than a minute to take these Skisails down and packed. In combination with their excellent upwind performance, this makes for ideal storm sails. These advantages come at the price, that the Skisails cannot be 'worked' and looped to generate additional power in light conditions, due to the short lines and the particular steering system.

During his historic east-west crossing in 1888 Nansen already used conventional sails to aid progression. But the Beringer Skisails were most likely the first modern 'kite wings' used for a ski crossing of Greenland, when the Messner brothers stunned the world in 1993 (?) by covering the 1800 km from Isortoq to Qaanaaq, in barely more than one month.

80km... the daily routine

28/04/2014, day 10
Distance today : 83 km
Total distance : 435 km
Position : N64.748 W47.193, alt 2265m
Moving time : 7 hours
kites used today : Flysurfer speed 3 19

UUUrrghhh ! it doesn't go as well as it should... After a short night, and an early departure (around 11 am), we were epecting to "surf" on the western winds that our routeur announced. But this didn't happen : a weakly blowing wind, the fresh powder snow, and our very heavy pulkas made us struggle to get going. We constantly needed to loop the wings to progress : 3 loops per 100m. You can do the maths : how many loops for 83 km ? (the first one to send us the right answer will get a dedicated loop kilometer :-))

If the wind didn't allow us to use the 19m2 of wing, they were still strong enough to send us towards wrong direction at every loop we took ! As we are very stubborn we resisted this pattern, and forced ourselves to fight the wind. As a result our hips took it all, pulled by the wind one way, and by the pulkas the other way. That was a hell of a job ! 7 hours like this, progressing at a 10km/h average speed, how frustrating !

Hopefully the next days will be better...

PS : Rom (thanks, man) sent us your messages, We were delighted to read them after a hard days in the wild ; feel free to continue, it helps us a lot. Although it's hard to answer you or even to thank you personnally, it's been good to read from you, dear friends from the alps, from Grenoble, Annecy and everywhere else. We also read thoroughly your remarks about the blog (Thierry, Laurent, Varun...), and we'll try our best to keep them in mind. Thierry, we are thinking of you, of course. Scott/Admunsen ? Who lives will know ;-)

Melt lake

27/04/2014, day 9

Total distance: 352 km
Distance today: 82 km
Position: 64.0529 N 47.8048 W, alt 2090m

Once more we had a late start, and left only around 5 pm local time to take advantage of the better winds in the evening and the night. The last days, we had the impression, that the wind was alway better at night - probably due to the diurnal variation of the katabatic winds, which currently reinforce the easterly meteorological conditions. Today however we had regrets about this choice, nearly the entire day would probably have worked for kiting. 5 hours on our Speed 3 19 m2 and an uncounted number of kiteloops made us gain another 82 km. The winds were already veering to the south, and progression with tailwinds was not always easy.

For tomorrow, the forecast even announces westerly winds, so we will try to get going earlier for the fear they might be balanced by the katabatics at night.

We crossed another few depressions, which looked to us like drained melt water lakes. The stranded iceberg in the image seems to confirm this interpretation...? The first really small and gentle sastrugis reminded us kindly, that progression will not alway be as smooth as the last days. Fortunately there were only a few short stretches of them.

We set camp close to the latitude of Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, - and close to the latitude of Reykjavik by the way. Greenland extends far to the south! Hello to Laurent, our logistic router, who lives in Reykjavik!

The michelin guys are back on the ice cap !

26/04/2014, day 8
Distance today : 88 km
Total distance : 270 km
Position : N63.314, W47.881, alt 2140m
Moving time : 7h30
Wings used today : Speed 19, speed 10 ; winds 12 to 30 km/h

At this lattitude in Greenland, at that time of year, there is still some hours of night (about 4 to 5), and that sets quite a bit the aerology of the area : temperature dropping at night generates more stable air flow on the surface on the ice (catabatic winds), and that usually happens between 7pm and 10am the day after.

In the afternoon, those winds are almost gone ; we therefore have to stop for a while between the wind system restarts again. As we cannot afford to waste time setting up camp every time, we are waiting outside.

The most efficient kite time would be between 7pm and 10 am, over night to get the most of the catabatics. But it's hard then to keep focus, to manage the hazards, and to maintain our bodies at good temperature.

So we just have to kite whenever we can, a bit in between, with pros and cons : in the afternoon we struggle a bit to keep progressing ; it gets a lot better during the evening ; and it's intense over night time.

That's why it's a bit hard at the moment to be efficient for very long, and therefore show better progression...

