We have a fetish for Patagonia and the Arctic. We’ve been on long-time (thru)hiking/backpacking trips into Patagonia (7 months in total), been on multiple (winter) trips to northern Scandinavia, hiked for 2 months in the Canadian Rockies and Alaska, explored some of the largest glaciers in the Karakorum mountains of Pakistan, climbed some 5000′ers and a 6000′er in the Central Andes of Peru and Bolivia, and recently lost ourselves on a wild trek on the eastern coast of Greenland… We prepare ourselves for those “big” trips by testing out our gear and training the muscles in the European Alps, or closer to home in our garden of the Belgian “Ardennes”.