Day 23 - Skiing to the Pole

We have sunshine and blue sky today and this stays with us all day. As such it is pretty easy going - although this really makes you realise the bleakness of the place. We can see clearly from horizon to horizon and there is absolutely nothing at all out there. I move around the group and take some (hopefully good) photos.

Camp in the morning

Camp in the morning

Break time

Walking along

Walking along

Walking along

We had been hoping for a quick pick up from the SP (ie earlier than the planned rendez-vous of the 27th) and a reasonably prompt connecting flight back out to Punta (earlier than the planned one on 29th) to let us head on somewhere more fun for NYE but this does not seem possible and we are likely to spend a a day or two at the pole and it does not appear at the moment that we will be able to get an earlier flight to Punta.

The sun remains really strong into the evening and after supper we cook in our tents - I am just lying on my sleeping bag in my boxer shorts; someone records a temperature of 32c in their tent! This is pure solar heat and as soon as the sun goes behind a cloud the temperature drops significantly in the tent - you go from being too hot to actually pretty cold in a matter of seconds! But in general the cloudless sky means the tents continue to heat up and shortly it is too hot to sleep so (and remember that this is Antarctica!) I have to open my tent zips to let some cool air in! We are using Backpacker Pantry dehydrated food and whilst they taste pretty good they are prone to causing flatulence - I seem to have had a rather potent one today and so am exacerbating the temperature issues in the tent; luckily for the rest of the group I am in a tent by myself! Although I am later told that the comic effect of this did prevent others from sleeping for a while!