N61:21.447 W46:46.910 Elevation:1289 meters

“Bitch of a hill”, I ventured.
“Yeah. It keeps going up…”, Eric replied.
And like that, we fell back into another hour of the silence that has come to characterize our travel. There isn’t much you’re in the mood to discuss under the strain of the effort, anymore than you would talk while running a marathon. In reality we have been ascending the ice sheet for the last four days and it doesn’t seem to let up. Its crest is forever teasing ahead of us, rolling up further when it feels like we are within reach. Of course we know the deal: we have now climbed almost 1300 meters (4260 feet) in elevation since we started at sea level, and this type of effort will carry on for another 500 meters or so, unless of course the winds turn, and we can switch to kites. If Sisyphus had been dealt his punishment on the ice, he might well have been forced to pull two heavy sledges up the ice sheet forever!
The mental cycle goes something like this: first you pump yourself and fix an objective, in this case six hours of night travel. After filling up on carbs and liquids, and while the cooling temperatures are still manageable, you set off gingerly, convinced that today you will fall into your rhythm. Pretty soon, your breath shortens, and you are chasing the negative thoughts that creep inside your head (Why am I doing this? I’m too old for this @#%*! I’m not in as good a shape as I thought! I will never last through the night…). At the first break, the sweat that invariably builds on your back and stomach instantly chills from the freezing wind, and your core drops to a deep chill. The outer layer you will now put on will come off again ten minutes or so into the next cycle. By then, the blood will leave you extremities to process the food you’ve just ingested and your fingers will go numb from the cold! Time to layer up there too, for ten or fifteen minutes, until the hands get TOO warm: layer down! Meanwhile your mental resources are playing tricks on you again. Upon setting off from the break, the cold dictates the pace in order to warm up quick; and for a brief moment, you feel good! But soon, a temporary shift in the slope’s grade will rob that gait and challenge your thoughts again (I choose to be here! This kid is twenty years younger than me! Dig deep! “There’s no crying in baseball…”) In the end, the mental resources are your own; to find the reasons to push forward has a lot to do with why you’re there in the first place. Modern exploration, or extreme adventure, has mostly to do with pushing your own limits, and stretching the capabilities of the human spirit. To be cold can sometimes be reduced to a state of mind; and made abstraction of. And it doesn’t hurt that I have a little angel sitting on my shoulder!
We pushed through to our 4AM target, covering 14.6 kilometers and set up camp. Outside, the thermometer registers minus 10C degrees without wind-chill. The sun is peaking on the horizon and soon our freezing tent will turn into a sweat lodge! But for now, it’s a quick meal and the eye mask: it has never fully gotten dark and it is about to get really bright!

Sebastian sending daily blogs using an HP smart phone and iridium technology

Greenland hints at its extremes as the stillness and thawing daytime temperatures fluidly roll into night and the cutting wind drop the air down to twenty below. During the day, the sun relentlessly beats down on the ice’ surface, turning the night’s hard crust into wet snow. This makes impractical daytime travel: the sledges and our skis sink into the slush, adding prohibitive drag to the loads. Consequently, we have turned the clock and set off when the sun hugs the horizon ending its apex, and the air temperature plummets. This makes for a vertiginous range in conditions: under the midday sun, inside the tent is like a baking oven! But upon setting off for our nightime sojourn, we brace ourselves for the piercing cold of the headwinds.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon resting and reading. Stepping outside the tent, I took in the fading mountain range to the south, and the way the haze diffused the multiple layers of ridges and peaks. With the domineering white ice in the foreground, it looked like a water color of itself. Soon, and for the next forty days, we will see no such features: the only shapes will be those made by clouds, or the way the wind and the melt defines the ice’ surface (the “sastrugi”).

By 9PM, we broke camp, strapped on our skis and begun making miles. Cold at first, the body quickly heats up under the strain of the effort: we are still pulling uphill, and will be doing so for a while. On breaks, the sweat instantly cools down, and the freezing wind sets a deep chill that will stay with me all night. Pulling the sledges in this condition reminds me of the North Pole, and sets the tone for the South Pole. It is hard work! At this latitude and at this time of the year, the night no longer goes totally dark, and long after it has set, the sun’s glow meekly hangs below the horizon. Breaks offer brief interludes to the intense effort, their length dictated by the cold that sets in almost immediately. A few dry fruits and nuts and a swig of protein and we set off again in the silence that characterizes this type of travel.

By 3:30AM we call it a night. I am especially tired, having not adjusted yet to the night schedule, and miscalcullated my fuel intake. A quick dinner and I crawl inside my sleeping bag, bundled up from the deep chill that has been with me all night. In a couple of hours, I will wake up wet with sweat as the sun will reverse this vicious cycle…

When the ice suddenly gives from under you, and your legs dangle above a void the depth of which is unclear, you get about the same jolt as when a car screeches to a halt inches from running you over…

We camped mid afternoon yesterday hoping that by evening the ice’ surface would harden some: pulling the sledges uphill is all the more tedious when your foot sinks to the knee with every other step.

By 7 PM we broke camp and set off. The sun was hanging low casting a golden glow on the ice ridge ahead of us. The ice sheet was within sight, though distances in this environment can be deceiving. But the warm colors of the sky belied the biting grip of the wind that picked up. And the placid setting hid the drama that was unfolding below us: we were now square in the middle of the crevasse field! Each variation in color had to be carefully considered, for what might pass for hard ice could in fact be but a flimsy bridge. The cooling temperatures would no doubt solidify this treacherous terrain, but

There is a point of diminishing returns when the dropping light makes challenging the deciphering of color or textural changes. Often, we might make out the curving droop of gravity doing its work on a weak bridge. But for the most part, we probe each step ahead of us with a ski poll, extracting information that can mean the difference between going through; or not. On occasion, however, adrenaline shoots up when a leg–or two–goes clean through the ice! Outside of Newton’s law, there is nothing familiar about dangling in void, your legs sucked in a hole while your upper body struggles on the surface! Both Eric and I trade some of this excitement. To worsen matters, the ice’s surface in the end has not harden enough to support our weight, and we sink to our ankle with each step. In all, we mostly labor through making two kilometers. Temperatures have dropped to ten below. The wind’s chill and the heavy effort takes me back to the North pole, and upon sitting on the sledge sucking on air for a fuel stop, I re-visit some of last year’s moments on the way to the pole.

On the morning of our third day, we stretch our time in the tent as we begin to roll the clock. The winds die down to a deadly stillness, and the sun beats down on the tent. With the vents closed, it’s like an oven in here! What a contrast to last night when I went to sleep with a mask over my face! We ditched our goat milk powder this morning which tasted like, well, ahem, ass–pardon my French! I’m just missing the bright side of mixing goat cheese into your morning cereal! This was a nutritional trick shared with me by my friend Lonnie Dupre, but I’m not seeing it! It shaves a few pounds off the load and will is sure to distract polar bears. At this stage, we are unlikely to encounter any unless perhaps at the end of the trip: they would find no business up on this barren ice desert. Except for us…and now the goat milk!