DAY 26 - 85°

March 27, 2009

by John Huston

Well, two days ago we stated that we hoped we would cross the 85° latitude in two days and today, thanks to great skiing conditions, we did that right around 2:30pm or so, maybe 2:00pm. We then traveled another 3 miles into camp. So we celebrate our crossing of the 85° latitude with a special concoction made by Tyler of leftover lunch nuts, a macadamia, pecan, and Brazil nut variety mixed with a little sugar and butter. We are quite looking forward to that. And just a wee bit of scotch mixed with a little water provided by some friends of mine in Chicago who donated that to the expedition.

So today was a very sunny day. It didn't seem quite as warm as yesterday although the temperatures were the same and most of that was due to a very small light breeze out of the north-northeast. It doesn't take much wind to really enhance the feeling of cold at these temperatures.

We are really enjoying the skiing these days. Our half-length skins on our skis are functioning perfectly and we are getting some more glide and our pulks are moving along much more quickly as well. There's a lot less friction due to the sun, but mostly due to flat ski conditions and nice hard-packed snow. So we are quite happy. We are very secure with where we are on our timetable, and we are right with or slightly ahead of other successful North Pole expeditions from recent years from Ward Hunt Island.

So, thanks for listening everybody, and have a nice evening. We will, too.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 27, 2009
Location: N85° 03.187' W074 37.884'
Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes
Distance Traveled: 8.7 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -42°F
PM Temperature: -30°F
light 1-3knot N/NE wind, clear and sunny all day
297 nautical miles to the North Pole

DAY 25 - WHO'S LIVING BETTER THAN US?

March 26, 2009

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

DAY 24 - DRIFTING NORTH

March 25, 2009

by John Huston

Well, this morning, a new event in the expedition. We turned on our DeLorme GPS's and, lo and behold, we had drifted north, and a tiny bit west, but mostly north. And that is fantastic. It's free mileage, but we can never count on that in our plans for getting to the North Pole, but we expect to drift all over the place. So sometimes it's to the east, most predominately, actually it's a little bit to the east if everything's the same as past years. And sometimes it's to the west, and sometimes north, and sometimes south, but this morning it was almost half a nautical mile north. We are actually drifting slowly right now as we sit here, almost directly west. And as I am talking to you Tyler has already fallen asleep because he's pretty much a narcoleptic once he touches his sleeping bag.

So the drift happens because the Arctic Ocean is made up of huge plates of sea ice and we don't actually feel the drift or notice it unless we are near open water, which we have seen none of so far. We don't feel it or anything; it's just like the earth is moving as well and people don't feel that in their normal day-to-day life. So we just are moving slowly as the ice drifts with the wind and ocean currents.

Today was a pretty normal day. We had clear conditions all day which was fantastic. And it was also calm winds or no winds at all all day. It was nice and sunny; we hadn't seen the sun for a few days due to overcast conditions and the past few days have been quite windy as well. So today was a welcome respite and the skiing conditions were very good.

Mostly flat terrain, although we did battle with a few hummocks, our share of snow waves again, and some rubble. And as we look north out of our campsite, things look good for tomorrow as well. But it's the Arctic Ocean and things change by the hour and sometimes by the 15 minutes or so as far as our ice terrain goes. So we never know what we are going to get each day. We hope for the best. Right now we're hoping to be at 85 degrees in 2 days. But that's a hope, not an expectation. Expectations will kill our morale out here. We just put in our 9 hours 30 minutes every day, stay optimistic and happy, and whatever turns up on the GPS at the end of the day is what we have done. There is not too much control over the terrain that we have and we cannot ski much faster than we are without tuckering ourselves out.

OK. Thanks a lot everybody, and now it's time for bed. Good night.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 25, 2009
Location: N84° 46.801' W074 29.952'
Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes
Distance Traveled: 7.3 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -30°F
PM Temperature: -28°F
calm S/SW wind, clear and sunny
314 nautical miles to the North Pole

DAY 23 - CONNECTIONS

March 24, 2009

Tyler reads notes that friends wrote on his sleeping pad.

by Tyler Fish

Many people think that an expedition whether in the wilderness or out on the Arctic Ocean or in the desert somewhere that it's about severing connections, that it's about getting away from people, that it's about doing something dangerous, and escaping society. Well, this can be true from time to time; actually, I think that people often go on expeditions in order to make connections. For example, John and I are certainly connecting, getting to know each other in ways that we haven't before as we're spending a lot of time in a tent together or on the ice together. Family and friends are also connecting with us; they're following us, learning about us.

