December 31, 2011

S84°08.345 E055°00.244

Elevation 11455 feet

No winds manifested in the night, and none during the day. After dragging the decision for as long as we could, we agreed to strap some skis on and give pulling a try. This was mostly academic at this stage, since in the time we have left before running out of fuel, the distance we could cover hauling would remain negligible. As it turns out, we need winds even more badly than we thought. One hour and one and a half kilometer later, I was sucking on air and cursing like a sailor. Eric had lent me an iPod, since mine is on the fritz, and I can’t tell for sure what made me more irate: the lack of oxygen or the selection of music. But after one hour, the experiment had lost its appeal. The sledges are heavy still, and after two months out here, with the weight loss, physical depletion, and at this stage lack of hauling conditioning, the exercise felt like slave labor! Add to that the psychological head game of computing that on our worse kiting day, we can cover in six minutes what takes an hour of walking and sweating, and a heart rate going up the charts! At almost 3500 meters still, the heart needs to work harder to pump in oxygen. That makes this type of aerobic activity leave you panting like a dog in heat! I was reminded of the intense effort of my 2009, seven hundred kilometers North Pole pulling trip with Keith! No pressure ridges or open water here, but the sastrugi certainly tries hard to compete!

The bad news is that the three day forecast calls for dead calm, and with it a noticeable increase of our required daily average. If we succeed at this, it will be a very close call. Had we not lost the fuel, we would still be within reasonable margins. As it is, we have a maximum of thirteen days before we exhaust our ability to melt ice into water and cook a meal. But we are close…

I want to thank all of you who are following our travails on this New Year’s eve, and wish you the very best in health, love and work for 2012 and beyond.

Rather than sending a silly hat picture (we did that for Christmas!) I chose a shot of some sastrugi from right outside the tent. How can something so painful on the joints be so easy on the eye? Enjoy!

December 30, 2011

S84°07.539 E055°02.714

Elevation 11433 feet

If yesterday’s progress suggested the successful final phase of our expedition, today’s non event brought us back to the drawing board. Nothing is certain, except that we have fourteen to fifteen days to reach the Pole before we run out of white fuel for cooking. And today suggests that getting there could be drawn out.
We were fooled again. While the remarkable wind conditions of yesterday held through the night and into the morning, we anticipated another glorious day of distance for today. There was no rush getting out of the tent: the previous two days held great winds, and as we are descending in elevation–and conquering new land!–we naturally expected for this to last. In the tent, we even joked about having found the Nirvana of ice kiting, and that we should set up a luxury kiting camp called “White Dessert” which would compete with the existing “White Desert”, except that ours would have a French pastry chef, and our katabatic winds would always be perfect.
We’re re-thinking the business model. We got out around 11:00, and I set up a shot with a camera mounted on the sledge behind me; we coordinated our synchronized lift off for camera, got the kites up in the air and ready to rip, and then…nothing. There was a breeze on the ground, but in a reverse of yesterday, nothing above.
Where I expected a glorious tracking shot from the rear as we glided, in formation, over the ice, we snailed around at four miles per hour, gyrating as we struggled to keep the kites in the air. And that old nagging feeling of doubt and crushed ambition creeped up again, fast, as I watched my kite fall out of the sky like a crumpled up cream puff! We were back in the doldrums. Within an hour, the wind simply shut off altogether. Incredulous, and not quite ready to admit defeat, we set up the tent as temporary shelter from the cold, but kept our clothes and boots on–not yet moving in–in case the wind would turn on again. I called in for Marc’s wind model forecast, and while waiting for his call back, starred at the tent fabric for any sign of life. Nothing. The call finally came, but the projections are bleak: no wind for the next forty eight to seventy two hours–the extent of the forecast. Tomorrow, we will likely strap on the skis–and start walking. We managed a measly six kilometers today, which leaves 656 to the South Pole, and fourteen days to do it in. We’re going back to work.
My lunch bags of nuts are becoming insipid by now, but that cream puff image is getting me all worked up! Luckily, I have managed to save a twenty day bag of Hebalife protein powder from the fuel contaminated food we jettisoned. Now we just need enough fuel to make water for it. Fourteen days…

December 29, 2011

S84°04.229 E055°07.914

Elevation 11450 feet

One of the best things about bad things, is getting on with it. Because sooner or later, luck turns. And good comes around. The key is to recognize that good and bad are both part of life. Attitude is what tips the balance one direction, or the other. As they say in the movies: life is like a box of chocolate; you never know what you’re going to get next!

It didn’t take long for yesterday’s buzz kill to turn around; today certainly made up for it. Unless you factor the protein bar with the tracings of gasoline which I ate on the trail, that left a lasting taste of petrol flavored burps for the following three hours; my breath was–almost literally–on fire! It is amazing and terrifying how fuel simply penetrates everything; including a sealed, aluminum lined bar wrapper. But as discussed, let’s focus on the positive.

The wind remained through the night and into the morning. Unfortunately, we still had some fuel soaked bags to sort through, and did not get out before 11:30. By then the blowing snow had largely gone, but we still had plenty to fly the big guns. The conditions were slowly pulling back and it seemed that we were headed to the usual afternoon shut down. But the wind simply kept up; it never shut off. We had the modest ambition of ending the day somewhere in 83 degrees; we finished in 84! And this turned out to be perhaps our best travel day of the trip, with 147 kilometers, bringing us to 662 kilometers from the South Pole.

We are now traveling a stretch of the globe that has never seen a man until now. In spite of the simplistic human urge to plant a little flag on unconquered land, perhaps to claim some type of ownership–or simply to say: “I exist”–there is something undeniably exciting, almost mystical, about setting prints where none have been before. In Antarctica especially, it gives the experience the taste of an other world. Of course, practically speaking, not much has changed: the terrain remained pretty shredded for the majority of the day, and my brains still rattles from riding the sastrugi. (Good thing, or my feet, ankle and knees would tell it to go on strike). I was told by the folks at the NSIDC that this region has probably not seen precipitation for five hundred to a thousand years. One noticeable change, and something we have not seen since climbing onto the plateau, are clear ondulations (hills) in the terrain. After eight hours on the trail, the wind was still there. What’s more, at eight knots it was light for the most part on the surface–which made for a warmer day for us, at around 25C below–but the seventy five meter kite lines found stronger fifteen knots air above which kept us moving at a pretty good click: we averaged around twenty kilometers per hour for the entire day. It is encouraging as we are dropping fast in altitude–we have come down over 750 feet since the POI– and this is a classic katabatic set up. A few days like this and we just might arrive at the South Pole by January 11th, my initial ambition, on the anniversary of Robert Falcon Scott’s centennial reach. However nothing says the conditions will hold. But…if they did…we would actually not even need to resupply on fuel at the South Pole (from what we lost in the spill) and we might just close the trip at Hercules Inlet, as intended…

The suspense is killing me!