The morning began quite normally. We filled our thermos flasks and ate our porridge. Just as we were about to don our Jalas ski-boots, we received new orders: today was unexpectedly declared a day of rest. One of the Expedition members woke up with a slight temperature, and had felt a bit off color already yesterday. So we decided to bring forward the scheduled rest day by two days. We don't expect this to harm the Expedition's progress: at most, the next skiing stint may have to be extended by a couple of days. It was a wise decision. One should rest when one's tired.

Once we got into rest-day mode, the day progressed like any other rest day. The only sounds to be heard in camp: seven men gently snoring. Later on, the sounds changed: there were gentle sighs and various rumblings as we serviced and repaired our gear. After all, sewing and darning is not the favored hobby of every Expedition member.

Our favored hobby for today, on the other hand, is eating crumbs and scraps from the bottom of old lunch bags, and scrambling around the tent floor hunting for tasty-looking morsels. Nowadays, we are so hungry that we find ourselves humming Christmas carols, just to remind us of roast ham, potato casserole, smoked fish and, of course, Finnish sauna sausage and Finnish beer.

Now that the worst of the pack-ice is behind us, we are suffering much less equipment damage. The Expedition's equipment situation is good: at present there seem to be no problems on that score that would threaten our mission objective of reaching the Pole unsupported.

Our entire rest camp has once again moved with the ice-flow. We can measure this movement using our GPS. This time we have drifted 5.5 km in a south-westerly direction, in 24 hours. This means that, while snoring, we have made negative progress towards the Pole. Thank goodness! Our ski trek won't be over too soon…

As we speak, part of the Expedition's Support Team, reinforced by friends and partners, are on there own expedition to Spitsbergen. From all of us here on the ice, we wish you a pleasant trip.

All is well with the Expedition.