Follow along as team Test Your Limits skis to the North Pole to support life-saving heart disease research.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

April 7 - Wind, wind go away...


N 89.11.220
E 134.12 and moving fast!

It's a windy day out on the polar sea. Windy and warm, with temps above freezing. The team woke to strong winds and decided to take a "wait and see" approach to the day. At 4 PM the winds had abated so they broke camp and headed out, where they made 2.5 miles. They lost about 4 miles last night, and continue to drift at the rate of about.3 miles per hour to the SE. Frustrating, yes... but part of the whole North Pole experience. If there wasn't drift, it wouldn't be the North Pole! The team is warm, comfortable and hoping for improved conditions. Though they may have to shout in order to hear each other (the flapping tents can be loud!) they are still having fun, and as you'll hear in the audio file, singing!

And now from Heather... "Take extreme weather and harsh conditions - put them in a blender and you have today in a nutshell. We opted to go out at 4 pm as we thought things had settled down. About 1 hour in we came across open water, a lead, that was about 8m wide. Huge sections of slush, all I could think was add lemon, rum and an umbrella and away we go. It took us about 45 minutes to try to find a way around it - but we did eventually - moving quickly. Again zero visibility in sections. The plan was to pull until midnight. Then around 6 the wind really picked up - I mean howling - we pushed on for another 2 hours and then called it. 8pm we started to set camp - wind was about 30 mph gusting much more. All hands on to put each tent up in turn - I was hanging on to the strings and all I could think is wow I'm going to fly.

"We are now in tent and eating beef stew.We have actually skied 29.5 miles which still doesn't account for drift when we are skiing. However tonight we are further from the pole than we were two nights ago - the drift is amazing. Our location is: 89.10.665; 134.32 - i.e. we have skied 29.5 miles but accomplished just over 10!
This really is testing our limits."











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