Dang! Back in the UK four days early! I have a book on quotations here, and it's tempting to reach for it and look for something inspiring about trying and failing and stuff. But that's all bobbins. There's not much that Socrates or Truman can say to make you feel less pants when you have worked so long for a goal which you then fail to achieve!
There is a quote in Icelandic, which sounds like a string of stifled burps and strangled gargles, which translates to "Oh, no, another sodding volcano!" *.
That, dear reader, was our problem. A chain of events started by Grimsvotn (so much easier to say than Eyjafjallacockadoodledoo), which went pop a few months ago spreading ash on, well, everything. The snow on the northern highlands was covered in a grey dust, very evident to us as our foot prints would reveal bright white snow beneath. The ash layer reduced the ability of the sun to melt the winter snows, so even in June, with 24 hour daylight, spring time hadn't yet fully sprung.
Thus, snow fields and mud; both unexpected. Now, good expedition planning tries to account for the unexpected, having done many such trips we think we're good at this; we carried winter gear (for the cold), contingency food (for the slow pace) and extra fuel (for making drinking water from snow). The problem was the snow itself. More accurately the consistency of the snow. It was on the brink of melting so was very soft, but the Northerly wind coming all the way from the Arctic Circle (er, an entire 50 miles away!), had frozen the surface.
If you have walked in the hills in winter you know exactly the following process; Take a step, slight delay, sudden collapse into hole. Ugh! Next step, lift trailing foot out of hole, slight delay, new front foot in deep hole. Ugh! add to this utter enjoyment a 28kg pack (approximate weight of an eight-year-old) and the potential for injury becomes real.
During our trudgery, I heard CC utter the age-old syllable used by climbers under stress, and turned to see a large rucksack with a wriggling body underneath it. One leg invisible under the snow. Actually, the damage was at that moment being done to the alternate leg, the constrained knee of which was bearing the weight of CC and his sack. That's it really. We carried on for 24 hours. The knee became worse. Tough (mindless :-) ) folks like CC will carry an injury for days, finish an event and then give into trifles such as pain, but we realised at the point where we were about to head deeper into the Icelandic outback, that to put ourselves and potential rescuers at risk was just not cricket, so at N64deg 57.765min W 18deg 18.127min having covered 83km, we binned it.
And as for a quotation, how about this from Truman Capote; Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.
NUJ
* not at all true
PS) We'll be back.
