Tyler wolfs down a pemmican dinner.

by Tyler Fish 

Today was a slower day. There were many large ridges to find our way over. We ended up taking off our skis to pull our pulks, either one at a time or both at once, over these ridges. But in the end of the day, things winded down a bit and we're able to get some good skiing and make some nautical miles.

John's and my diet is based completely an energy per weight. How many calories can we get per gram? And it's a diet that is based on advice given to us by the polar explorer veteran and very nice guy, Richard Weber.

This staple of the diet is Pemmican. Pemmican has been used by explorers, historical and current, for a long time. It's meat and fat and vegetables all compressed together and then, in our case, frozen. It was made by a restaurant in Quebec and it is very good. The Pemmican we eat in the morning and in the evening. In the morning we add Minute rice to it. And in evening we add freeze-dried pasta to it.

Our lunch consist of chocolate, nuts, bacon and butter. Now what we've been doing is taking the bacon and the butter from lunch and adding it to either breakfast and/or dinner. So it's been putting the calories there and it's very tasty. So previously we've done that. But as of Day 15 we increased our calories by adding whole milk powder and some great, really tasty dehydrated cheese, which was dehydrated for us by Midwest Freeze Dry. They donated that, and we're very, very happy with our freeze-dried cheese. We've added that. We've also added butter for breakfast.

So, we no longer add the bacon and the butter, so much, from lunch into our breakfast and dinners. We're able to eat it during the day. So, this is increased our calories from 5,700 per day to now 6,700 per day. As we are needing more calories we're burning more and eating more so everything is good. So you can imagine us every morning and every evening holding our soupy, very warm breakfast or dinner, holding it for warmth. Cradling it as we turn off the stove to save fuel. So we both sit here in the cold, holding it and eating it and both of those feel good.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 20, 2009
Location: N84° 14.691' W074 34.747'
Time Traveled: 9 hours
Distance Traveled: 5.4 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -36°F
PM Temperature: -32°F
visibility good, light E breeze
346 nautical miles to the North Pole