The weather this morning was almost an exact copy of that on previous mornings: sunshine, temperature - 30 C, nasty cold wind. Nothing that we're not already used to.

The icescape today could be described in one word: broken. It wasn't impassable, but there were man-sized lumps of ice strewn all around us. Also, our path was crisscrossed with deep, frozen-over, 1 or 2 meter-wide old leads; none of them going in the right direction. Imagine yourself skiing through a giant jigsaw puzzle made of ice. Fortunately, we didn't have to `solve´ this puzzle: nature has done that for us!

Late in the afternoon, we found ourselves skiing on younger, more level ice. This made for much easier going than the sastrugi-furrowed old ice we were often faced with earlier in the trek. We are hoping for more of the same easy trekking in coming days.

(Ed: Sastruga is a Russian word meaning `wind-formed furrow´. Sastrugi (plural) are long, wavelike ridges of hard snow, formed perpendicular to the direction of the wind and common in polar regions. [Webster's New World Dictionary])

All is well with the Expedition.