We would like to share a thought for towards our good friend Arnaud "Nono" Noel, who was doing all the communication coordination in 2008, when we crossed Greenland, from south to north.

And let's cheer for
- Laurent, franco-icelandic coordinator ; he makes sure you get our news, and get them transalted to both blogs (english and french)
- Rom and Rémi who are keeping a hand on our "lattitudes nord" facebook
- Thomas, who is preparing the prorgession maps everyday (under the tab "prorgession" of the web site)
- Sylvie, who "spies" on our friends/competitors belgo-canadians, which makes us feel less "alone" on the ice cap :-)

All the best to you dear firends...

Picking up speed

25/04/2014 day 7
Distance today: 104 km
Total distance: 182 km
Position: 62.5342 N 47.6857, alt 1900 m
Hours kited: 5h30

With a good forecast for the evening, we took it easy in the morning. At around 13h30 we got going on our Speed 3 19 m2 and quickly made 35 km. We enjoyed a spectacular view on the coastal mountains and nunataks in the west - probably the last time for a long while! At 15h30 the wind got weaker and we took advantage for a lunch break. During the next 15 kms we had to loop our kites continuously to barely keep moving before the wind died completely around 17h30. After 2 hours of waiting, (and Sudoku for Mika - imagine a guy, concentrated, a pen in the hand, sit on a sledge, in the middle of a ice desert !), the wind picked up again, as promised by Marc, our meteorologic router. In the following two hours, we covered another 50 km, kiting leisurely at speeds well above 20 km/h and top speeds around 40 km/h. The daylight faded, and when the wind raised to averages above 35 km/h and gusts well above 40 km/h we were definitely pushing the limits of the Speed 3 19 m2. With another promising day ahead, we set camp after a little more than 100 km. We finally start to get going ! At an elevation of 1900 m we are still climbing, but the slope gets weaker and weaker. Yet the landscape is far from flat! At our position the icecap is textured by a succession of undulations, and while their scale of meters or tens of meters of several kilometers may seem absolutely ridiculous, we have the perception of climbing hills and crossing valleys.
Ps: we have crossed fox prints, the courageous animal went towards the east side of the icecap...

loose day

24th of april, day 6
Distance today : 0
Total distance : 78 km
Same position

Again we went late to sleep, and missed out on the windy window of the morning. But we still packed everything to get going. But no wind to be found. We spent about 8 hours sitting or lying on our pulkas, waiting for the wind to pick up.

Around 8pm raises a freezing fog, and still no wind. Tired of waiting we pitch the tents again, only a few meters away from the previous camp...

All of a sudden after dinner i start to feel really bad : drop of pressure, nausea, high pulse, not far from loosing consciousness. I manage to get out of the tent quickly. Cornelius starts to feel the same.
We quickly realize what happened : the tent is quite well insulated (letting little air out, specially if no wind) and the air is circulating too little for our stoves to work properly. Other signs should have awakened us before : we could see that our cooking equipment was not doing a full and proper combustion, and we woke up a couple of times with some light headaches.
Good signs for a starting CO poisoning. This is very common of polar expeditions ; we'll have to watch out for that now.

We slowly get going

Day 5 23/04/2014
Position: 61.6082 N 47.3536 W
Elevation: 1660 m
Distance today: 32 km
Total distance: 78 km
After yesterdays night kiting session we slept in late and rested in the tent, waiting for the wind to pick up again. We finally got out in the late afternoon and started kiting with our Speed 3 de luxe 19 m2 at around 16h30. While the 20 km/h of easterly wind is largely sufficient to power this kite it just barely kept us moving along the correct heading with our sleds. When the wind weakened, we extended ou lines from 21 m to 33 m and had to continuously loop our kites to keep going. We nearly called it a day, when the wind eventually gradually picked up, and pushed us comfortably for another 20 kms. With some mountains close by to our west, fading daylight, and temperatures dropping, we set camp at 21h30 after a total or 32 kms and another 300 m of elevation gain.

Sauna moment in the tent

Instead of a picture from our night session, here is one in the tent to show you our home made sauna. The tent absorbs really well the solar radiation, despite the snow fall. Yes we’re having a pleasant 20°C plus, and Mika is just relaxing in his boxers...

Night session !

Day 4

Distance today : 24 km

Total distance : 47,5 km

Position N61.332, W047.201, alt 1370m

What a day yesterday… no wind at all to start with, so we used this opportunity to load our batteries. We set up our pulkas like a catamaran, thanks to the special preparation of our partner Roger Daynes, from Snowsled). That’s the sign that we are not pulling those pulkas on our own sweat anymore !

