King of packing Greg Kemp knows where all his kit is at all times. Unfortunately Dave does not. Upon awakening, he sat bolt upright with the realisation that he had lost his gloves. This lead to the irrevocable declaration: ‘Today will be a bad day’. In general however, the team were in higher spirits, with Lyngseidet and the promise of new fuel and hot food drawing ever nearer, they powered on. A warm fuzzy sensation spread through Dave with the prospect of reducing his bag weight by dumping the useless paraffin at the fuel station. This feeling seemed to actually make his bag lighter and came hand in hand with a fumy smell. Shortly afterwards, Dave was found, pants round ankles, with his arse buried in a glacial stream in an attempt to remove the paraffin which had emptied itself over his back and was burning his bum. Between rolling on the floor in fits of hysterics, the rest of us saved what kit we could.

After a brief encounter with civilisation, correct fuel, and cramming our gullets with toasted Italian calzone, there was an opportunity for a clean slate from which to continue the journey without hindrance. This slate was very nearly obliterated in dramatic style as Chris accidentally lit up the spare fuel, it igniting into a burst of flames, setting alight Dave’s beetroot soup and luxury hot chocolate sachets (a treat he had prepared in anticipation of a fully working stove). After the flare-off we had our first hot meal with the precious little fuel – the remainder of which was eked out over the following five days. Dave’s lost fork added a fourth event of misfortune to his bad day.

DAY 5 – KLYMIT KLUTZ

A sleep-deprived, shivering, short, grumpy and hungry Peachey woke up on the cold floor. ‘What went wrong?’ he wondered. It seems the brainchild of this trip had forgotten to read the instructions on our new shiny Klymit sleeping mats: ‘Be careful not to over-inflate!’. Peachey had burst a seal and so would now spend his nights fidgeting on cold, sharp scree. Fresh, full and feeling good, the others packed their bags to a bright sunrise, excited for the day ahead. Sat high on a peak in the sun, enjoying the view while Peachey’s short little starving legs laboured up behind, whilst Dave took the opportunity to encourage the evaporation of the paraffin still paining his bum-cheeks.

From here, the northern journey across the magnificent Strupbreen Glacier that lay ahead could be observed. A speedy head-over-heels descent, involving bent walking poles and a squashed Peachey, lead to the 10km glacier crossing. Crampons on, axes out – an afternoon of crevasse hopping followed. As the cold sun began its long descent to the horizon, we were still on the Strupbreen. Though the way appeared straight forward – we were consistently bluffed out by the huge grids of crevasses, large blocks of ice spearing out from the floor of the glacier, formed as the ice flow split in two over a steep mound. As if in a life-size game of Pacman we stumbled back and forth, crossing the frozen maze several times until eventually resorting to jumping off the wrong side of the glacier in the hope for easier ground lower down. Sparks went flying as crampons met hard rock and we scrambled down easy ground to find a perfect crossing at the base of the glacier, leading into what later became known as boulder valley.