3/13/06

Hello everyone,

Ok we are back in Wales, after having spent a week in Fairbanks getting our Bering Strait Crossing gear ready and meeting with some important contacts in Fairbanks and Nome to gain details on Chukotka (I will send a separate email on this matter later).

Currently practicing shooting icepans that look like polar bears (!) with our gun and shotgun, testing the webcam with the kite ( a bit of a challenge out here because we tend to either have too much wind or not enough), finalizing our gear and training with our new tool: grapnel (see pictures attached). After having heard repeatedly from natives the benefit of using a grapnel between ice pans or to go through slush "soup effect" (where it is hard to either swim or walk) , we have built this new tool that we can throw a pretty good distance (25 meters). You can see us on the shots practicing with it. It feels like playing extrem petanque ! This tool should help us to pull ourselves through the slurpy ice where we can't swim. I will send pictures of the Bering Strait tonight.

Later,

Dimitri