Report from Svante: Today started as a rather warm day – a comfortable –18˚C. After a while we had to stop and remove one of our layers of thermal underwear, because we were sweating and simply too hot.
The last few days we have gotten used to –30˚C and wind, plus a chill factor due to the wind. Well, there was virtually no wind when we started, just sunny, nice and calm weather. But in the afternoon the cloud cover drifted in, and everything became white, the horizon all the contours disappeared. It’s called whiteout.
Without either sun or wind, it is really easy to lose all sense of direction – and it became a real challenge for me to stay the course. And when you can’t even see the surrounding terrain, it becomes almost impossible. Almost, but not quite …
Under such conditions one has to navigate by the shape of snow drifts on the ground. Today I kept our direction by continually studying two types of snowdrifts. One of these was relatively soft and fresh, deposited the day before yesterday, when the wind was blowing at about 90 degrees relative to our direction. The other type of snowdrift was a bit older, perhaps made a week or so ago, when there was a hard wind from south-southwest.
In this manner I “felt” my way forward, and was able to keep us moving on a fairly straight course. That’s reflected in our distance: 22 km in 8.5 hours. And that is up to par, so we’re very pleased. The position of our camp this evening is. S89˚24’15”, W95˚38’50”.
