Are We There Yet? I Have to Go to The Bathroom!

Yesterday was our first full day on the ice. It was a hard day. The weather conditions were still good: above negative 20, with very light wind and some hazy sun. The problem was the altitude. We started out at a pretty brisk pace, and I just couldn't maintain it. By the second hour, I was feeling lightheaded and nauseous. Also, my face mask system was icing up. The Fog eVader does warm up the air a bunch and make breathing easier, but also directs moist air into my ski goggles. After an hour or two, the inside of the lenses was coated in a sheet of ice - I was only able to see out of a narrow slit by my nose. To add insult to injury, the mask literally froze to my beard! When I tried to take it off to eat some trail food, it would only come halfway off... I eventually got it to thaw by pulling up my neck warmer over my mask, so that the mask was inside another layer. Then I switched to my spare goggles that just has a fleece curtain hanging down over my face - not as warm, and the fleece still froze solid from my breathing, but at least I could see out of the goggles.

I was still feeling pretty icky. Finally, in a big blow to my pride, I gave up some weight off of my sled (a ten pound bag of dehydrated food). Lightening the sled, and setting a slower pace seemed to help a lot. By the end of our seventh march I was pretty tired, but not feeling nearly as bad as after our second. The marching itself is pretty straightforward: Ski due South for fifty or fifty-five minutes, then take a ten minute break to eat, drink, adjust clothing, and pee. You need to plan each stop carefully in your head to get everything done in time. As previously mentioned, we are not allowed to leave anything behind, so human waste goes in a bag, if solid, or pee bottle if liquid. It is critical to maintain hydration in the cold, dry, thin air, so those pee bottles fill up fast. Once or twice a day we dig a deep pee hole and pour all the liquid in.

The terrain is a nearly featureless expanse of white in every direction. There are a few sastrugi, and some gentle rolling to the landscape. We are also slowly ascending higher on the ice cap as we head towards the Pole. Every few minutes, we will ski over an area where a weak layer of "hoar ice" has formed below the surface. You can tell, because as you ski over it, the entire area will give out a vey load "WHUMP" and sometimes settle a little under your skis. It was very disconcerting at first, but not otherwise dangerous. There is also very little crevasse danger in the area we are traversing, so it is not necessary to rope the team together in case anyone falls in, unlike travel on most glaciers.

In the end, including a little bit of zig-zagging around sastrugi and as the compass needle wanders, we did about seven nautical miles in a straight line towards the Pole, after skiing about eight. We are now fifty seconds of longitude away, i.e., fifty nautical miles (56.5 statute miles), so there is still quite a lot of slogging to go. Today is my birthday, so hopefully, we can get in some good mileage. I also put on my only pair of clean, fresh from the laundry, wool socks as a birthday present. However, the wind is blowing a bit, making the challenge just a bit higher than yesterday...