Friends got together and decided to have a North Pole Solidarity Day and sent letters along and we would all read them a number of days ago now. Well, friends, actually we did not read them all that day and instead have been saving them and reading them bit by bit for inspiration. So there are a great many people that are a part of this expedition. Also, all the sponsors, we're connected with them, and all the way to the barber who gave me a little scissors to trim my facial hair for the trip.

And old friends have found me. One old friend contacted me and asked me if I could put a nine-year-old's name on my ski. His name is Mason and he is fighting for his life and using CaringBridge, and so since we are supporting CaringBridge, my friend thought that I could put his name on my ski. So I do, and I decided if this nine-year-old can do this, then I can certainly ski all day through the cold with the wind on my left side.

I also decided that my other ski needed a name, so I thought of a man named Jim who I met and who listens to me about this expedition and helped us make some connections. So I put his name on my other ski, the left ski. So I can think of Jim and the link that I followed from his CaringBridge site about, it was a journal entry that he wrote about a very special day on a bike ride that he had. And I think of that bike ride and what he said about that bike ride as I'm skiing along and it motivates me. So there are lot connections being made and the more connections, the more the expedition means. The more powerful it is and the better it is.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 24, 2009
Location: N84° 39.114' W074 35.147'
Time Traveled: 8 hours
Distance Traveled: 6.5 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -34°F
PM Temperature: -24°F
stiff 10knot SW wind, overcast
321 nautical miles to the North Pole

DAY 22 - BREAKS ON ICE

March 23, 2009

by John Huston

So Tyler and I, we ski for 90 minutes to 2 hours at a stretch and then we pull up and take a break and I will describe what those breaks are like in this dispatch. It's not like a coffee break or anything; it's more, I'd say, cold-food-on-ice type break. And in about 10 minutes, we ski to a stop, take off our skis real quick, it's quite easy to do that, reach into our Bergans outerwear and pull out a truffle bar, which is a fudge bar, which is our favorite thing to eat on break. And we also then go into our sleds, unzip them, and pull out our lunch bag. Tyler calls his his "nasty sack" because he has all his lunch items open in one bag. And I have a bigger bag that I have individual stuff sacks of my food in. And we then sit on our sleds or just stand there or if it's windy and we've found a good spot that we crouch behind an ice hummock or big piece of ice to get out of the wind.

Then we proceed to eat as quickly as possible so our hands don't get cold and the little perspiration that we have generated over the last 90 minutes doesn't start to freeze. And this is a challenge. And we eat truffles and we also eat macadamia nuts, Brazil nuts, and pecans, a mix that's salted that we really like. We really like the macadamia nuts. Those are the best. And then, of course, we also eat some butter and bacon. The butter in my mouth leaves a nice salty film of fat for the next 20 minutes or so and it feels like I have a small IV in the back of my throat of butter for the next half an hour or so and I really enjoy that feeling after a break.

And we also, during a break, most importantly hydrate and drink half a bottle of water, which is a liter in size, a half a liter to a liter of water every break. That keeps our circulation going and keeps us mentally into it and our muscles performing well. So by that time it's about 10 minutes and we can be very quick at this. Our fingers are getting cold and we proceed to the sleds, zip up our Bergans clothing, check our Victorinox watches to make sure we know when to take the next break, and we also often take a peak at the DeLorme GPS so that we know that our bearing is on track because it's quite easy to get thrown off when we're navigating around and over all these ice ridges.

And then ensues a whole bunch of arm flapping, which looks quite funny, but it's really vigorous attempts to push blood into our hands. And then we proceed to ski off, which is really the only way to get warm. It's very easy to stay motivated to ski when your hands are cold and your body is cooling down quickly and there is no tent to go into, let alone a house or anything. So that is the short synopsis of our breaks. So when you're at your coffee break at work or taking a break from classes at school, you can think of us behind some ice hummock, cramming nuts down our throat, drinking water, and flapping our hands.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 23, 2009
Location: N84° 32.676' W074 40.639'
Time Traveled: 9 hours
Distance Traveled: 6.1 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -22°F
PM Temperature: -22°F
10-13 knot SW wind, overcast
328 nautical miles to the North Pole

WEEK IN REVIEW 3/16-3/22

March 22, 2009

by John Huston

This week has been a week of what I will describe as optimistic patience. We experienced feelings of success and also a little bit of frustration that comes with traveling a little bit slower than we want to be and just with the mental up-and-downs of long distance and long-term expeditions like this one is. Feelings of success happened when we crossed 84°. It took us 18 days to travel from Ward Hunt Island to 84° and that's basically right on schedule with what we thought we would be doing and the same pace as other successful unsupported expeditions. I know that seems like a long time to take 18 days to travel less than 1°, but since our sleds are heavy and the snow has so much friction and also the ice is not smooth at all, it's just full of rubble and snow waves, that makes it very slow progress. Just to reassure everybody, we hope to the last 2° of 88° to 89° and 89° to 90° at the North Pole in about a week. So, once we lighten up and the friction decreases and the ice smoothes out a bit, we can really increase the pace.

