Day 30
Miles Advanced: 0
Weather: Blowing Snow
Yet another day in camp. Supposed to get another 48 hours of this sh1t. Bummer- tired of sitting around. The sastrugi on the trail ahead is huge and we can’t drive that area in a whiteout. You might find yourself hitting a wall or dropping off a cliff. So we wait. We are going to shifts- moving the tractors and module every 4-6 hours to keep them from being buried again. Necessary, but dangerous in a whiteout.
Miles Advanced: 13.1
Weather: Whiteout Conditions, WC -25F.
Location: 200 Miles from South Pole
Not the best of days but at least we made some miles. Weather cleared around 1:00pm and we finally made our move. Very hard to see the sastrugi but it wasn’t as bad as predicted. So far so good. We did however break another HMW (High Molecular Weight) sled. Last year we broke 17 of the 32 sleds in the National Park. This year only two broken so far, so we think the black HMW is better than the white stuff. As it is said, “Once you go black, you never go back.”
Miles Advanced: 16.0
Weather: Partly Cloudy, -13F Ambient, -48F WC
Location: Sastrugi N. Park
Took the GPR boom off the Prinoth and used the blade to smooth out the trail. Not worried about crevasses here. Dosinga drove my tractor today and I got to ride along in the Living Module. I thought this would be like a day off but then the sastrugi got big and I started getting sea sick. We were going really slow, trying not to break our sleds, so I jumped off the deck and started walking- mostly to exercise my legs. To my surprise I was actually walking faster than the convoy was driving. Took the opportunity to take some pictures- the sastrugi really is beautiful.
Beyond the Backyard 