89.1313N, 36.6076W
Over the course of 14 to 15 hours of day in/day out pulling, there are many instances when the effort feels overwhelming; and endless. Your legs lose all power; your back and arms burns. You reach a physical barrier that screams for a break–generally a power bar or drink break. These tend to be short, as you must be cold at stoppage in order not to sweat during effort (for then you’d get dangerously cold during breaks as the sweat would freeze). Those short breaks, and any type of food, sometimes even just a candy, give enough mental seperation from the effort to bring fresh reserves until the next cycle. It occurred to me that life is like that, too. Sometimes if you are challenged and see no end to it, it is important to acknowledge that this time shall come to pass, that everything in life is transient, and therefore not to let it affect you.

This will be my last dispatch from the ice for this trip–tomorrow our last pulling day here. After five weeks of this epic adventure, I know that re-entry will be a challenge. But all things do come to an end–and I could really use a sandwich! The last few days have been the toughest. We pulled long days, with reduced food rations, and the conditions were especially tough. But today, perhaps a salutation to honor our effort, the sun was mostly out, the winds died down, and we traveled open pans with only a few pressure ridges to cross. The temperature fluxed between negative 15F and 20F degrees. This was perhaps our easiest travel day. We lost 2.5 nauticals overnight to the south drift, but managed 14.5 nauticals in 13.5 hours of travel, which means we likely did 2.5 on top of that.

In all, I have estimated that we have lost around 60 nautical miles to the drift on this trip. The winds have been especially strong, and we only once gained north drift, and only by a half a mile. Surely, the moment we leave the ice, the trend will reverse! Our ending position was N89°07.881 and W36°36.458. Tomorrow we will push long and hard for an anticipated 18 hours, to get us as close to the pole as possible. The helicopter will then lift us and and drop us within striking distance. Two extra days and we would have been there un-assisted…

As I sit here, typing in my iPAQ (great PDA by the way–amazing communications tool) I cannot help but think of Peary, Henson and the four Inuit on their team, and how after reaching the pole on Aril 6th 1909, they then had to face the un-assisted return to land, for another month of journeying. They were no satellite phones, no blogs, no power bars, no technology developed Napapijri fabrics, no nylon tents. Just six brave men facing the unknown with no safety net, and no back up. I would raise my protein drink to them in salutation–but i’m all out!
Good night. I will report back from Longyearbyen, from which we are making our exit. Until then!

88.930N, 37.1603W
The wind finally let up a bit today, though the conditions were generally mediocre with low visiibility for the most part, and the sun struggling at the losing end with cloud cover. Some nasty times were spent in two rubble fields, something that we hadn’t done in a few weeks. We hadn’t missed much, and the experience remains as unpleasant as ever–hard to find the selling points of pulling heavy sledges up and down large blocks of ice burried in thick powder, generally forcing us off our skis.
I had said, a while back, that the Arctic sea should be on the list of sunny destinations since we had had three straight weeks of sunshine; well, hold on to your bikinis as I may have to revise that opinion: we haven’t had much sun now for about a week. While it does not affect temperature out here, the sun still helps psychologically; more importantly it helps define the terrain for route finding and simplifies navigation as it rotates in the sky at the rate of 15 degrees every hour. I spent the day navigating using the wind instead for guidance, which hit us from the west with 10 to 15 knot gusts. (These alternatives save battery life from the GPS.)
While a definite improvement on yesterday, that wind gets right through you during the short breaks. We spend those chewing the most out of our rationed energy bars to make the experience last longer! Any mouthful of flavor is a treasured experience to both taste buds and our growling stomachs. Keith and I have come to sorely miss the Herbalife protein bars which we have ran out of ten days ago. If you haven’t had one of those, you should try them out: they’re really tasty!
The south drift robbed us of three miles last night and today we pushed hard for 15 hours and made 15 nautical miles. Given the loss ratio to the drift, we probably traveled 18 NM or more, so this was a big day, much of it spent–luckily–on large flat pans. Our stopping position was N88°55.802 and W37°09.620. We’ll be out of 89° tomorrow. Finally.
We have been told categorically that our flight off the ice will be no later than the 26th in the AM as Barneo closes then. (Barneo used to close later in may, but the rising temperatures have made this too precarious for this floating station servicing expeditions and scientific research on the ice for four weeks). We will therefore be air lifted to the pole for the last few miles lost to the race. In the end, the many leads, the drift and the blizzard hampered our progress this week. No honor lost; just another humble lesson from the great white desert. If only we had two more days!…

88.7318N, 44.2366W

Another day of strong winds and poor visibility. After our tent was shaken and stirred all night long, it was our turn to get battered again by the 25-40 mph west-southwest lashes. Though the 100 foot visibility made today feel like gravy compared to yesterday’s pea soup in a blender. I guess everything is relative.

It’s hard not to feel defeated as we woke up behind our latitude position of the previous morning. Today, we spent half of the day repeating the hard earned mileage we lost overnight to the drift. Now we really feel like Sysiphus (he was sentenced by the gods to push a rock up a hill until it rolled back down, for the rest of eternity). Like nomads of the white desert, either chasing our shadow, chased by it, or by either side depending on the time of day–a whimsical companion for the many hours of this solitary journey–there is a lot of time to contemplate.

I reflect on human’s amazing ablity to survive in one of the harshest environments on Earth. And today especially, as the world celebrates Earth day, I think of how important it is to get out of the false sense of security that we have developed as city dwellers, lulled away by the convenience of technology from the responsibility and connection we have to the land that hosts us. Where does our garbage go? We don’t know. What is the true impact of our electrical power source and what is our consumption? What is our footprint since all efforts have been made to conveniently burry it inside a small envelope we call a bill?

Indigenous cultures have an innate sense of renewable and sustainable living because it is logical. Western cultures have mostly lost that. With each step into the white vastness of the Arctic sea, I am reminded of how small and vulnerable we really are, and confronted with the mirror of my own footprint. While the snow drifts covers my tracks, I know that I, too, would soon drown in the tears of Nature as its ice melts and floods our cities, forcing on us the reckoning of an order we lost. So let’s act now. (You can check www.globalgreen.org for some tips on what to do.) Happy Earth day!
We traveled for 12 hours and made 10 nautical miles, but probably covered 4 more lost to the drift. Our stopping position was N88°43.911 and W44°14.201. Temperatures today were around minus 15F without windchill. Good night.