Fredrik Belin is a product developer at Fjällräven. As such he has the privilege to combine his work with two of his biggest interests, designing clothes and climbing mountains. In both cases he is extremely cautious because he knows that there are no short cuts to success. As a first leg in a project to take him and Ola Skinnarmo to the magnetic southpole on skis they went to Svalbard last spring for a 12 day expediton to Svalbards highest peak Mt Newton.The purpose of this expedition was not only to test the equipment and their physical ability. Equally important or perhaps even more important was to test their ability to work together as a team under high levels of stress.
On Svalbard Ola and Fredrik skied 320 kilometers in twelve days in weather conditions shifting from the brightest sunshine with 40 kilometers sight to snowstorm with 4 centimeters sight. The temperature ranged from -5. to -35 degrees celsius. An expedition like this puts the equipment to the test and Fredrik and Ola used only standard Fjällräven equipment like the Expedition anorak and trousers, the Akka tunnel tent and the Atmosphere rucksacks. To be totally honest one adjustment was made, the mosquito net on the Akka tent was removed because if there is anything nice about ”vacations” on Svalbard it has to be that there are no mosquitos!
Click here to read Olas and Fredriks story from Svalbard.