John heads north into very poor contrast.
by John Huston
We had a good day. We put in our 8 hours. We can't really go any faster in these conditions. They are quite labor intensive. It was a cold day. We both struggled keeping our hands warm all day, lots of flapping of the arms and hands. But no frostbite to report and we'll do our very best to keep it that way. But as soon as one lets their guard down out here, you have to be very careful and very proactive with warming up extremities.
We skied along. We each have 2 layers of long underwear on the bottom on our legs and our Bergans wind pants and on the top we have the same, Brynje net long underwear, 2 layers on top. And today we skied in our gator masks, so if someone were to have come across us, all they would see would be our eyes and our little mouths sticking out the hole in the front part of that mask. Our nose and cheeks totally covered to stay out of the wind. It doesn't take much wind at these temperatures to make it extremely cold. Then we had our ruffs up for most of the day as well.
So that is what we ski in even though it is 30 or 40 below zero. If we are moving, that's the very best way to keep warm. Breaks are very short, 5 to 10 minutes every 90 minutes. After 90 minutes of skiing, our hands start to get cold and we start to get a little chilly, so we have a lot of motivation to keep moving because that really is the only way to stay warm until we get into the tent.
OK, we will send the photo tomorrow and have a longer update. Thanks for listening.
Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 10, 2009
Location: N83° 26.482' W074 07.548'
Time Traveled: 8 hours
Distance Traveled: 3.4 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -34°F
PM Temperature: -38°F
Distance to North Pole: 394 nautical miles