Tyler in full anti-wind garb battling strong winds a few day ago.

by Tyler Fish

Today was our best day so far, at least as well as distance is concerned. We traveled across wind-hardened snow, small rubble ridges, and leads frozen for apparently a long time. It was a day of smooth sailing. No wind.  Plenty of sun, which by the way, rises in the three o'clock hour these days.

Yesterday John looked at me after arriving in our selected camp and he said, ‘Can you believe this is our world? Just the two of us. All this stuff.' I thought that was a great comment because in a way it was John stepping back, looking at our situation, and totaling accepting it, pleased with what it is.

John and I are able to do that more and more now, and it's a great place to reach in the expedition. We're content because gone is the severe cold, and our routines are becoming well-developed, and John and I now laugh at some of the unique aspects of ourselves that at times have made it difficult: I think John tries to control too much and John thinks I'm stubborn and both of these things are true. And we're becoming the very best team we can be and we trust each other very much. We appreciate the hard work that each of us puts in. We sleep well, we eat well, and we both agree that our routines are sustainable for days. That's a great place to be in an expedition, like I said.

So moments like these where we're feeling really good, they happen now and then during the day, and usually it's when we're warm as we just had a break, and we're usually well fed, the light is probably nice, maybe we're skiing along and the temperature is perfect. And we're able to pick our heads up, look around, and really appreciate this awesome place where we are, where nobody else is, and probably where we will never be again. And I think, ‘Who's living better than us?'"

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 26, 2009
Location: N84° 54.501' W074 30.444'
Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes
Distance Traveled: 7.9 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -40°F
PM Temperature: -28°F
very clear and sunny all day
306.43 nautical miles to the North Pole