DAY 14 - THE COLOSSUS

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Our sled peaks through the rubble.

by John Huston

This is John calling. Today, Day 14, March 15th, we traveled for 8 hours and 30 minutes today, covered 3.2 hard-earned nautical miles. Temperature in the morning was -36. This evening it warmed up to -26, however, we have a pretty stiff 10-knot wind blowing out of the west that's been with us all day. It's probably picked up, or at least felt like it picked up, in the evening as we are camped in a pretty open area.

Today we crossed 2 leads and traveled across a bunch of old sea ice, with kind of small 1 to 2 meter snow dunes that made it difficult to ski over and also due to the overcast skies, we had lots of low contrast and poor visibility. These snow dunes appear flat, so you kind of run into them and they are not flat and require quite a bit of effort to pull our sleds over.

So around 3 o'clock, Tyler and I skied in what can only be described as a small town of different sea ice formations, all sorts of sizes of rubble, shoebox size, soccer ball size, all the way up to gigantic small building size piled 4 stories tall, formations of ice. It was an absolutely incredible place. And as we skied into this with our pulks, it felt like we were entering a small urban area.
 
We didn't know how long we would be there, and after some scouting, we realized that we would probably be there for a few hours because this was a joining together or a smashing together of 2 old multi-year ice pans that due to the forces of the Arctic Ocean at some point must have just had some massive crushing and grinding going on and upheaval and this was the result. We named this area "The Colossus", and we spent the next 2-½ hours navigating through The Colossus, first with our small pulks, as they're pretty easy to maneuver. It was kind of almost like mountaineering with a sled behind you. And then together with 2 people on one big pulk at a time to get the larger pulks through the maze. We were able to let go of being in a hurry. We put in our time everyday and we do the best we can. We put in our most effort, and we can only go so quickly, so that mindset allowed us to enjoy the experience and we really felt like little kids in some gigantic playground. I mean if this ice formation area, The Colossus, was in Illinois, it would probably be a little national park.
 
So we both left with a feeling of strong teamwork, having helped each other through, and a feeling of complete wonderment of having been through such an area that not too many people get to see and that is an example of the power of nature and the power of the Arctic Ocean. It was truly beautiful as well. We got a bunch of photos. After that we skied across a new pan of ice, windswept, and camped behind a little hummock to try to get out of the wind.
 
It was a good day. We left with a high feeling. We talked to our families and loved ones, which is also a big thing to look forward to every Sunday. We did our surveys for Gloria Leon and the psychological research which we do every Sunday as well.
 
I would like to give a big hello to all the families and people at CaringBridge who are watching our expedition. CaringBridge.org offers free personalized private websites to individuals and families in health crisis, illness, and treatment, and it allows people to communicate through the Internet to hospital rooms and recovery areas. It provides a special mental support to people in those sorts of crises. Anybody can use CaringBridge at any time in their life, so keep that website in mind, www.caringbridge.org. And we are also trying to raise $100,000 for CaringBridge, so you can go to our website, www.northpole09.com and check out more information about that.

OK, thanks for listening, and more coming tomorrow.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 15, 2009
Location: N83° 46.166' W074 18.091'
Time Traveled: 8 hours 30 minutes
Distance Traveled: 3.2 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -36°F
PM Temperature: -26°F
Wind: ~10 knots out of the West

WEEK IN REVIEW 3/9-3/15

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Our sled perched on some rubble.

by Tyler Fish

This is the Week in Review. I'd say this week has been about some old and some new. Having survived the bitter cold of the first week, the negative 50's and negative 60° temperatures, we have now moved on to the consistent cold of -30° to -40°. And we've also added now a breeze, which varies in direction, but necessitates the face mask so we've been wearing masks most days this week.
 
Having left behind the large consistent and amazingly random rubble of the first week of the trip, now it's the every day undulating wind blown landscape separated by veins of rubble where large pads of ice have collided together and thrown up huge obstacles in our path in the way of ridges and sometimes huge boulders.
 
So now it's, at least every once in a while frustrating, everyday is the same. And now we travel more like nomads across the desert, not surprised and amazed by our location as we were in the first week, but now more of, "how do we get through everyday?" And we decided we do what we can and we do it as well as possible.
 
So, we're starting to rely to our routines, feeling very good about what we do everyday and being efficient and good to each other and good to our equipment and we travel by the clock. We use our watches, which haven't missed a beat. We trust ourselves, our choices and our gear. We also know that we're in about in the same position as other expeditions that have gone before us. Some have been a little faster, some have been a little slower, but considering how the Arctic Ocean can vary so much from year to year, we feel very confident at this point.
 
So, here we are at the end of the week. One of the things that we realized is that we can't see the mountains of Northern Canada anymore, which have been consistently behind us. And Ward Hunt, which stood for awhile as a constant reminder, is gone. I was sort of, in my mind, referring to it as the lonely mountain, especially when the sun was behind it. But no more can we see that. So instead we focus more on looking forward. And we look forward with optimism and we're hoping to reach the 84° mark early in the week. That's it for now. Take care.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 14, 2009
Location: N83° 42.946' W074° 16.704'
Time Traveled: 8 hours 30 minutes
Distance Traveled: 3.7 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -42°F
PM Temperature: -34°F

DAY 13 - MOVING THROUGH THE RUBBLE

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Our ever-changing icescape.

by John Huston

This is John.  Today was a typical day for us as far as travel goes. We had a mix of rubble.  We kind of have little soccer ball sized ice called popcorn rubble; you can kind of ski over it and the sleds slide over it quite easily.  And in other places we have more significant, difficult blocks of older ice that require two people on a sled and lots of grunting and groaning depending on the exertion. 