A NNE wind starts to blow around 7 pm. AT 10.30 pm it’s good enough for us to start today’s show for a 4 hours run with our headlights. The snow showers make it quite tricky to see anything else that the snowflakes themselves, but we progress forward, and upwards as well : almost 500m elevation gained !

We have to get out of this glacier swell on the south east, where very little catabatic winds are found. We take whatever wind we can, even if it can be hard to find the right wing for that. Hopefully another couple of tens of kilometers, and that’ll be easier !

Special thoughts to Clotilde for the “foie gras” that we couldn’t find any better reason to eat than pure enjoyment. Thanks a lot Clotilde.

The previous special thanks went to Hervé “350” Doux. We think of you very often.

Chilling out in the sun

Yesterday we finally catched the wind with our kites and even though we did not make great distance, we gained some altitude kiting uphill upwind. This should make things a little easier from now on. The slope gets less steep, temperatures get lower, and we expect better winds. Yet at the very moment the north easterly wind is too weak to get going in the good direction with our still heavy sleds. And after yesterdays kiting session, manhauling doesn't really appeal to us - for the time being.
Right now we take advantage of this break to charge the batteries of our equipment, to rest, and to send a picture of Mika hauling one of his pulks up the glacier tongue above Qaleraligd Fjord, which can be seen in the background.
We hope for some more wind tonight or tomorrow evening to reach the 'plateau' and to get us to our cruise altitude of about 2000 m to 2200 m.

A good step forward, on the way to the cap !

Day 3
Distance today : 16,3 km
Total distance : 23,7 km
N61.179, W046.878, alt 825
9 hours of travelling

As we woke up, we finally cought some wind, as planned by our weatherman, Marc. But it was slightly stronger than planned. We tried our Beringer 8, but had to move on to the Speed 10. What a hard work sking against the wind, dragging our 2 super heavy sleds.
At 3pm we only had gained 300m elevation, and travelled 7 km northwards (a lot more in fact).
Later in the afternoon the wind turned a few degres east, which made our progression a bit easier.
We put up our camp at 7:30 pm.

Hauling up the gear

Position: 61.0482 N 46.8423 W
Distance today: 3.2 km
Distance total: 6.9 km
Elevation 390 m
We spent another day ferrying up our heavy sledges (about 180 kg in total per person) on the glacier tongues towards the ice sheet. We have two sledges each of us, and the slope is still so steep, that we had to haul them one at a time. And while we did not make a lot of distance, every meter counts at this stage. We reached an altitude of 390 m, bringing us a little closer to where we hope to catch the wind with our kites. Hopefully tomorrow morning!

--
Envoyé de mon téléphone Android avec K-9 Mail. Excusez la brièveté.

Successful departure despite uncertain stability of the floe by fjord Qaleralik

Day 1

distance skied on day 1 : 3,7 km
total distance since departure : 3,7 km

61,0312N / 46,7952W / alt 160m

Ready to go. Laansinnguaq is going to bring us to our starting point in
Qualeraligd Fjord with the 'Tattak' from Blue Ice Explorer. In the
background, a cargo ship from Royal Arctic Line calling Narsaq. We had
shipped our equipment with one of those.

Boat drop off at the bottom of fjord Qaleralik, after zigzaging through the breaking sea ice.
After 1,8 km of flat snow, we had to drag, one by one, our humungus pulkas up the steep hill leading to the glacier outlet.

Start on the pack ice in Qaleraligd Fjord.

Then another effort to higher ourselves up to the same area where we established our first camp in 2008. That took us 2 forth and backs.

Total walikng time : 7 hours.
We're off to bed, exhausted...

Special thoughts to Hervé

No departure on a holy friday !

This morning we had to postpone once again our departure, because of a rough sea and icy sprays. Or maybe the reason is elsewhere : here, as everywhere elase in northenr Europe, it's a bank holiday, easter !

But we have good hope of being able to set off tomorrow, "inch allah". In the meantime, we practice our abilities to nap, and play sudoku. Well we're double checking everything as well :-).

The weather forecast for the next days shows high pressures coming back, and good weather (the ocean is already strating to look flat and oily).

If that's the case, it's likely that we won't use our kites in the beginning ; we have to be ready to sweat a bit....

In the starting blocks !

Those 2 last days were insanely busy. But we‘re finally starting to see clearer and clearer. The pulkas are loaded ; we‘re now reassured, everything seems to fit our 1500 L available in the sleds.

We‘re gonna leave either tomorrow morning or the day after, depending on weather conditions (huge depression went over Greenland yesterday ; today the weather is still really strong and the sea might keep quiet rough tomorrow again.)

