After yesterday's unscheduled rest day, the whole team feels rejuvenated. We are ready to ski with new vigor. The warm spring weather (- 21 C) also spurred us on.

Otherwise, the skiing conditions we confronted today were nothing to write home about. The overcast weather caused total whiteout. It was impossible to distinguish icescape profiles. In pack ice pressure zones, whiteout makes for very heavy going, and much wasted energy. All we could do was to ski in a straight line blindly, disregarding any mounds, moguls or mountains we might come across.

In good visibility, we would of course ski around obstacles in order to save energy. In whiteout conditions this cannot be done: you spend time and energy crossing an obstacle, and only afterwards do you realize there would have been a much easier route just a few meters to one side.

All day long we fought on half blinded, and the icy boulders seemed to be never-ending. We did bump into some bits of welcome flat ice, but this was completely by chance. We couldn't use the sun for orienteering; it wasn't visible. A small aid to navigation were the snowdrifts, which undulated in a fairly constant direction. At regular intervals we also checked our GPS position and our compasses. It has to be remembered though, that we are very close to the Magnetic North Pole, so the compass reading is 90 degrees off True North.

Despite these difficulties, we made good progress. This afternoon we crossed the 85th latitude; an important milestone. The Pole awaits us…

All is well with the Expedition.