January 3, 2012

S85°36.026 E052°39.086

Elevation 10816 feet

“Looks like a fine travel day,” I said.
“Yes, it does,” Eric replied. Not much more was said for the next hour. It was 5 AM. On a windy day, it is not unusual for our morning preparations to be silent, almost solemn. As we go though the daily nomadic ritual of stuffing sleeping bags away, melting ice and filling water bottles with various teas and protein powders, eating breakfast, and donning the layered cloak of our frigid travel before finally zipping up the tent and getting the house packed into the sledges, we mostly spend time in our own heads. And when we need the miles, as we invariably do, the mental preparation before hitting the trail is also a quiet time before show time.

The wind was steady at around fifteen knots, just as Marc had predicted. We laid out the big kites and jetted out of the campsite that had been home for three long days.

The terrain was hard and shredded. We were flying off a north-north-westerly on broad reach and quickly making miles. But none of it was pleasant due to the brain rattling surface. The sastrugi was different, and in varying stages alternating between what can best be described as a frozen plowed potato field, granulated and randomly shredded; and patches of more organized patterns following one, and sometimes two wind directions, sporadically including larger heads of about two feet in height. And then, for brief periods, the terrain would pleasantly smooth out–but for brief interludes of five or six hundred feet.

We have not lost enough altitude yet to find warmer temps, apparently: with the wind up, the cold was still biting. Given my concern for my toes (both of them, now) we started with two one hour sections, but switched to half hours, in order to walk around and redistribute blood flow. The downwind foot is the one that gets it; and since switching tacks after the POI, my left big toe has been getting worked. But not as much as the sledges! On a break half way through the day, I noticed some yellow spots on the fabric of my sledge. The zipper was frozen with what evidently had been liquid. I managed to pry it open, only to find that the screw top of one of my thermos had exploded, and the chai tea inside had soaked, and quickly frozen over much of my personal items tent bag! Between last week’s petrol leak, the stowaway snow inside the sledge, and now the chai tea, on top of the regular sweat of two months on the trail, my clothes are ready for the end of this trip. And today was going to be my “changing to clean underwear day”! (I have four for the entire trip…)

To be honest, I am getting ready for the end of the trip, too. With today’s sastrugi ride, my toes, knees and ankles have been feeling it. I am getting fatigued on the longer stretches, and the weight loss has been robbing my vitality. But the end is in site; we have about twenty days left, and the South Pole–if we get there!–will mark a break for the remainder.

Strangely, one of Eric’s thermos also exploded in his sledge today, although its content was only water. We stopped around 16:00 hours as we had both ran out of fluids. Between the effort and the dry climate, it is easy to get dehydrated out here. Our plan was to melt ice, call Marc for a weather update, and hit the trail again after a couple of hours rest. But given the cold out there, and finding out that all my tent clothes were now soaked in fragrant chai, the break turned permanent for the night!

We managed our best distance of the trip, so far, with 165 kilometers. This also means that we broke two thousand today, with 2112 kilometers exactly. Upon approaching the South Pole station, we need to adjust our tack to avoid a pristine and heavily protected area called the Clean Air Sector. This area is kept clear of any type of traffic for scientific studies of air quality and seismic research. Unfortunately, this large wedge extends about 150 kilometers, and cuts right through our path. It will add about one hundred and fifty kilometers to our trip! We are now 490 kilometers from the South Pole, but will need to add this on top… Getting there, though!

PS. On a previous blog, I just realized I made an error: Scott arrived at the Pole on January 17, and not 11 as I reported last month. It goes to show that spending too much time in the tent does indeed make the brain go soft! At the rate we’re going, we might well arrive on that day, too!

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January 2, 2012

S84°08.345 E055°00.244

Elevation 11455 feet

After spending too much time in the tent in dead calm weather, your judgment can be impaired. Any sign of wind looks like a ticket out, but that isn’t always the case as we found out today. A mild flutter animated the side of the tent, and this we took as a divine sign to pack up the tent go. By the time the kite lines were laid out, no amount of tugging would lift the sail into the sky. We were marooned again. We set up the tent a mere ten feet from its prior location, and set up house again. This was just a drill.

The forecast calls for wind tomorrow, however. Through the day, small signs alluded to that, including a mild but persistent flutter of the tent. Marc’s wind model suggests twenty four hours of consistent winds building in the night. As it is, at 23:30, I can hear it outside. By early morning, it is meant to be on. We will ride it as long as we can stand. This could be a long day. Off to bed now.

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January 1st, 2012 Day 58

S84°08.345 E055°00.244

Elevation 11455 feet

The quietness is crushing, almost oppressive. The air is still. No flutter in the tent’s fabric, no air pressure outside, and the only sound breaking the absolute silence that dominates the vast landscape is the mechanical clicker of my camera’s shutter. For weeks now, I have scoured the areas surrounding our campsites for the more interesting sastrugi formations, and the faces that reach out of the ice. But the storm that preceded our arrival at the POI has left in its wake new forms that we had not seen until then. These patches vary in size between twenty to forty feet in length, and ten to fifteen feet in width. They consist of delicate, curved, wafer thin ridges intertwined with each other, and rarely greater than twelve to fourteen inches in height. In the sunlight, the sharp edges and rounded shapes create endless arrays of subtle shading. Carefully framed, they deliver abstract patterns at once organic and graphic, reminiscent of computer generated digital art. Without a reference in scale, the could pass for sand dunes, but for the dominant monochromatic white and blue hues. I can’t get enough of them and thankfully, there are enough out here to chose from! While kiting, they will raise your guard as these delicate looking ridges are fiercely effective at catching and diverting a ski’s edge; they are hard and brutal to ride over. But they also offer a harmonious visual break from the monotony of the white shredded surface.
An ice cap isn’t typically the richest landscape to photograph. The endless white is remarkable to place a subject into, but by itself can easily look barren and, well, empty! These new shapes, especially defined by the changing light, are graphically exquisite. Because the sun doesn’t set around here at this time of the year–rotating instead around the horizon–the same sastrugi patch will take on different but equally rich shapes depending on the time of day.

I have been careful not to trample over the nicer patches in an effort to frame a shot, so as to re-discover them at a different time of the day. It also keeps me productive and occupied during stationary days; such as this one. If I were the wind, on this New Year’s day, my resolution would be to work harder! Today is one of the more still days of the trip; you could practically burn a candle outside. At least the sun makes for a warm and pleasant walk to photograph. Were it not for the frost that builds in the beard from breathing, this would pass for a T-shirt day.

A stationary day enables us to be frugal with our fuel consumption; and the sun baking the tent facilitates the melting of snow reserves inside without using a flame. It seems like we will be able to squeeze about fourteen days on our petrol reserve, which should allow enough time to reach the South Pole. Whether we can close to Hercules remains uncertain.

In closing, I will not win any feet beauty pageant any time soon: the nail of my other big toe fell off today as well. It had also suffered trauma in the ski boot riding over the sastrugi and finally gone black a week ago. That toe will now also require careful monitoring as the new skin is thin and fragile, therefore more susceptible to cold injury. Note to self, and others interested in this type of mission: the Dynafit Zero’s, while incredibly light and awesome boots, are the wrong choice for a long Antarctica crossing–even with a fiber fill overboot, as I have. Eric chose the Millet Everest boot, which is warm, but offers little structural ankle support, and fatigues both foot and leg. If I had to do this again, I would sacrifice in weight (probably about seven pounds) but pick a soft and warm Rossignol boot and binding system, one and a half size bigger. And keep all my toe nails; I am three down! Lesson learnt.

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