How Empty is Antarctic?

Another good day in the cold. It started off hazy with a headwind - not fun - but then the sun came out and the wind shifted to the East. Zack judges polar weather based on whether or not it is "blowing a Hoolie" (short for Hooligan). I have proposed to him that we refine that into a 1 to 10+ scale (a la the Beaufort scale). An H10 would be a full Hoolie, whereas H10+ would mean "What, are you crazy? Why are you not in your tent?" So far, this trip, the worst we have had to face while skiing is only an H3 on the Hooligan Scale.

Shortly after we started out, Zack said "Keep on straight towards the Pole; I am going to take some pictures of the group." Fortunately, the sun was out by then, so I just navigated by my shadow - kept it 80 degrees to my right. The other trick was to pick a distinctive lump of snow up ahead, then ski towards that, then pick another further ahead on the same bearing. It seemed to go well enough - we were closer to the Pole at the end of the hour than at the beginning.

The rest of the marches were pretty routine - enjoying the "summer" sunshine. The last two of the eight marches the air got a lot colder for some reason, despite the sunshine. David and I had to zip up all of our zippers. We were moving slow, but tired and working hard. I was breathing so hard that my beard achieved epic icing (see the photo). At the end of the day we had made good another nine nautical miles, and are now just fifteen from the Pole (not counting a dogleg we need to make to avoid a very long ULF radio antenna near the South Pole research station. After seeing how hard it is to make nine miles a day, when well fed, rested, and in good condition, it is much easier to understand how, on their return from the Pole, Scott's surviving group could starve to death just eleven miles short of their next food cache...

Shortly after we stopped for the day, we saw someone out on the ice to the South. At first we thought that it was the other sub-team, but as they came closer we saw that it was actual one of the teams trying to traverse the continent - a married French pair of ultra marathoners and their Norwegian "not a guide" accompanist, Ari. I guess chance meetings can happen even in the middle of Antarctica, even with less than 30 people currently traveling on foot. We visited with them for a little while - they took 39 days to reach the Pole, and need to get out in about 32 to catch the last flight of the season. They try not to ski more than 8 hours a day because then they would burn more than the six thousand calories a day that the human body can absorb, leading to very rapid weight loss. Given their very tight time frame, Ari thinks that they will have to ski longer towards the end: "The last 14 days will be mayhem..." We gave them a belated Christmas present - the last chocolate Santa Claus from yesterday that was not yet eaten.

A couple of other quick notes: David and I don't like the hot granola we have every other morning for breakfast (alternating with scrambled eggs with bacon crumbled in). As an alternative breakfast David took a ziplock of frozen cheese into his bag with him last night to thaw. He was lucky that the bag held, because in the morning it was hot goo. Of course he ate it anyway... This evening the capers continued: David was struggling to pull the inner boot out of his size fourteen monsters, and accidentally kicked himself in the crotch, with his own boot that he was holding in his hand! Not to be outdone, I then punched myself in the nose trying to zip closed the tent..