Finally after 5 days delay we are on the ice. We were awoken at 2am by our Russian friends to let us know we were leaving early so we quickly got our sleds and headed to the airport, then of course we were delayed again and we left an hour late.

2 hours later we touched down at Borneo and walked out onto the arctic ocean. It was great watching Ben and Sandrine’s expressions as they stepped out of the plane and looked around.

We quickly got our sleds and headed to the mess tent for a coffee and a meeting with the director of Borneo. He gave us the bad news that we are still due to fly out on the 6th from the pole thus leaving our 100km trip impossible in that time frame. Add to this that the ice is currently drifting south at 500 metres per hour thus putting us on a conveyor belt as such. The team had a discussion and we agreed to be airlifted to a start point closer to the pole that would give us a realistic chance of making our goal.

We flew via helicopter north and over some big leads, some over 40 metres wide. At 2pm we finally headed north over good terrain but cold at -30 degrees. We called a halt at 5.30pm and had covered a reasonable 4.5km.

Unfortunately, as I type I am looking at my GPS and we are still drifting backwards at 500 metres per hour so by the time we start skiing tomorrow we will be further back from where we started today.

No one said this was going to be easy.

I thought I would leave you with a quick update just before I jump into my sleeping bag for one last night with a solid roof over my head. The PricewaterhouseCoopers North Pole Expedition officially gets underway in approx 8 hours when we are set to fly out on to the beautiful and challenging frozen arctic ocean to begin our push to the pole.

I have been thinking all night about the last few months, months of hard work and fun times that have eventually lead me to this point and I want to take a moment to acknowledge some people who without their hard work and support I wouldn’t be here.

Firstly I want to thank Tony Harrington and all the team at PricewaterhouseCoppers for their support and belief in me, in particular I’d like to thank James Collins, Manuela Schmidt and Genevieve La Bars for all their efforts over the last few months thank you all so much.

To Peter Jammison and Jon Graham at Telstra a huge thanks must go to you two as well. In particular Jon, thanks for putting up with my endless amount of calls over the last few weeks.
Finally I want to thank the most important people in my life, my family and friends. You all mean the absolute world to me and your love, encouragement and understanding are a continual source of inspiration.

I better go and get some sleep now but John Butler just came on my ipod and I think some of his lyrics pretty much sum up everything.

“I can do anything I put my mind to just all I gotta to do is give myself a half a chance”

Its time to do it!!