Day 38: The Arctic shows us it's Wild Side, and challenges us...

Expedition Statistics

Expedition Start Point: 82 58.02N, 77 23.28W
Day 38: End of Day Position: 88 41.6 N, 89 18.0 W
Distance covered since the start: 343.6 nm
Distance covered since last Post: 50.7 nm
Distance to The Pole: 78.4 nm
Overall distance versus plan: +2.0 days (- Behind plan, + Ahead of plan)
North Pole ETA: 16 April, + / - 2 days
Ave hrs / day marched for this period: 10.0 hrs
Coldest / Warmest temp for this period: -25 / -10 deg C

Notes: nm = Nautical miles (1 nm = 1.8 kilometers)
Expedition days are ‘1 sleep’ days, and may not = calendar days

I am so relieved that the last 5 days are behind me, but also so glad I experienced them... The Arctic has become wild since the last Post: Weather wild, ice wild, and terrain challenging. I guess we should have guessed that would happen after getting a bit too comfortable and maybe even complacent.

This Post will have mixed tenses, and order of days... sorry! As I have written it over a few days, and the current situation (described below is consuming us).

Night of Day 37: I sit here in our tent on a small floating ice floe (probably 800 metres at its longest point). Beautiful sea views, and lovely sunset! We are sort of marooned here, as we thought it was a bridge across a huge piece of open ocean but it's turned out to be a peninsula going nowhere! As our GPS says we are drifting at 0.5 knots, and just before coming into the tent we hit a smaller island floe, and it's now connected to us! With our drift the peninsula has probably now disconnected at the small ice bridge we used to get onto it, so we are truly a small floating ice island. It was the end of a long day and we had no option but to camp here. The good thing is we are drifting north and if this continues through the night we should cross the open ocean we desperately were wanting to go to, but probably by colliding with the other side ice tomorrow! It's pretty exciting, a bit scary too... I must say I was amazed today at the extent of the open water. It has looked like real open ocean with sea to the horizon in places. For the first time I truly 'believed' I am on a 'water ocean', rather than just 'land of ice', with a bit of water. Today felt that the ice was secondary to the ocean water...hmmm, scary stuff. Richard is also amazed and shared with us that in 7 trips to the Pole he has never seen open water like this for this time of the year and this far North. Hmmm, things REALLY are 'a changing' in the world, hey!

Sunset from our marooned island‏.

Today was probably the most interesting day of the expedition. It started with whiteout conditions and snowing, and us having to cross a maze of cracks, some of which were disguised with covered snow! Within the hour I had put my boot in hidden slush, and two sleds got dumped. Visibility improved, then we hit a huge east / west lead that took 3 hours to navigate around, with some tricky ice and crossings (beautiful scenery though). Just after 'conquering' that one, huge dark low level strata cloud almost reaching to sea level pointed to probably massive open water...and that's where we are now! Trying to get around this water was really challenging, but took us through the best Arctic scenery yet. It's clear there has been very recent huge ice destruction, and with the strong Easterly wind, there was lots of grinding and gnashing, all set behind a stage of REAL ocean, waves and all. I was fortunate to lead the last hour march which ended up being 3 hours, with a section where we walked metres from the ocean along the ice 'floe' edge with a beautiful golden sunset on the water. I guess one may conclude I led us to our current dilemma... haha, it was in consultation with Richard, and the whole team agreed at the time there was no dead end! It's all part of the navigation game that I can see draws Richard back! The South Pole does not offer this. We managed 9 miles today.

With less than 80 miles to go, after today, it's still not certain we will even get there! I guess we don't really believe that, but it would seem that in years to come, the open ocean water barrier will prevent people doing what we are doing.

I found this amazing: Open water showing the process of freezing, showing the clear line between newly frozen water, and open water.‏

It's Day 35, I have been living on the ice for 5 weeks now, and the Arctic has decided to show me a dimension I hadn't experienced yet... A moderate blizzard! Since 8pm yesterday it's been blowing 25 - 35 knots, with pretty heavy snow, and virtually white conditions. As the wind slowly strengthened we took the precaution of building a snow block wall around the windward side. Using a snow saw, we cut blocks of hard snow, placed them on a cleared foundation, and then plastered the gaps with soft snow. I can see I have a few more hours training to go before I can get awarded qualify for my Arctic Igloo builder diploma! After a blustery night in the tent, we awoke to absolutely miserable conditions, a new bit of open water a short distance off, and a unanimous vote of 'yes' to a rest day was accepted! Gee, how nice it's been sleeping in till midday, and just generally consolidating. We are all REALLY tired and this rest day will pay off nicely in the days ahead.

