Skiing to the South Pole in 59 days : Ray & Jenny Jardine

Day 26: Frozen Cameras

Dec 6, 2006

The wind blew hard all night, and at wake-up time we decided to sleep in. Fortunately, it calmed to manageable proportions (25 knots) two hours later. So we quickly did our morning routine (light the stove, melt snow for the day's drinking water, get dressed, put everything away, while Jenny loads the sleds I shovel snow off the snow flaps, then we un-pitch the tent and stow it in my sled).

So it wasn't until 9:00 am when we started skiing. Better late than never.

The morning was cold and windy, -21 C with 25 knot wind. The sky was clear but the sun didn't seem to be doing its job.

The terrain was rough, rough, rough. And at one point we encountered a batch of sastrugi so menacing, that in a white out I doubt we could have negotiated it.

The hours passed slowly but steadily. We switched leads every so often to break the monotony.

Number 1: Monotony of looking at the back end of the other person's sled.

Or, number 2: Looking at nothing but sastrugi ahead and off to the sides.

At least with 1, you are free to relax from the constant route finding.

For the record, back in Punta I through-bolted the sled runners at their aft ends because I could see that the design was flawed and that the runners would likely pull off at the first opportunity. This is exactly what has happened. Two runners have separated at the aft end but my though-bolting has stopped them from separating altogether. So we are looking fine at the moment.

This is what happened to Rune's Acapulka sled in Antarctica last year. Before I submitted my order to Alex, the builder in Norway, he assured me he had fixed the problem. But now I realize that did not remedy the problem.

While on the subject of these Acapulka sleds, the drilled-out holes in the stainless-steel attachment tangs, that the traces tie to, had not been chamfered (de-burred) so these holes have sharp edges which are cutting our traces. The first trace cut loose on Day-2 on the epic evening. The fourth one cut loose today. I now have a system of loops, so that when one begins to cut through, I simply shift the cord so it rides on a fresh spot.

Again with the sleds, the Dragonfly model is intended for kiting. It is wide and short, so it resists tipping over. This sounded good in theory, but in practice the sled does not track very well, because it is too short for its width. In ice or frozen snow, which is most of the time for us, It fish-tails with every step, side to side, like a skier doing parallel turns to slow down. We don't need our sleds to slow down, but that's what they do.

With these minor peeves aside, we had an excellent day, but today's update contains no photos because both our cameras froze right off the bat. We wear two insulating shirts under our ski parkas and today we both carried our cameras between the two layers, and it always amazes us to pull out a camera and have it covered with ice.

* * *

I am writing this later, and I will put it here, on this page, because I don't remember which day it happened. Jenny doesn't remember the incident at all. We had finished skiing for the day, and had just pitched our tent. The winds were strong, like always, and our number one priority was to never let go of the tent until I have buried the skirt with snow to hold the tent in place. I always have the tent anchored with my ski poles on the windward end, but the force of the wind on the tent could, possibly, pull the poles out of the snow. So I don't like to take any chances. So while I am digging snow, and covering the skirt, Jenny is supposed to stand on the windward side of the tent and hang on to it. But on this evening, instead of holding on to the tent, Jenny fainted and fell over, onto her back. Lights out. I knew instantly what had happened, and that it was not a matter of life and death. And I could not stop shoving snow until I had piled enough on the skirt so the tent would not blow away. This took me less that one minute. Then I came to Jenny's aid, and right then she came to. She asked me what had happened, and I helped her up and directed her to crawl into the tent. She seemed OK, so I handed her the foam pads, and then the rest of the gear. Once inside the tent, Jenny was her usual self. This was the only time it happened.

Evening camp: S 84° 17.858' W 84° 35.209'

Today's mileage: 13.0 in 9 hrs

Temperature: -21 C

Day 27: Low Margins of Safety in Strong Winds

Dec 7, 2006

We were up early this morning and off by 7:30. The sky was clear, the air was cold, of course, and the wind was whipping the spindrift into a fast-flowing river 6" deep.

In a ground blizzard, the snow's surface looks blurry except for the down-wind wake of my sled. In real life, the blurriness looks like a fast-flowing river.

