gadget shop
Image: Pulling hard uphill Pulling hard uphill

No flat ice
20 March, 2006    83.9166N, 75.8833W
Yesterday morning we continued with two small heavy-laden sleds between us. Daily mileage is slowly increasing apart from yesterday that gave us no flat ice in 9 hours travel. Equipment failures continue to dog us and include the metal frame of our rucksack and various straps and attachments for snowshoes.

In theory we should now have crossed the continental shelf and be passed the worst of the pack ice. Although encountering worse ice than expected we are still just on target for mileage.

Previous Dispatches

Rest and repair    15 March, 2006
As per our scheduled programme today is a rest and repair day. We repaired two broken snowshoes and one of my two broken sleds with a large piece of wire. The terrain and extreme cold of -40ºC is

image

Spirits are high    13 March, 2006
Eventually the ice conditions are slowly improving from the constant ice rubble that we've had for the last seven days. My sledge is giving me a little concern when we wire up the holes most morni

Minor issues    9 March, 2006
It’s the evening of the 9th March. We achieved 2.6 nautical miles north in 7.5 hours through very testing ice rubble, with us again having to carry one pulk at a time through the tricky sections

Later dispatches - Previous dispatches