24 Nov Day 3 on SPEC

The sun was visible a few times today to remind us that the Mather Nature is in control. No wind but still the thick, soft snow that slows the sled and makes pulling so much harder on the body was our path south. We covered 8km and it took almost 8 hours skiing.

Today was hard on me, I have to be honest… I think of 61 years young and it never concerned me before. Here I am, skiing uphill from 8,000ft with a temperature of -16°C pulling 90 kg behind me.

When I dreamt of this journey over the last 5 years, I worried about my knees, hips and even my stamina. Today it’s more psychological for me. I have been here before….pulling the same weight, in the same snow and heading south. I stop for tea and think…..nothing is different yet so much has changed. 30 years on from my first Antarctic Expedition, we are using a technology that I would not have believed would have been available to anyone except perhaps in a sci-fi movie. Shell researchers and scientists created a fuel from wood chips that functions as well as and take the place in our Expedition for the fossil fuel we used all those years ago. Amazing…companies do care, they do listen and hopefully thru this Expedition we can encourage more change, more bio fuels, more technology because we MUST…

Rob Swan-