Within the first half hour, instead of my face mask freezing to my beard and chin, as it usually does, it froze to my upper lip. My reaction when something freezes to my skin, is to pull it off immediately. Unfortunately a dime-sized scab came off my lip with the mask, so I was tasting blood for the next 15 minutes. This is just to say that we are having problems with our lips. Sunburn and frost nip, even though we try to cover them, they are having trouble healing because the scabs are always getting torn off. This is a minor infirmity though.

Another very minor infirmity, which is healing nicely, happened on Day 2, which we wrote about previously. We were caught in a terrific windstorm, in extremely cold temperatures. We should have made camp, but there was no place to camp because we were climbing a never-ending slope up to a pass. Hour after hour, until we finally found a place to camp at 9:00 p.m. This was the same wind storm in which I temporarily lost my overmitt.

As the result of that cold wind, we each got frostbite blisters on the front of our thighs. This is actually common with people in polar regions, especially in Antarctica where they are constantly dealing with headwinds.

We didn't notice it initially, but a few days later we had purple splotches that within a few days turned to white, dime-sized blisters. I had about a dozen, and Jenny had twice as many. The skin turned purple around the blisters, and then red. The camp doctor, Martin, carefully monitored our situation over the satellite phone to help ensure that the damaged areas did not become infected.

Mid-day, Jenny pulls out some cookie bars for lunch.

He also advised us to wear an extra layer of clothing on the thighs, which we have been doing since. In fact, with these cold winds of late, we have been wearing four layers: ski pants, 2 pair of thermal pants, and a thigh-sized layer of fleece sandwiched between the two layers of thermal pants. The affected skin is healing nicely but slowly; the blisters have turned to thick scabs that are sensitive to the touch.

As usual this morning, the terrain was quite challenging and the cold wind was so intense that it had us feeling that our margins were quite low. By that I mean, if anything happened out of the ordinary, we would have very little time to deal with it.

For example, Jenny's sled sliced one of her traces again, and it took both of us working furiously, wearing our thin liner gloves, to make a replacement piece, especially tying the knots. With stiff, cold fingers, it is very hard to do. One would not think this is such an emergency, but anything that requires stopping and taking off the overmitts is a big problem because we rely on the constant moving to generate warmth, and we rely on our ultra-thick overmitts to preserve warmth in our fingers.

The light is playing tricks again. Those mountains don't appear in any other photos taken that day.

This is not to say that the day was an epic, by any means. As long as there are no hang-ups with the gear, we are quite happy.

In fact, after climbing a long hill in the afternoon, we came to a plateau and we enjoyed a few hours of easier going.

The best time of day for us is when we haul into camp, pitch the tent and crawl in. It is very warm and relaxing in here.

Evening camp: S 84° 28.969' W 84° 54.892'

Today's mileage: 13.0 in 9.25 hrs.

Day 28: Sastrugi for Breakfast

Dec 8, 2006

Anomalies in the flat Antarctica myth

Today's weather: sastrugi. Other than that, we didn't notice.

Today's menu: sastrugi for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Snacks at rest stops: sastrugi.

What are sastrugi? Anomalies in the flat Antarctica myth.

With only light winds (5 to 15), we expected a day of white out. This was according to the patterns we have observed. And actually a white out came flying through, mid-morning. It was traveling fast, but just as it was about to engulf us, it swerved and missed us by a good mile.

The wind was full of fine spindrift, and the upper atmosphere was full of ice crystals, and we enjoyed the sight of a pretty sun dog, (when not looking at the sastrugi) which at times showed the colors of a platinum rainbow. That is to say that it looked strangely metallic.

We wended our way through the anomalies as best we could; at times there didn't appear to be a best route, so we had to simply forge through. This happened about 40 percent of our day.

Other than that we both listened to music all day. Over to the right umpteen miles sits a lovely, small cluster of mountains commanding the eye.

We enjoyed the day very much, and especially appreciated our light sleds as we are getting close to our resupply 40 miles hence. Also the day was warm enough so that the sled runners slid over the ice more easily.

A small cluster of mountains commanding the eye.

A pile of snow blocks, positioned just outside the cooking area. Jenny adds these to our cookpot to melt, to make our evenings supply of water for cooking and hot brews. Then later she melts more blocks to fill our drinking bottles.

