We have had another great day, having progressed 21 km. Today we had a double challenge: lots more pack ice and weather conditions that made navigating much more difficult. There has been a “whiteout” almost all day, which makes it quite a task to keep the direction we want. So we are very pleased with the distance; 21 km up here under these conditions is excellent! It just goes to show how strong the team is.
The pack ice is more beautiful than problematic, and it never fails to fascinate me. Sometimes the ice is pushed up into walls or small mountains, at other times it seems like a giant hand has strewn ice blocks out across the landscape. So it’s quite an adventure to ski through it all.
We encountered a fair number of newly frozen leads today, but fortunately no really wide leads. And for the most part the ice has been solid enough to truly close the leads. We haven’t had any problems getting across in a safe manner.
The expedition has been out on the ice for nine hours today – and that’s a long time. Naturally we are exhausted after such a long day, but now we only have 23.8 km to go to the North Pole! There is a chance that we just might reach our goal tomorrow. And that would be quite a feat in such a short time.
We are skiing on excellent snow. There is a thin layer of fresh snow on top of the icier snow below, and this provides excellent glide. I’ve had problems with my eyes the last couple of days. They’ve been really sore and hypersensitive to light, almost on the verge of snow-blind. Yesterday I taped my sunglasses, leaving only a narrow horizontal strip open for each eye. This is the same principle the Inuit’s use, and it really works. Today I feel much better.
Once again we have been taking turns leading the expedition, with everyone putting in a couple of hours in the lead. And it’s gone very well. It’s always more exciting to lead, to choose the route and keep your bearings, to make ski tracks where there are none before.
We are constantly drifting, and the ice drift varies with the wind. It’s easy to calculate – the direction of the ice drift veers 30 degrees to the right of the wind direction. So if the wind is blowing from our left, from the west, then we’ll drift in an east-southeasterly direction. And if… No! Scratch that, I’m sorry, it’s complete the opposite – we would drift in a southwesterly direction. And with an eastern wind, we would drift somewhat north. This all has to do with the rotation of the earth and Coriolis’ Force.
We landed at 160˚W – now we are at 144 degrees latitude. Our current position is N89˚47’14”, W144˚. We are quickly closing on our goal and are very excited as to what tomorrow may bring.
Congratulations to Stas and the whole team. Well done.
Irena