Børge Ousland

We’re in our tent once again after an exhausting day. A strong westerly wind, 27 metres per second, made things a bit miserable. We pressed on all day for 9.5 hours. It’s only –10?C, and in this mild weather the pulks glide better. So it’s good, in that sense, with the mild temperatures early on in the expedition. As we lighten them of food and fuel, they glide more easily regardless of conditions. But when they’re this heavy, our current temperature is an advantage.

Mike and I walked 12 km today. The westerly wind is pushing us slightly south again, unfortunately, approximately 10? southward and 90? eastweard. We’ll probably drift back a little during the night. The drift made today’s distance somewhat less than we expected, because the ice has actually been pretty good. But we’ve had to make our way through many snowdrifts.

There are only really two problems in this weather. First of all, it’s difficult to choose the right clothing, because it’s miserable without really being cold. And the second is that visibility is even further reduced – snow is blowing everywhere. It covers the half-frozen leads in a nice, even blanket, creating conditions that can be spooky and traps that are very dangerous. Things almost went wrong a couple of times. Only the slightest shade or nuance enables to distinguish good ice from bad ice. It iss really difficult. When the snow falls on a lead covered by thin ice, it may look perfectly fine – then suddenly you step through.

The position of tonight’s camp is N81?46’02” and E102?39’23”, with 919 km left to the North Pole. That’s all for today. Oh, yes, we did swim across one ice-covered lead …

This entry was posted on January 30th, 2006 at 7:07 PM and is filed under North Pole 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.