There is a big question mark also on the state of the coastal floe by the Qaleralik fjord, where our expedition is to start. It could be that the wind broke it apart : are we gonna be able to step on the frozen sea and get to the bottom of the fjord that way, before our acsent on the glacier cap ?

Still some questions remain...

Equipment complete

Early in the morning, we went to the harbor to claim our cargo - which had arrived in perfect condition. Next we showed our permits, and registered our expedition at the local police station. Then we got the fuel for our cooking-stoves, that had to be sourced from Qaqortoq. Later we recovered the rest of our luggage which we had to leave behind in Narsarsuaq yesterday. And finally we took possession of our rifle, that somebody here had bought for us.

With this, our equipment is now complete, and we are busy with re-packing and checking everything one more time.

And while we did not leave Narsaq the entire day, we certainly made good distance running errands between the harbour, the supermarket, various other places and the house where we are staying.

Its raining by the way.

Now that's it ; here we are !

There is so much that we would have loved to share regarding the preparation of this expedition. Unfortunately we‘ve been running after time, dealing with logistics and millions of details to fix and solve.

But now, before we set off, it‘s time to sum up the first step of our trip : the preparation. Yes this counts as almost half of the trip, as it‘s such a crucial part!

This project got born about 2 years and a half ago (even if the idea of it is even older). And we‘ve been actively working on it since about a year and a half. For about 6 months everything got fast forwarded as we went full force into it, leaving aside everything else of our lives ; the final 8 weeks went really intense !

We‘ve been working between 15 and 20 hours during those last 4 weeks, all in front of our computers and on the phone, trying to finalize everything ; a huge work ! I guess you would have expected us to focus on getting physically fit for the challenge, right ?

But no, preparing such an expedition seems to be more like being a company manager rather than a high performance sportsman. But that also explains why there isn‘t that many candidates for such a project...

The achievement of this adventure is also the result of a great team work, and it wouldn‘t be possible without the energy and support from our partners...

-          Snowsled

-          Flysurfer

-          Carnets d‘aventures

And friends and surroundings :

-          Laurent Jégu, logistic coordinator

-          Romain Moissard, administrator WOG association, logistics in France

-          Damien Fourcy, satellite mapping

-          Paul Cohen, logistics Narsaq

-          Sophie Castet, Marie-Anne Magnan, pharmacie preps

-          Olivier Nobili and Marie-Anne Le Van, project presentation file

-          Ludo, shop Vertige Montagne

-          Bruno Stainer, search for sponsors

-          Ramon Schoenmaker

-          Roger Daynes

-          Sylvie & Jean-Pierre Boileau

-          And many more

Thanks also to all the donators to the association „Wings ove Greenland“ (it‘s still possible to give us a hand)

To all these people : THANK YOU ! We do this for you.

We left Genvea on the 14th of april 2014 ; the 15th we‘ll get to south Greenland, Narsarsuaq.

The real departure of the journey will be from the bottom of the fjord Qaleralik.

We‘ll try our best to keep you posted from the ice cap ; Knowing of your support will help us a lot throughout the voyage. Stay connected !

The bar is set very high!

Its only while sitting in the plane and flying over Greenland, that we realize the dimension of this huge endeavor. A grid, where each figure needs to occupy its precise position. A partial solution is not enough. Shortcuts will show their ugly face later on. Everything has to fall into place for the whole to make sense. Sixty plus days of "challenge", "difficult" and "master" are no piece of cake.

And while we are confident about our kiting skills and preparation we have come to realize the notion of defeat: Today Mika did not succeed to complete one of the easiest of hundreds of Sudoku we set out to solve along our way. The bar is set very high.
P.s. the two of us and part of the luggage have safely arrived in Narsaq.

Halfway to Greenland

After many more final preparations, a night without sleep for Michael,
and a short night for Cornelius, we catched our flight to Copenhagen
this morning. We are tired, but happy to be here - halfway to
Greenland. Tomorrow we are headed to Narsaq via Kangerlussuaq and
Narsarsuaq.

„Secure“... again „secure“... Always „secure“ !

„secure“, as THE Key word !

Let‘s start with the top, the head wear : in addition to the warm hat for the evening, the cap for the hopefully sunny end of the trip in june, and a helmet for kite skiing, we stuff our both suitcases with 3 balaclavas and 2 ski goggles ; these are the best assets to prevent frostbites on our faces... To be secure, we packed double amount of them...

