We’re once again sheltered in our tents, after skiing for eight and a half hours. It’s been a good day, despite the rather obnoxious 7–10 metre per second wind from the west. Toward the end of the day it got colder, but also nicer. If we are lucky the wind will turn and blow from a more southerly direction by morning. As it is, we are drifting 500–600 metres toward the southwest every hour. Today we walked almost 20 km, but due to the ice drift, our net gain is limited to 13.5 km. Nevertheless we are very satisfied with our progress; it’s great to be hitting that kind of pace this early on an expedition. The position of our camp is N89˚11’24”, W156˚. The ice drift has carried us almost four degrees latitude to the west since yesterday.
Our expedition team has also seen a bit of action today. Twice we experienced the pack ice being scrunched together as we passed it or crossed it. It’s amazing to witness these immense forces of nature up close! We also crossed two or three open leads where we had to crawl across, using our pulks as a bridge. Other times we could safely ski across.
One thing that is highly unusual about this year’s expedition is that we are not seeing any ice that is older than a year – no ice that survived the melt last summer. Usually one sees thicker pack ice that has refrozen after being partially melted, but there is nothing like that in our surroundings. Each day we measure the ice, and today it was 170 cm. That, of course, is plenty thick enough, but conditions up here are very different than they were on my first expeditions 15–20 years ago.
Enormous forces can press the pack ice together into small mountains.
