The kit list is not a suggestion

Every departure starts the same way: everything you have brought, out of the bag, on the floor at Sjøgata, in rows, with your name on a card at the end of the row. It takes about ninety minutes for six people. Nobody has ever enjoyed it and nobody has ever, afterwards, said it was a waste of time.

Why on the floor and not on a form

Because a form tells us what you think you own. The floor tells us what you have. The gap between those two is where the trip goes wrong, and it is a wider gap than people imagine — the single most common finding is not a missing item, it is an item that is present, correct on paper, and has never been out of its packaging.

The list of things that get pulled

In rough order of frequency, across the last four seasons:

1. New boots. By far the most common. They are pulled every time, without exception, and we would rather lend you a pair of ours with two hundred days in them than watch you lose skin on day three.
2. Cotton. Almost always a t-shirt somebody sleeps in. It stays in Tromsø.
3. A transceiver with a firmware version we do not recognise. Usually borrowed from a friend, usually fine, occasionally three generations old and slow enough to matter in a multiple burial.
4. One pair of gloves. The list says three and it means three.
5. A sleeping bag rated by its extreme temperature rather than its comfort temperature. This is a marketing problem, not a traveller problem, and we explain it every time without irritation.

What we lend

Almost anything technical: bags, mats, shells, gloves, thermoses, goggles, group kit obviously. We keep a store room of it and none of it is charged for. If we have told you an item is wrong, it is our job to make it right, and billing you for that would turn a safety check into an upsell.

We do not lend boots on the Greenland crossing, transceivers on any ski route, or a drysuit for Hornsund. Those three have to be yours and have to fit you.

The thing nobody expects

The kit check is also how we meet you. Ninety minutes of handling somebody’s gear tells a guide an enormous amount: how they pack, what they have used, what they have bought because a shop told them to, and whether they get defensive when told something is wrong.

That last one matters more than any item on the floor. A party member who argues about a glove in a warm yard will argue about a turnaround on a cold ridge, and we would much rather have that conversation in Tromsø.

If you want to arrive prepared

Bring everything on the list, use the boots for twenty days first, and put the sleeping bag out of its stuff sack the night before so it lofts. Then bring the extra t-shirt anyway. We will find it, and finding it is how the ninety minutes stays honest.