Børge Ousland

Today started with lots of challenges. It is day 4 on the ice, Sunday 16th of April. After two hours of pack ice and leads of open water, we had only managed to do 2,4 kilometres, about half of normal. After this ice got better and we gained more speed. We have had a long day with 9 hours and in the end our daily distance was 18,4 kilometres, very good considered the rough start we had. Weather got better towards the end and sun broke through for the first time on this trip. Temperature has been stable, around minus 15-16 C the last couple of days, but it looks like it has started to drop now.

Yesterday we overtook another last degree group led by a Russian team, they had problems with the conditions and considered giving up. We however are in excellent shape, and have become a closely knit team that work well together. Equipment works well too and there has not been any accident so far. It takes a couple of days to move with skies through the pack ice, but now ski technique is defiantly improving. Conditions got very good at the end of the day with large flat pans, and where there is no fresh pack ice, there is enough snow in between pressure ridges to ski across them, this saves us a lot of time.

Mick sends his regards to Rachel and friends. Fiona sends her regards to all friends and says she miss you “wish you where here”, and Mattew says hello to his parents. Will be back tomorrow with more updates. Svante

This entry was posted on April 16th, 2006 at 10:41 PM and is filed under Last Degree Expedition 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.