Day 32
Camp: Allied Forwarding;
Position: S85.5057, W086.6798
Temperature: -8c
Weather: Whiteout/ snowing with deep snow., 5th day with no contrast, it’s really getting to us.
Distance today: a miserable 19.7k of hard going, 8 hours skiing.
Distance to Pole: 495km
Strange weather and terrible conditions, slow us down., can it be climate change.
What a day, it was as hard as I’ve have done in a long time. Just as we were getting up the mileage to between 25 to 27km per day and our hope of reaching the South Pole in the next 25 days may be shattered.
We have been hit by yet again by an Antarctic storm that has dumped between 4 to 8 inches of snow on our route. The going is really hard and slow at the moment, Today for 8 hours of hard pulling we only got 19.7 km under our belt. The sleds are digging into the freshly fallen snow, making it back breaking work to pull them, there is no glide on them.
Usually only 12 inches of snow falls here in a year, but in the last few days we have got approximately half the recorded snow fall, in three days.
Also the temperature has risen to the warmest yet today for us, -8 degrees, also the wind is coming from the North east, strange for us, as we assumed we’d have the wind from the south. I wonder can this be the effect of climate change.
On a positive note. We have broken the 500 km to go mark. Tonight’s camp site leaves us with 495km to the Pole.
Lots can still go wrong, can bad days get worst? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Tonight’s came site, is dedicated to John and all the staff at Allied Forwarding who have been my shipping agent for all my expeditions around the world. They are a key element in the successful logistics that is required to organizing my expeditions.
