Dispatches: The war on weight - Saturday, 14th February 2004
It's one week to go and I'm starting to feel like getting out on the Ice will be a relaxing break. During the day, there are Russian visas, film crew itineraries and kit deliveries to deal with. At night we lock ourselves away with scissors, drills, stitch unpickers and power tools and give in to our obsession: saving weight. If we can make everything in my sledge 1% lighter it means I have two kilos less to drag, which makes a big difference over 1,200 miles.
In the corner Tony, my expedition manager, has on a pair of old ski goggles as he saws, sands and drills anything extraneous to the success of the expedition. Everything from fuel canisters to toothbrushes has been attacked. War has been declared on metal zip pulls (replaced with cord), tent mosquito nets have been bidden bon voyage and labels have been liberated from underwear.
We are keeping a pot of all the items we manage to remove from my kit; we're at half a kilo at the moment and there's still a lot more to do. It's important that when I'm swearing at my sledge as I haul it over a pressure ridge, that I know this is the lightest load I could possibly have taken with me. And after all, as my brother says, 'obsessive is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated'...
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