On 26 June 1976 a party of eight embarked MV Blenheim at Newcastle on the first stage of the expedition's journey to Svartisen. Situated on the Arctic Circle, north of the steel town of Mo-I-Rana, Svartisen is a plateau ice cap roughly 24 km in diameter. A deep valley, Glomdalen, running north-east to south-west splits the ice cap into two halves. Surveys made over the past 100 years have indicated that an extensive and almost continuous retreat of the ice limit has taken place.