Our hands : same thing goes here ; we need base layers (that we probably hardly won‘t ever take off). Then we have different kinds of gloves : from light weight summer kinds to warm and fully water/wind proofed mittens. This is critical survival equipment for our fingers, so we don‘t take any chance here either : we have everything double in case of loss of something.

The feet : pretty delicate question here. The feet are the furthest extremities to the „heat“ center of the body, the core. And to be able to achieve our travelling goals at a decent pace, we need to ski hard and agressive all the time, which means the shoes that are going to enable us to do so are not made to insulate our feet from the cold temperatures that well. We‘ve been looking and looking for the right solutions (like suing our own boot insulting layer from scratch, or customizing others that we had bought) without finding something good enough. But it looks like we finally have found something interesting : easy to use, and specially made for ski boots. „over boots“ made of neoprene, from the manufacturer „40 below“ (with such a name, it can only be good, can it not ?)

We‘ll be trying those !

Let‘s not forget the following : a good protection of our extremities starts with an excellent protection and insulation of the core of our bodies (chest, neck, legs). Therefore we‘ll be skiing wearing down clothes both pants or overalls and jackets, as often as we‘ll reach below 20s. That will be our ultimate  protection against coldness, to keep our body core at its ideal temperature to keep irrigating in blood the whole body and extremities.

Final preparations

There are many things we would like to write about and to share, but we are completely saturated with final preparations for our departure on monday April 14.

In the meanwhile "explorersweb" have sent us a few questions about our expedition and made a nice little article from our responses.

Read the article: explorersweb on Wings Over Greenland II

Explorersweb is a great website with news from the polar community, following up on expeditions, and full of inspiration for new projects.

Once on our way, we will resume with regular posts on our progression and the daily life of the expedition.
Stay tuned, departure from France to Copenhagen is on monday April 14, and our flight from there to Narsaq, Greenland is on tuesday 15 already!

In 2008 we headed down to reach Qaanaaq over the frozen Bowdoin Fjord. This time we plan to push further beyond
80 degrees north, before returning home on the eastern side

Training in Finse. For our circumnavigation project we rely on the latest technology in closed cell kite design to efficiently exploit the weak katabatic winds we expect in the northern part of this gigantic journey. Speed 3 19 m2." (click to enlarge)

Training in Finse. Playing in the hills with the Speed 4 10 m2.

The sled - suitcase of the polar traveller

A difficult equation - we are going to travel in full autonomy which leads to contradicting requirements: On one side we would like to carry all the necessary equipment as well as the spares to cope with repairs and unexpected failure. On the other side we would like to travel as light as possible.

This causes quite same headache! The same question for each item. May it break? The answer is unfortunately rarely comforting, and it takes endless hesitations and discussions before we come to a conclusion.

Surprisingly, with increasing experinece we are more and more tempted to double redundancy and to reduce the risque of failure or loss which might be the end of the adventure. But at the moment of departure there is always the final verdict without compromise: Will all the equipment fit in our sleds? Will we be able to haul them?

The Sled is the suitcase of the polar traveller. And when the trip gets rough and long it should better be tough.

In 2005 three Norvegions had shown that it was entirely possible to accomplish a huge kite ski crossing of Greenland using sleds of average size and of moderate cost. In 2008 we have choosen very similar equipment and were entirely happy with the performance of this economic choice.

This time, our euipment and the food we need to cover more than 5000 km in full autonomy require the use of sleds of much larger load capacity. Yet we trust in the same concept and the quality of the same british manufacturer who already equipped our last big adventures, Snowsled Polar, who are now offering a much larger version of their successful Ice blue plastic pulks.

Roger Daynes and Snowsled Polar a company specialized in polar equipment, is one of our rare long term partners and we are really proud of this reciprocal loyalty.

Each of us is equipped with 4 Ice Blue® Expedition pulks: We stack two of these sleds one inside the other. And we each use two of these stacks in a catamaran configuration. While the catamaran configuration
pioneered by the three Norvegians gives the pulks the necessary stability for progression at high speeds in terrain covered by rough sastrugi, the stacking allows for a higher load capacity and provides redundancy in the extremely unlikely case of breakage or much more likely in case of abrasion on bare ice with moraine inclusions at the very beginning and end of the journey.

New Snowsled Polar Ice Blue expedition pulk with increased load capacity.

For our big trip, we are really happy about the largely increased capacity of the new Snowsled Expedition Bags with a volume of 350 l each.

New pulk bags with a volume of 350 l.

Many thanks to Snowsled Polar for the development of the larger Ice Blue plastic pulks and for their support of our expedition!