We have experienced a bit of frustration because we feel like we're traveling well, but our distances aren't as big as we thought they would be after 84°. We're still on schedule; we're not worried. But it's just a little frustrating to turn on the DeLorme GPS at the end of the day where you think you've done 7 nautical miles maybe or 6, and we only do 5. I think the big factor there is that the mornings have a lot of friction and we're still traveling through a lot of heavy snow waves that we're so used to that we don't realize how slow we're traveling possibly. This week temperatures got to the warmer side. We haven't seen 40 below in a few days or maybe a week. And with that the wind increased a bit. So, as I'll talk about later, negative 50 is a lot of friction to pull a sled over, but it can feel warmer when there's no wind compared to minus 30 and a bit of wind. But we appreciate the warmer temperatures; it makes tent life a whole lot easier and it makes pulling the sleds easier as well.

We came across a relatively fresh set of polar bear tracks yesterday, that would be the 21st of March. At noon, we saw polar bear tracks of two cubs and a mother that were headed the opposite direction of our travel and slightly across it. So we're not too worried that we will encounter them, but it's quite exciting to see signs of wildlife out here. It's only the second sign of polar bear that we have seen. The first was on day 6 or 7 and we have not seen any since then until yesterday.

We have been traveling on mostly old sea ice that's been around for a few years and this is identified by lots of rubble piled high and makes it difficult to navigate through, to go in a straight line. We're always zigzagging our way north, so our actual distance traveled on foot is probably a few miles more then our actual, then our GPS straight line distance from camp to camp. We have come across a few large frozen leads that are well-frozen and jumbled a little bit, but make for very good travel because there's very little snow on them compared to the sometimes deep snow and snow dunes on the old ice.

And the theme, I guess, is optimistic patience because this expedition is front-loaded with a lot of heavy work early on and we just have to be patient that our loads will decrease and that the friction will decrease as well and that we'll be able to travel more miles later on. And we're confident in that; we just have to keep reminding ourselves to be patient. So that's it, optimistic patience that we will be patient with ourselves and continue to improve our mileage and that each day is a new opportunity to get closer to the North Pole. Thanks for listening everybody. That is the week in review.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 22, 2009
Location: N84° 26.564' W074° 40.361'
Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes
Distance Traveled: 6.8 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -16°F
PM Temperature: -12°F

DAY 21 - GOOD DAY

March 22, 2009

by Tyler Fish

Sometimes you wake up in the morning, and you begin going about your day and you're not really sure how it's gonna go and all of a sudden it ends up, you're half the way through the day and you realize that you're just having a good day. That's what happened to me and John; we just had a good day today.

The terrain was for some reason flatter. We were able to ski faster. It was warmer; we were in a good mood and we just went and went and went. We traveled across terrain that was very much like fields separated by low stone walls, except the fields in our cases were snow or ice and the low stone walls were low, blue, ice rubble, lines of ice rubble or maybe snow chunks. So we would have to go over those and then on to the next flat stretch of ice.

There was a wind sort of in our faces all day, but it was warm enough so we were fine with that. And I was able to wear my glasses all day and that's the first day that's been able to happen, so I was pretty happy about that. And for those of you who have been following our blog, you know that we saw polar bear tracks yesterday, it was, and those tracks where fairly fresh. We saw no polar bear tracks today.

All is well here on the ice. We are very pleased with our progress today and as I lay in my sleeping bag right now about 11:15 p.m., the sun has officially gone down for, let me check, it looks like 3 1/2 hours or a little more. But I do not need a headlamp in my tent right now, even if I wanted to read a book. So that what's going on up here on the Arctic Ocean. Thank you very much and have a good evening.

Daily Expedition Data
Date: March 22, 2009
Location: N84° 26.564' W074 40.361'
Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes
Distance Traveled: 6.8 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -16°F
PM Temperature: -12°F
stiff NE breeze (~10 knots)
334 nautical miles to the North Pole

Blog

DAY 26 - 85°

DAY 25 - WHO'S LIVING BETTER THAN US?

DAY 24 - DRIFTING NORTH

DAY 23 - CONNECTIONS

DAY 22 - BREAKS ON ICE

WEEK IN REVIEW 3/16-3/22

DAY 21 - GOOD DAY