January 17, 2012

S86°12.067 W085°50.800

Elevation 5878 feet

We left early in the morning; and again late in the night. Both times, the winds defaulted on their promise. After barely one and a half hour of our slow moving morning session, balanced only by warmer conditions, the kites fell out of the sky, without ceremony. That was it for the first part of the day. We build up camp again, and rested for the day, until a slight flutter held more promise for our missing miles. I stepped outside. The sun was absent, and the landscape a sheet of white. I lifted my kite to confirm the threshold of wind. It flew. I hurried back in the tent, and woke Eric up. Our sleeping pattern is as erratic as the wind. We catch some when we can. We broke up camp again, laid out the kites. Then nothing. The temperamental flutter was gone. The air was still. No amount of running back would lift the nylon into the sky. We were marooned again. This last portion of the trip is losing its luster. Packing and unpacking the camp hardly qualifies as the epic long downwind days we had come to expect from previous accounts. Besides, we have seven days to complete mission, nine before we are pulled off the ice on the last flight out to Punta Arenas, Chile. In that time, we must cover 700 kilometers–699 to be precise!–and I am beginning to question whether we will be able to close. There is wind a degree or so below us, we just need to get there! Aside from that, we see more and more ondulations in these parts, and we are dropping in altitude like a lead balloon. We are over a mile below our POI elevation. The good news is, oxygen is plentiful around here and we are no longer sucking on air. Eric’s altitude cough, which was with him for almost two months, is gone. We barely managed 16.7 kilometers today; far from the 100 kilometers average we had set for ourselves. We are no longer likely to arrive early. Now we need to make that average, lest we get pulled off before completing. We are back to praying for winds. Perhaps I will have Eric repeat his wind dance; you never know. It seems to have worked the last time!

January 16, 2012

S86°19.533 W087°08.814

Elevation 6094 feet

Waiting for the winds is like being on alert for combat: you know they’re coming. You just don’t know when, or how much. So we sit in the tent, resting, reading or writing, always an ear out for a sign of change. Invariably, sound will announce its approach. The gentle flapping of the tent’s walls, or a distant low whistle will faintly be heard. Typically, a gust will more firmly shake the tent. “They’re coming,” one of us might say, mentally readying for another sortie. The lack of regularity can reap havoc on the mind. We have taken to sleeping whenever the winds are down, which means that we turn the clock randomly following their whims. So much so that, with the twenty four hours of daylight, it can get confusing figuring whether we are on AM time or PM; the clock’s face works on twelve hour cycles. Eric is a sleep specialist: he will go down wherever, whenever. I have never seen anything quite like it! I have had more trouble with this wanton rhythm, and spend a lot of time writing, tossing and turning, and alert for change. This morning, the winds manifested, finally. Though they were weak, and short lived. Motivating to get out and work with light winds, at this stage of the trip, is measured only against our eagerness to put some miles behind us, and complete the mission.

But we did get out. Surprisingly, the temps were on the chilly side, and for the first time in at least two weeks, my toes were feeling it. I say surprisingly because we have been seriously dropping in elevation–we are more than six thousand feet below the POI! However, the terrain was remarkably smooth, and the snow quite soft. Today was a milestone for our trip as we passed the 3000 kilometers mark. We flew downwind with big guns and managed to close 71 kilometers before the wind completely shut down and forced us to set up camp, after merely three hours of travel. The forecast is not great: weak winds out of the east for tomorrow. We are now 714 kilometers from Hercules Inlet and have eight days to close it. It could be close…

January 15, 2012

S86°54.158 W091°48.895

Elevation 7058 feet

So much for the predictions and expectations. The sweet downwind runs; the reliable winds; the high daily average. We are marooned one more day with dead calm conditions. It had been a while. On the positive side, the sun has been out, baking the tent, while the outside stillness has eclipsed the frigid temperatures which have dominated since the South Pole. Our prospects of reaching Hercules in seven days quickly faded, and we are back to finding ways to occupy ourselves for hours at a time while laying down. Eric has taken to listening to every podcast on my outpost, and sleeping. I have spent almost twenty hours reconstructing and finishing–almost–the article that I lost yesterday in cyber space. At least this was constructive: the Antarctica branch of Sebastian Copeland Productions is now officially open! All this while waiting for the wind to build and switch direction.

This is oddly anti-climactic, especially in light of what I wrote yesterday; with 800 kilometers still of travel, the trip is far from over. But this leasurely pace could have us fooled. The winds will turn on again, and Antarctica is sure to dish out some of its decibels, at least one more time. I suspect we’ll have one more marathon session before long.But for now, the prospects are weak, and it is back to the spell check program. And there goes the glamorous life of an expedition on the ice! We have nine days to complete the mission. And we fly off the ice in eleven days. Tic-toc, tic-toc…