day 28 I could hear Jon roar....

Shaun’s bad energy day.

Camp: Ben Gordon (Jon’s cousin)
Date: 9/12/07
Position: S85.0566, W087.3906
Temperature: -19c
Weather: Whiteout.
Distance today: 25km, 7 hours skiing.
Distance to Pole: 548km

I could hear Jon roaring…

I could hear Jon roaring at Shaun, ‘for god sake wake up, your water is getting cold. This is my third time calling you.’ over in our tent we were ready to move. I knew that Shaun was going to have to rush to meet the time for leaving. 25 minutes later we were on the move for another day on the ice. The day got off to a bad start for Shaun, the pressure was on from the start. As we were traveling along,
Shaun told me he was having a bad energy day.

We all have bad days, and it was Shaun’s turn today. Because he rose late he had very little to eat, and if he didn’t rush Clare and I would be out in -19 degrees freezing in the sub zero temperature.

When your on expedition you have to consider your other team mates, you are always running against the clock and operations have to run to military precision. If not huge frustrations can be built up. Shaun knew that and started his day badly, because he had slept it out.

Getting up in the morning is the worst for us all. So no doubt we will all have bad energy days, as we try and get in an extra few minutes sleep.

We still had a good day skiing today and hit two milestones. 1, we have just passed 85 degrees and 2, have passed the half way mark.

Even though we were in white out all day the snow was good with very little sastrugi and no wind. It was a great day on the ice.

We finished an hour early today, tomorrow we will reach our rest day camp in a half a day only 17km away. We will then be taking a full day and a half to recoup our energy before continuing our journey to the pole.

Yes, a rest day.