Day 20 - Skiing to the Pole

The days are going to be very similar from now on so I will only be writing about the bits that stick out. 

Each day is roughly wake at 7am, breakfast and strike camp. Walk for 50 mins then break for 10 mins. Repeat until the evening, set up camp, have hot drinks then supper then bed. The plan is to move at about 4 kph to gain about 20km per day but we don't usually manage that and end up nearer 3 so having to move for 7 hours per day. 

Our food is a mixture of rehydrated meals for breakfast and supper (which have the amusing side effect of giving everyone bad wind) and a mixture of nuts, power bars, salami and cheese for lunch and snacks. 

Unlike at altitude when I will often sleep very little and feel fine the next day, I was very tired when I woke up and a bit slow getting out of camp. As usual when this happens things go from bad to worse.

I struggled with my sled all morning, having to adjust it every 15mins and then catch up with the rest of the group and then repeat all over again. At first I blamed my packing as I had not had problems when using the sled back at UG but when the problems continued after a big repack at the first break, I had a closer look at the sled and saw that it had bowed considerably - it had presumably been stacked against a heater on the flight out here, slightly melting the plastic and causing it to warp and so track badly and continually spill the contents to one side. The only option then is to tie things on really tightly which will warp the sled even more but at least things won't slowly slide off. After that,
things improved but it still felt pretty tough to pull.

The weather is pretty good for most of the day with plenty of blue sky and sunshine. Unfortunately we never really managed to get up the hoped for speed and trudged along at a similar speed to yesterday and then we stopped early at 15:50 as some people were tired - not convinced that this is the sort of form required to make our goal of spending XMas (or at least part of it) at the SP. We also stopped under bright blue skies and sunshine! I can't believe that this is common weather out here so it seems rather wasteful - I just hope that we don't come to regret this with days spent battling driving snow, cold and winds!

Our camp site in the morning - the small trenches are the footwells in our tent vestibules which make getting in and out much easier.

Stopping for a break - polar plateau in the background; white and flat from horizon to horizon