An eventful day: good things and bad. On the second leg of the day, one of Tero's skis snapped in half. This was not a problem: he merely put on a spare ski and the journey continued.

Half an hour later, the ski on Tero's other foot snapped in half. The break on both skis was in the same place: just behind the binding. It was as though the pair of skis was jinxed, or that one ski had sympathy for the other.

Now we did have a problem. Due weight restrictions on our sledges, the Expedition set out with only two spare skis per man. Tero's first spare ski went to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean while we were crossing a lead last month. His last spare ski got deployed half an hour ago. The second ski break was thankfully only partial, so Tero was able to ski on it until lunchtime.

By lunch we had already covered more kilometers than ever before on a morning stint. We retained the least damaged ski so that a proper repair job could be attempted in the evening. However, so that the afternoon stint could be completed we had to spent over an hour after lunch swapping bindings.

Because of these difficulties, and also due to rougher terrain, we covered fewer kilometers in the afternoon. There were several leads to cross, but all of them could be skied over. No swimming was necessary. The final legs of the evening were swifter, which made for a good day's skiing all round.

This evening the camp has become a major ski repair shop. We cut a piece of sheet metal from one of our cooking-stove boxes. The metal was first bent to form a splint, and then screwed securely in place over the break. Tomorrow we shall put our craftsmanship to a field test.

Distance remaining to the Pole: 232 km
Skiing days remaining:8

All is well with the Expedition.