Tonight we set up camp at N85?33’37”, E97?40’33”, after progressing 20 km – two of them thanks to the northerly ice drift last night. The reason for today’s shorter distance is the ice conditions. We walked for 10.5 hours, but spent a fair part of the time going through pack ice or looking for ways around the blocks of ice. Another factor is poor glide; it was –31?C today and that seemed to influence the surface of the snow. But all things considered, we’re happy to now have less than 500 km to go – 495 km, to be more precise.
We experienced a small catastrophe today. My left ski broke. This was not an accident, but rather material strain. All the skis are showing this on the steel edge, just behind the bindings, a typical place for this sort of problem. But this is so unnecessary! We had these skis specially made so they would have the strength to handle this expedition. It’s the first time I have ever had a ski break on me. It must be a production fault.
Now we’re facing some difficult repairs and expect to spend most of tomorrow on that. If we do nothing, every one of the skis will break sooner or later. When the steel edge breaks, that break will keep eating further into the ski until it just snaps off – so we have to fix them all.
It will be my job, actually. Mike froze his fingers and they don’t look so good. His thumbs really swelled up last night, and when we pressed them, pus came out behind the nails. But they are clearly improving.
We’ve figured out a way to do the repairs and are hoping they will go well. I’ll give you a full report when we’re done tomorrow.
