Day 23
4th, Dec, 2007
83.8978S,085.1516W
Distance to Pole:677 km
Another milestone, we are now into the 600ths,
Riding white horses.
just finished my shift navigating and fell to the rear of the team. The conditions on the snow were bad for pulling today, which slowed the pace and made our work a lot harder. Ahead I watched, Jon, Clare and Shaun pulling their sleds through the sastrugi. It reminded me of been on a rough sea. As I became mesmerised by the movement of the sleds as they swayed from left to right and bounced forward and every now and then turn over as they became unbalanced. It was as if we were on the sea, the sastrugi were like white horses on the ocean. We were riding white horses on the ice, and it was difficult.
The temperature today was a biting wind chill of -32 degrees c. Jon suffered badly with cold hands, while Shaun had an off day and was very tired by days end. Clare was in top form, I was a little more releaved that my frost-bitten thumb is getting better and dealing well with the low temperature, I also found time to do a bit of filming.
The katabatic winds were blowing steadly all day which added to our discomfort.
We are now cocooned in our tents, cooking and feeding ourselves well, in preperation for tomorrows ordeal.
Tonight I’d like to dedicate our camp site to a friend and mentor that is no longer with us. He was the person who introduced me to hillwalking over 20 years ago.
Camp Val Dean, he is with us in spirit.
