Take a look at Iceland with online webcams

Obviously Jim and I are anxious to keep an eye on the weather in Iceland. One of the tools we are using to check out how the snow cover and general day-to-day weather will be is a great system of online webcams - the best site we've found is: http://www.vegagerdin.is/umferd-og-faerd/vefmyndavelar/nordurland

Below is a typical shot from the roads in the north of Iceland:

Berghaus Adventure Challenge!

Iceland Highs and Lows has been nominated as a candidate for the Berghaus Adventure Challenge! The winning expedition gets a very handy £2,000 in sponsorship - and voting closes this Friday!

Please register and help us out, and remember that our expedition is ultimately to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, so your vote and any donations will always be going to a good cause. The Berghaus competition is at http://www.berghaus.com/en/adventure-challenge/shortlists

Registration is free and takes about 30 seconds. You won't get spammed and your details won't be sold on - it's just so they can ensure fair voting.

Temperatures starting to fall in Iceland...

Here is the overnight forecast for next Sunday night, courtesy of the Icelandic Met Office's fantastic website (http://en.vedur.is):

A few more weeks to go and it will only be getting colder!

Flights are booked!

We've officially booked our flights to Reykjavik with Icelandair. Jim is back in the UK in a matter of days, and from then it's a short 4 weeks until November 5th and the beginning of our expedition!

Training in the Lake District

With Jim still away in lands afar, Ed set off into the Lake District last weekend for a part training-hike and part weekend-getaway...

It was really great to get out into the hills and do some serious walking again! I took a lot of extra weight with me that I wouldn't really need for the weekend because I wanted to make sure I would be happy carrying a pack of similar weight to the ones Jim and I will be lugging across Iceland. Most of my time was spent near Borrowdale and in quite a short space of time I was able to climb a few of the large hills in the area (including the uncompromisingly steep Great Gable at 899m) and do a fair amount of scrambling - essential things to practice for part of our journey across Iceland! Just before the Vatnajokull ice cap we will be crossing what appears on the map to be a mountain range (by British standard anyway). The only defined route skirts around the outside but it will add many days onto our journey following it, so we are planning to take the "shortcut" - straight over the top!

For anyone interested, you can check out the photos in Ed's Picasa gallery at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113419761180934624957/LakeDistrictJul

(Yes that is sticky toffee pudding!)

Jim has been and gone!

It's been a busy 6 weeks since the last update. Lots of research done on what gear to take, some more posters put up, and some more research done our route. Jim returned for his R&R for a couple of weeks and we managed to squeeze some time in to go on a camping and climbing road trip of sorts up and down the country.

Over the next few weeks we're going to be really looking at getting some sponsors on side to try and subsidise some of the gear costs. If anyone has any recommendations of where to look please let us know! 

Following that we're going to go on a big fundraising push to try and get closer to our target of £10,000. We'd once again like to give a massive thank you to all those that have donated so far and helped us get things underway. It's seriously a case of "every little helps" and we are very grateful to everyone! 

Maps have arrived!

I've had a call from Stanfords letting me know that the Iceland maps I requested sometime at the start of April have finally come in and are on hold! With any luck I shall be collecting them this weekend. We've asked for the most detailed mapsheets of the areas we're walking through, but because of the limited number of surveys in Iceland the best available is still only 1:100,000. Hardly ideal for walking!