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Diary
16.6.2008Location: 75 53.40 N, 44 58.42 W
Last night we calculated that we have ca. 28 days left. That was a great motivator since it means that everyday we need to progress over 23 km. Our speed was good and after four hours the gps showed that we had skied over 10 km. Unfortu-nately it started to snow pretty heavily and the rest of the day we surrounded by this grey snowfall. We determine the position of our camp by the clock in stead of the map. When the 8 x 50 minutes is up, we stop and set up the camp. So in the morning we don’t know where we will sleep tonight. 17.6.2008
Today we were supposed to have a day off, but somehow that turned out to include 6 x 50 minutes of skiing. The afternoon we spent writing and someone may have done some washing as well. The weather is still poor and the snow keeps on falling on us all the time. Despite of that the skiing yesterday and today has been quite promising. We were going on average 2,5 km/h, which is pretty good especially in this kind of weather and that gives us confidence. This is the longest continuos period of bad weather we have had on this entire expedition. Once we get trough this, things will pick up. We only a couple of days normal spring weather and the surface will be in good skiing condition once again. So let us all be patient both here and there. 18.6.2008
When we took off the weather was pretty ok. The sky was cloudy, but at least we could see our shadows. I cut off the last quarter from my ski skins and that improved the skiing noticeably. During our fourth leg the white out covered us again. The fifth leg offered no surprises, but sixth did. There was this sudden thud that shook the whole body and it was immediately followed by a harsh wind. During the break we decided to ski the remaining two legs despite the wind. And so we did with freezing fingers. When we reached the camp the wind was 14 m/s, but every now and then it felt to be even more than that. 19.6.2008
Location: 76 16.13 N, 46 19.10 Wdistance: 19,9 km distance total: 1844,6 km hight: 2735 m temperature: -6, lowest at night -15,2 wind: 2 m/s W During the night the weather changed and the sun was heating up our tent and so we were sweating in our sleepingbags. When we got up it was calm and partly cloudy. It had snowed during the night and there was no sign of the old good snow anymore. The old snow had a nice hard surface and not so much friction. This new snow is quite the opposite. We did 8x50 minutes today and the surface remained the same all the time even though the sun was shining all day. While visiting the Summit we laughed when the hostess told us how all the researchers bring their skies with them in order to do some skiing on their spear time, but all of them give up after a couple of kilometres due to the bad surface. It is not funny anymore. There was a possibility for us to meet the Greenland Inland Traverse – expedition, the snow cat expedition on the Thule - NEEM - Summit route. And today we saw them, unfortunately only with binoculars from 6-7 km distance. I must admit that I was a little disappointed that we didn’t get t meet them. We even had their stickers on our sledges. Maybe next time. 20.6.2008Location: 76 21.35 N, 46 58.06 W The night was colder and the surface on the first leg was soft and sand-like because of it. The day was warm though and in the afternoon we took our Sasta shell jackets off. In the morning we were both thinking about the track the Greenland Inland Traverse team had made to the snow yesterday and we decided to check out if it would offer a better skiing surface. It took us 5-6 legs to reach the track and it did offer a better surface to ski on. We moved some 21 km today, but the actual progress from camp to camp is 19,7 km as shown above. The track has been marked with black flags, which have been positioned roughly one km apart from each other and it takes directly to the NEEM station. I believe that skiing might get even more monotonous when move from flag to flag. 21.6.2008Location: 76 31.32 N, 47 28.27 W I would not have believed that I would be spending the midsummer night in 22 C. Like I said yes-terday, we are skiing on the track made by the Traverse team. It means that on our way to the NEEM station we will pass around 170 flags. The interval between two flags is around 14 minutes. Somehow I don’t find this all that exciting. 22.6.2008Location: 76 41.52 N, 48.00.33 W After a busy day we achieved a new record distance in skiing. I don't know whether it was the good progress we made in the first four hours or the upcoming pit stop at NEEM, but we were almost rushing the whole sunny day with a good result. We are pleased and not even that tired. Another record that was broken today or actually yesterday afternoon is the longest skiing trek we have made. Previous record was 615 kilometers (Greenland 2003) and now it is 640 km. Someone might wonder why we are making the distinction between kite-assisted skiing and pure skiing. The new kites have made kiteskiing so fast that we think you can't count them as one when records are considered. Also thepoles.com website considers the expedition as kite-assisted if kites are being used. And that is the way it should be. Kite skiing is much less demanding. When we used kites our daily consumption was 3500 kcal/day and now we have 5000 kcal/day rations and still they are a bit small. To give you an idea how effective kiting really is: a record distance covered in one day using kites is over 450 km. So in theory our expedition could be done in little over a week in good wind conditions.
The Greenland sightseeing continues. In the picture you can see the stickers collected already. The one on the left belongs to the Shooting Club of Narsarsuaq followed by the Greenland Inland Traverse sticker and the third one is from the Arctic Nanoq museum (in Pietarsaari, Finland). Isn't that the custom to put stickers of places visited to side of the caravan? I found a dollar bill from NGrip but I haven't managed to glue that to the side of the sledge yet. The track made by the Traverse group has been covered by snow a bit but it didn't bother us that much. Such a track is not that uncommon in the arctic world. A similar one is being planned (or already made) to the Antarctic from the shore to the South Pole. They are meant to be used for transporting supplies to the research stations, so that air traffic can be cut down. A couple of Finnish expeditions are heading to the South Pole at the end of this year, so it remains to be seen whether they will be using the track.
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© 2007-2008 Petet |
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In the morning we had high hopes both for the weather and the distance we would cover today. The sky was partly cloudy and there fairly harsh tail wind. 
Location: 75 59.49 N, 45 19.20 W
Location: 76 08.36 N, 45 48.06 W
If all goes as planned we will be breaking more records in the days and weeks to come. The current record in expedition days is 74 achieved by the Huurre expedition in 1984. We will be in those numbers in about 10 days. And if we have time to ski the rest of the distance we will have around 1200 kilometers of skiing in total. The current record is 1124 km set by Timo Polari in the South Pole. Our expedition will be in total 2500 km. But now I'm getting ahead of things.