I am writing this inside the shaking and rattling tent, 30 knots outside, we are drifting west at 0.4 miles / hour, and have just gone outside to check out our barricade wall, and fill a few gaps. The barometer has dropped 20 bars in 20 hours, and is at a new low, so probably worse to come. It’s pretty warm though, and we have all committed to ‘marching tomorrow, no matter what'... I went to bed wondering what would happen if the tent got ripped up in the wind... After a few minutes of thinking, I had a plan, so fell asleep!

Surprise, surprise, after a restful 'blizzard day' off, and early to bed we woke on Day 36 an hour earlier at 5am, to a clear windless day... A good day to start marching again, but it didn't last long. It was soon dark blue / gray sky, westerly wind, snow, then our favourite northerly headwind. There was lots of fractured ice around, obviously from the strong winds of the day before. It was truly amazing seeing all this destruction and watching huge ice floes moving fast relative to each other. Lots of open water but until the last two hours of our marching it fortunately didn't affect us. We covered an amazing 16.4 miles to the Pole. I led the last 2 hours in initially whiteout conditions then literally a maze of open water fissures, with better visibility. I was dead tired at the end of the 11.3 hour day. The Pole is now only 87 miles away.

The only person we have met along the way! 'He' showed us the road to the Highway to the Pole!‏
On Day 33, we woke as expected to the news that we had drifted south 2 miles, the north wind was still blowing and it was 'whiteout' outside... hmmm, one has to dig deep knowing we were going out for 10 hours in this. Somehow I still started the day full of hope and excitement! Within hours it changed to a beautiful dark blue grey sky, with contrasting pure white snow ocean, and then the sun came out, there was no wind basically perfect weather. At the break before our last march that day we sat on our packs almost sunbathing, and sharing how "lucky we are"! We are always trying to dry gear out, and now it was so warm (relatively now!) with strongish direct sunlight I removed my iced up face mask and attached it sun-facing to my sled, so it could start thawing out before I got to camp!

A challenge for that same day was coming across this huge almost black ice lead... probably 500 meters wide and running NE / SW, almost directly across our path. Coming across it was like just arriving at an undiscovered sea. No chance of skiing across it and too far to swim... 2 hours of north easterly walking produced the hoped for ice bridge... phew, saved again, and with a 12.4 mile day (North component distance) we thought we had been forgiven for premature thinking about records, and 'only 9 days left’, and the arctic was back on our on our side!

Part of the Black Ice, big lead of Day 33. Pretty cool with the 'Iceberg' caught in it.‏

Well, Day 34 proved that the Arctic was playing with us... shocker, the worst to date! Whiteout conditions, the largest black ice and open water lead we have seen, 1 km across in places, running almost east west and no sign of any 'bridges' where we can cross. In desperation Richard climbed a 'little mountain view point looking for the crossing point "that always exists"! Nothing...

Richard up the highest point telling us the bad news that he can't see the end of the open water and the big walk east in hope of finding a 'bridge' is about to begin!‏

With no options other than whether we walk east or west, the mood was somber, as we set off east. Well, the weather deteriorated to snow and whiteout, and to share the load I led for 90 mins... ooh, challenging stuff, stumbling over little humps and sliding down slippery snow caked I couldn't see, I felt like I was a blind person leading the slightly less blind! Anyway, after 6 hours of virtually easterly progress we found what looked like a patch of greyer ice going north / south across the lead, and an apparent break in the open water. Richard went out to test it, and an excited shout back to us to put on ski's to cross was just the news we needed. The ice crossing was quite good, but needed urgency as the crack was in the process of opening again as we crossed. Although we probably walked 16 miles, we were thankful that we could claim 10 miles north progress.

Happiness... the trail of our sleds leaving the crossing point of the big, bad, 6 hour delaying lead! Sorry no picture of the actual crossing point as it was pretty hairy and no time for stopping for photos!‏

I must say as the Pole gets 'close' and fatigue sets in, I am finding it more difficult to not focus on the luxury of relaxing in Barneo, and 'normal' comforts. This is the difficult phase of a long endurance trip... managing the mind, when it wants to 'escape' to paradise, and leave the body behind! The two have to work closely together over the next tough 5-7 days to 'the end'.

Continuing the 'day in my life out here'.

Breakfast now done, pack up time. Firstly all the 'washing' to be taken off the drying line. Then stoves off and the chill down begins. All gear is moved out of the tent and I am left in a cold empty tent to fill the 3 stove fuel bottles from the sled fuel cans... hmm, a delicate job! Once that's done I join the guys outside doing personal stuff, basically packing backpacks and sleds. Last job is pulling the tent down, and then manually breaking off ice crusts on the lower tent walls, a pain of a job that takes 20 minutes. I'm the quality controller here, as I carry the tent in my sled, and ice is excess weight! Finally, we are all packed up skis / snowshoes on and the march begins... (Now around 9am EST)

I must 'run' now....we have a busy and probably 'big swim' day ahead.