We never know what we are going to get.  Out of camp this morning, for example, it looks like great skiing and it was for about 45 minutes and then it turned into rubble for the next 3 hours.  We climbed upon the tallest piece of rubble around to scout and sometime it looks great to the north and sometimes it looks like a huge field of rubble. It is just a very inconsistent terrain that we travel on. So we always just try to accept what it is and keep moving north. 

That's it for today.  We are healthy.  We are well fed and we are ready for a nice sleep. Our routines are working very well. We are not over tired and we feel like we are moving along quite well as far as that goes. Tomorrow we will do the Week in Review and something fun to wrap up the first 2 weeks as well. And we’ll try to send a few more photos.  All right. Thank you.  Bye.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 14, 2009
Location: N83° 42.946' W074 16.704'
Time Traveled: 8 hours 30 minutes
Distance Traveled: 3.7 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -42°F
PM Temperature: -34°F
AM overcast, light breeze out of N
PM clearing, light breeze out of SW
Distance to North Pole: 378 nautical miles

DAY 12 - BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY

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The view to the back of the lead skier.

by Tyler Fish

It is March 13th. As I was skiing along today I was thinking about Cecilie Skog's book. She wrote a book called, "The Three Poles", referring to the North Pole, the South Pole and Everest - which is sometimes called the 3rd pole. The book is in Norwegian and I manage to read it while I was getting ready for this expedition.

 
She talks about the North Pole expedition from Ward Hunt to the North Pole as being the world's most beautiful ski trip. And I've been trying to figure out what she meant, whether it was the sunset in the beginning that I already referred to or just the beautiful blue blocks of ice that we've seen; sometimes boulders, sometime just small cobbles. Or is it just the snow? Is it the wide expanse of the Arctic Ocean? What is it?
 
But I think today I came upon it. It is the light. For the vast majority of the day John and I ski through, I don't know what to call it, some people could call it the golden hour, some people call it alpenglow. Whatever word you have for light that makes everyone skin glow when it hits them. That's the kind of light that we have all day. Not that there's much skin showing, actually, here. But it's really quite amazing that we have this wonderful light all day. So that's it for today.
 
A little bit of a highlight from yesterday, we did come upon a frozen lead that was heading northwest. Now the advantage of frozen lead is that it's very flat and very easy for us to pull even our heavy loads along it. So, we took that for a little while. Hoping that it would have been north and really give us the miles north but it did not do that. And although those little miracles won't get us to the North Pole, we do get excited about them. They add a little spice to the day. But it is truly the getting up everyday and going everyday, however fast or slow that we can go, that is going to get us there.  So, that's all for now. Bye.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 13, 2009
Location: N83° 39.210' W074 18.240'
Time Traveled: 8 hours 45 minutes
Distance Traveled: 4.6 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -38°F
PM Temperature: -32°F
Clear skies, breeze out of NE
Distance to North Pole: 383 nautical miles

DAY 11 - SKIING HIGHWAY

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by John Huston

This is John calling with a short update report. Today was an up-and-down day. Kind of everything the Arctic Ocean had in some ways was thrown at us. We had a whole bunch of ice rubble in the beginning that made it very, very slow and it seemed that every route we chose, as far as we could see, we needed to then go back the opposite direction once we crossed over some boulders or something. Lots of kind of wiggling and crisscrossing our way north.

In the afternoon we came upon several frozen leads that were quite old and beautiful ice formations undulating and some of them were going in a northwesterly direction so we followed those leads as long as we could. And now we are camped just north of the last one that we crossed today. So those leads, if they are going in the right direction, can kind of be skiing highways, but it's kind of rare that a lead will run north-south; maybe it will run northwest-southeast or something like that, which is good for us, but north-south leads are kind of rare, so we often just cross the lead because they're running east and west.

That's about it for today. We'll send some photos tomorrow and have a longer dispatch. We're doing well; we're staying warm for the most part. It can be a battle to keep one's hands warm in these conditions and breaks are very, very short. I wouldn't even call them breaks. It's more like you cram some food in your little facemask hole and drink as much as you can in 2 or 3 minutes and then keep moving. We look forward to breaks because it gives us some sustenance, but at the same time they are a very cold time and we just look forward to keeping on moving so that we can stay warm.

OK, talk to you next time.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 12, 2009
Location: N83° 34.625' W074 16.487'
Time Traveled: 8 hours 15 minutes
Distance Traveled: 3.6 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -34°F
PM Temperature: -34°F
Distance to North Pole: 386.83 nautical miles

DAY 10 - WARM FEET, COLD HANDS

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by Tyler Fish

Hello, this is Tyler calling. The temperature this morning was a -28° F - a little warmer, and even warmer in the PM at -22°F. There was a light breeze all day from East/Northeast. 

We traveled for 8 hours and 20 minutes and set a distance record of 4.7 nautical miles for the day. We are very pleased about that progress. And that means this is about 390 nautical miles left to the North Pole.  As far as the day’s dispatch. I thought I would talk a little bit about how the day progresses. 

When you wake up in the morning you’re feeling really good.  You are warm all over because you've just been sleeping in your sleeping bag and you get out and you really feel like not even that cold outside. You can go outside, go to the bathroom if you want, do stuff in the tent and you feel pretty good. 

But gradually, your feet get colder and colder and colder.  So you start out your day with very cold feet and that’s one of your biggest worries is how to keep your feet from, worst cast scenario, getting frostbite. 

And as the day goes on your feet get warmer and warmer and warmer and you usually end your day with very hot feet. Now the opposite is true with hands.  (This dispatch was interrupted.)

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 11, 2009
Location: N83° 31.109' W074 12.118'
Time Traveled: 8 hours 20 minutes
Distance Traveled: 4.7 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -28°F
PM Temperature: -22°F
Distance to North Pole: 390 nautical miles

DAY 9 - KEEPING WARM

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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