02 Dec 6 Marches a Day – Day 11 on SPEC

I am sure we are skiing backwards! Today the sun was out but the wind blew at 35 knots with gusts up to 45 knots. In 9 hours we covered 8nm. It was slow but the biggest problem was the sastrugi (wavelike ridges on the surface of hard snow). 

Heading into the blizzard we can’t see clearly where we are going. If there is sastrugi and it is higher than your knee, then you either trip and fall over, or safely get thru it then the sled comes rollicking from behind and hits you in the leg. I think my sled caught me at least 20 times today. The language from the team was not pretty, but we did laugh. What else is there to do?

We have what is called 6 “marches a day”. Each “march” is about 75 minutes. Then we stop for a break. The break is about 15 minutes, then march 2 begins. I can tell you how much I think about the breaks (when my sled is not knocking me down).

My favorite chocolate bars were sent from CSM Bakery Solutions. I have worked closed with them in the past but the effort and love that they put into these incredible tasting bars, makes it the thing I look most forward to each day. In keeping with our these of using renewable energy, CSM bakery produced the bars using an ingredient that before 2015 was a waste stream of coffee.  This material was dumped in rivers or left to rot on the land near growers.  Thankfully this food worthy plant material is now being processed to create economic value for farmers and food producers and the excellent nutritional value once wasted is now part of our food supply. Michael Hesler’s team at CSM worked tirelessly to get the ingredients, the calorific value and the taste perfect….and that they did. Thanks to them I am not losing any weight on this expedition! Is it snack time?

Rob-