23 Nov Day 2 on SPEC

Day 2 on this long Antarctica journey and we are slowly….very slowly settling into our daily routine. We covered 6km today and it was tough. The weather Gods were not as favorable as yesterday and we awoke to overcast skies and temperatures warming up to only minus 16 °C.

Without the sun snow travel and skiing is extremely difficult. Better known as whiteout conditions ; when visibility and contrast are severely reduced by snow and the horizon disappears completely. There are no reference points and this totally distorts your orientation.

The snow  on today’s path was deeper than we experienced yesterday and therefore made travel arduous and slow but we stopped a couple of times for tea and had a good laugh about our day.

I am delighted to say that the technology we brought with us is working well. Barney and I were able to have all our drinking water today from the NASA snow melters, so no need to use fuel to melt additional snow. The passive snow melters, as may be expected, were struggling to keep up today with the lack of sun.

We are safely now in camp with the wind picking up and expecting some poor weather to come through. Hopefully it will have passed by the morning. Looking forward to a hot meal and a warm sleeping bag.

Wishing all our US friends and partners a very Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Robert-