Day 18

Day 18
Lat S83deg 24.817’
Long W80deg 29.590’
Altitude 1204m
Daily distance 14.14nm

Quite a tough day with the wind being a feature throughout. Once underway it strengthened to around 25 knots and didn’t ease until the last hour of skiing but that made pitching the tent slightly easier. It’s still blowing at around 15 to 20 knots and forecast is pretty much the same for the whole weekend. Wind chill is down to minus 35 deg C so sharpens everything you do. Despite that, still scraped another 14 nautical miles so relatively happy plus I went over the 1200 metre contour.
A few milestones today too. Passed 200 nautical miles since I started which also means less than 400 nautical miles to the pole! In your human miles that’s 230 and 460 respectively. Also I now have just 100 nautical miles to my next objective at Thiel mountains so they should start coming into view in the coming days.

My routines are like clockwork now and having a warm cosy tent at the end of the day makes a world of difference. When I look back a few years to when Scott and I crossed the Greenland icecap from East to West coast it was so different in terms of comfort. Even though we had 24 daylight then too, the sun never really had an effect on the tent and even inside it was below freezing. Drinks bottles and pee bottles would freeze overnight and first thing to do after waking was to wipe all the frost off the inside of the tent and brush it out otherwise it would melt and drip onto everything once body heat and the stove took effect. I slept with barely enough opening on my sleeping bag to breath and mornings weren’t pleasant at all knowing you were about to get showered in frost.
Here it’s a total opposite. The sun heats the tent nicely, in fact too much! My sleeping bag zip stays open and at worst I have to wipe the frost off the porch roof to stop it dripping once the stove is on. Even that isn’t a discomfort due to the inside temperature. I know it’ll get colder the closer I get to the pole but I’ll take this over Greenland any day!

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