By Martin Hartley

Posted on February 16

All are abed now. All is quiet save, for Coldplay’s ‘Swallowed in the Sea’ drifting out from my laptop.

In my ground-floor hotel room all is warm, easy, safe. I have been dealing with the usual volume of emails, scheduled phone calls and meetings. It is unrelenting, even at 75 degrees North here at Resolute Bay - on the north shore of the Northwest Passage.

The scope of today’s activity is wide as it is every day – to be honest I’ve grown to love it, though not the associated permanent, semi-exhausted state which means I have only energy enough to keep driving the Survey forward – all superfluous extruded to the margins.

Ongoing fund-raising, contracts to be approved, writing thanks to sponsors, gripping equipment freighting issues, signing my updated will, clarifying protocols for ground-truthing satellite imagery, doing the media commitments and planning tomorrow’s, contributing to the ongoing development of our editorial strategy wrestling with the need for scientific accuracy whilst engaging a non-specialist global audience, arranging some additional sponsor patches to be sewn onto hats, rucsacs and over-sleeping bags, reviewing the prioritisation of data to be sent back daily from the ice on a limited power budget, co-ordinating with Canadian government officials on a special event planned in a few weeks time, reporting on the field-performance of our pioneering hands-free voice system, arranging flowers to be sent to two special supporters of the Survey, arranging the promotion of an Arctic artist’s work on our website, following up media interest from our Ottawa press conference, and a bunch of other stuff … … which is why it is no surprise to me that I have still taken no exercise since our arrival on Saturday, nor in fact since we were last in Canada 4 weeks ago.

I have found it an inescapable situation, given the scale and complexity of the Survey now, and with all its deadline driven demands.

People better than I, I am sure would have managed to scheduled in the training. Condoleezza Rice managed it every day … apparently!

And yet, next week, I will be engaged in a life so utterly, utterly different. Hauling a heavy sledge for months in sub-zero temperatures for 12 hours a day.

It is such a brutal thought I confess I have only occasionally, in very dark moments, dared to re-visit past experiences of what I know lies ahead.

Showtime is fast approaching.

And so to bed.