In line with recent days, the distance traveled today is rather modest (1.6 km), even though we have been fighting the pack ice for 7 hours, 20 minutes. The going just seemed to get tougher as the day drew on. Not to worry though; at one stage we had several tens of meters of flat ice in front of us.
Today we once again adjusted our tactics. We stuck with the Double Carry, but this time on foot. Our Fischer skis are still in perfect condition, but in this terrain of crushed ice it is much easier to progress on foot than on skis.
Sometimes, the ice boulders were several meters high in front of us. Getting the pulkhas over these obstacles at times demanded three men per sledge even though, using the same tactics as yesterday, each sledge was only 50% loaded.
We are not alone. There seems to be bit of a rush-hour going on around here. Tonight, only 100 meters from our camp, is another camp: a 3-man Norwegian expedition. Yesterday we bumped into Mr.Weber (`I presume´), a real North-Pole veteran, on a 2-man Canadian-British expedition. Some distance behind us is yet another 3-man group lead by Matty MacNairy. All these expeditions have similar goals: to reach the Pole at the end of April.
All is well with our Expedition, and we wish the other expeditions well too.
********* The Support Team Adds ************
The Finnish-language pages of this Website are being continually updated and developed. This is an ongoing dynamic process, and we are doing our utmost to keep up with the living beast also on the English-language pages. New sections of the English pages will be updated shortly, so keep watching…
Also, the EXPEDITION DATA page has now been improved.
Another development is on the FRONTPAGE. The stylized map of the North-Pole region on the left of the front page now shows a RED CROSS, which roughly corresponds to the real-time present location of the Expedition, relative to the objective of the Geographic North Pole.
The Expedition has received many e-mail greetings, messages of encouragement, and interesting questions, for which we are grateful. Keep them Coming! Our boys need all the encouragement they can get (`Man cannot live on [skis and] bread alone´).
Your greetings are being transmitted daily to the Expedition via satellite link. And your questions will be answered; some of them directly, and some on these web pages. So keep your eyes peeled for the answer to your particular question!