My face mask at the end of the day, turned inside-out to show the ice that forms from my breath. Every day this ice cup forms around my chin, and sits very close to my chin, like a loose sock fits a foot. At the end of the day, this ice is sometimes so thick that it takes me several minutes in the warm tent to melt it enough that I can remove the face mask. Once off, I melt all the ice by putting the mask on top of the lidded snow-block melting pot. This face mask covered in ice is not very comfortable to wear for nine hours straight, at least the parts around the mouth and chin. But it does offer excellent protection from the wind, as long as I can keep the ice away from my skin.

A patch of frostbite on my lip.

Evening camp: 84° 40.212' W 85° 22.859'

Today's mileage: 13.4 in 9 hrs

Altitude: 5,125 ft., Temperature: -18 C

Day 29: Thiels Mountains Visible in the Distance

Dec 9, 2006

The wind started out at 20 knots, but then mid-morning started to diminish, and by the late afternoon was down to 5. All this under a cloudless sky.

All day we steered for a mountain visible in the far distance, one of several, which we think might be the Thiels. At least the navigation was easy. We first caught sight of it yesterday at a distance of about 45 miles, which seemed too far for it to be Thiels. Maybe some other peak in line with it. Now at tonight's camp we are not that much closer, so maybe it is Thiels. If so, our resupply is at its base, 27 miles away.

Our boots are working good so far, but they have a threshold beyond which they become painful to wear once they accumulate too much ice between the inner thermal liner and the boot itself. This ice never melts, so when we put our boots on in the morning, it's into the ice the foot goes. But we never feel it because the liners are so effective.

Jenny's boots reached this threshold two weeks ago, but we didn't realize what the problem was until two days later. Meanwhile she had very painful feet. The problem is not that the boots become cold, but that they become too small for the feet, with so much ice in them.

Today my boots reached this threshold, so as I limped into camp I knew what to do. In the tent with the stove roaring, and aided by hot water bottles, we melted the ice enough where we can remove the liners. Then we can easily melt the remaining ice and dry the boots.

On a perfect evening, Jenny putting duct tape on a ski to protect the home-made fitting that secures the skins.

Thiels Mountains Visible in the Distance

There must have been a reason why we didn't take any photos of skiing today, but now I don't know what it was.

Evening camp: S 84° 50.835' W 85° 57.976'

Today's mileage: 12.8 in 9 hrs

Temperature: -9 C

Day 30: The Half-Way Point

Dec 10, 2006

Blue skies, light wind, (SSE 10 to 15) it almost seems that summer has finally come to Antarctica. Enjoy it while it lasts. The terrain was not as severe. And the scenery was absolutely spectacular with mountains all around.

Today was our best day ever, mileage wise (16.0) but much more than that, enjoyment wise. We have paid our dues to this point, and we are enjoying this trip to the max. Where else could you find so much elbow room, and an ultra-pristine landscape? A month without seeing anyone, and not one shred of trash.

As we skied along in single file, we each listened to our music, each lost in thought. The time does not drag on; it just seems to fly.

I find so much pleasant to think about here. I suppose it is because there is no outside negative influences. No bad news from the media, no advertisements, no daily, hourly, and by the minute turmoil of society to have to deal with. So the mind is free to soar.

This afternoon we reached 85 south. At the estimated spot we drew a line across the snow indicating the latitude, a customary gesture. Five down, five to go. That means we have reached the half-way point on our journey.

Health-wise we are both doing great. We're slowly losing weight, but not nearly as much as we expected. We have not taken a proper bath in a month, and our clothing needs laundering, but that is not an option, so we don't worry about it. Some of our gear is starting to wear out, namely boots and bindings, and we can only hope they will last another month. The boots and the bindings are each doing well, but where the two meet is a war zone, and both are slowly losing.

Late afternoon Jenny thought she could see the resupply, 14 miles away. We are not wearing prescription eye wear this trip, so we can't be sure. The cache consists primarily of 100 55-gallon barrels of aircraft fuel, sitting on a 4-foot high platform of snow. So she could be right. Anyway, we can home in on it with our GPS if need be.