Camp 9: We are pretty happy with today. 16 kilometres was good as the conditions were far from ideal. We started out in white-out and that lasted the day. After lunch the wind picked up, and continued to do so. One hour before planned, we camped out of security as everything was just white chaos.
The snow today has been like glue. It has stuck to the skis all the time not respecting our ski wax at all. But, that made the small grey ones wake up. We experimented with both sun screen and sausages and had great success! – Things like that is not bad for the spirit.
The routines today was Thorleif in front. He did marvels. The two first was tied up, while the last was left to ponder the world. In the end we the thing was to count the teeth. Our tongs agreed on 16 apiece both up and downstairs.
We have 12 km to a fairly serious pass. We would love (meaning neeeeeed) better weather for that. But it does not look good. Outside now all hell is loos.
Archive for November 19th, 2009
White chaos
Singing in the snow
Camp 8, and Thorleif reports: We had a staggering 50 cm of snow last night, so the hope of real progress was not great in the morning. But 16,5 km was good. As it turned out, the weather was very warm so that the snow packed up well and gave better conditions as we went. – We even had a good spell without jackets!
But, then it changes again. First white-out came sneaking, then a full blast snow-storm came out way. It was 3 wet gents that hit camp at 8 pm after 9 hours of labour.
In fact, we have had more drying of wet clothes and equipment than expected. That has resulted in two things: One is hat the morning session takes longer than planned. Sometimes as much as 4 hours. Then secondly we use more fuel than we normally do. We have brought some extra, but have little to spare.
We would not mind a somewhat easier weather pattern, but all in all we are very content with progress, spirit and the whole experience.
