We’re in the tents now. At noon today we flew from Patriot Hills. We had an intermediate landing at S85˚ to fill fuel, before continuing to S88˚. There we came in for a perfect landing.
We travelled in two Twin Otters, so we could get our entire group into position in one go. Weather conditions were perfect when we landed, with temperatures at about 18˚C. Conditions were perfect to test our form and equipment, so we skied for two and a half hours. This also has the advantage of allowing people to make whatever adjustments they need for tomorrow.
The first couple of days are always special, and challenging; the situation is unfamiliar and there are a lot of things that you have to get used to.
The members of my expedition team are doing very well. A couple of them are complaining of headaches, but that’s to be expected. It takes time to acclimatise oneself to this altitude, which is about 3000 metres. The weather is gorgeous! There is a slight headwind, which there almost always is up here on the Antarctic Plateau, but it’s not bad.
Spirits are high. We’re tired, however, after getting very little sleep last night. But now we’ve crawled into our sleeping bags, and plan on getting enough shut-eye to compensate.
Our position is S88˚03’, W95˚. We walked 5 km in those 2.5 hours – which isn’t bad. We’ll have to increase that to an average of 18 km if we are to make the journey to the South Pole in the planned 12 days, which is our objective. But for the first few days we’ll take it easy and get accustomed to our new and very different environment.
