        
|
Diary
28.4.2008Location:62 10.91 N, 46 49.91 W
After kiting we had so good strength left, that we skied until all our water was used. After 8,5 hours we had our first over 20 km day completed and we were still in good condition. Most of the day we used only our Ruskovilla underwear. At map-page you can see how our route is progressing. It goes a bit into west, away from planned route. Reason for that is that we are trying to avoid the highest spot of south Greenland, which now at east of us, 2800 meters of hight. It would be quite unnecessary to climb on top of it. After 50 km from this place, Our plan is now to head into north, where we should meet Dye-2 station, depending on winds 29.4.08 we'll be in finnish tv-programme "Ajankohtainen Kakkonen" on 21.00 29.4.2008Location:62 20.50 N, 47 00.04 W
First two legs we skied then light wind raised from east. We pulled out our sledges and made 5 km and then it came calm again. Rest of the day it was skiing in sunshine. Actually we wished harder winds, since the storm week behind haven't affected here anymore and snow surface is softer Wind would do it harder and better to ski. Today it was roughest day of expedition. Our plan is that we won't burn ourselves out by pulling too hard days. So we are happy to be in good shape. Now we are ready for tougher days. We'll see. Otherwise, we are slowly feeling like home here. Few days back skiing at 2000 meters felt heavy, but now it is ok. In some groups it is called as acclimatization. Or Angmassalikzation. Taste a second those words. Soon you won't be able to say either of those. Yesterday we got a lot of messages, here is answer to one question. We now mark wind directions in english like N, E, S, W. (North, East, South, West) More spesified we cannot provide, since direction have to be evaluated when on the move. We would like to wish happy 1st of May for everyone. We have waited this day also and we are going to keep day off and relax. Red nose we already have. 30.4.2008
To celebrate 1st of May we started kiting right from the camp. After 6,1 km, after one hour it came calm. This has happened previously, so we started a bit earlier today, but it did not help. So we started to ski.Another hour, at it started to blow again. Kites out from sledge. We were able to kite 800 meters and it came calm. What a disappointment! We skied few hours and started celebrations in usual Finnish style. Today it was hottest weather during expedition, and it is not pleasent at all. Though we know we are not in deep north, but still. Now we use all our tricks to forget previous days and continue skiing either tomorrow or day after tomorrow. Our mind is ready 1.5.2008Location:62 35.65 N, 47 05.36 W
Yesterday was a tough day. If our celebrations did not had its affects, day would anyway been one of worst so far. Snow surface is not hard anymore, and now we are struggling 10 cm below surface. Snow is very gluey and it get stuck everywhere, skis, sledges etc. Today we skied 7 hours in total and were quite exhausted after that. We changed also our direction straight towards north. Next few days there will be more climbing up, but on the other hand we will be able to go downwards same meters. Our new sledges have worked surprisingly well and we have many times discussed that they don’t feel heavier to our previous expedition in Greenland 2003. We skied from Kulusuk to Qasigiannquit with 130 kg sledges and now weight is 175 kg. We used Fjellpulken Patrol sledge at that expedition. Reason for better pulling is new material at bottom of sledges, which is basically same material one has at bottom of skis. If you want more information, please read our "Equipment" pages. Sledges are also made of new material, Hyptonite nano-epox, which made them lighter of weight than those of rivals. I cannot be anything but satisfied with our work with Pekka Tyllilä. 2.5.2008Location:62 40.68 N, 47 06.40 W
For many times today, we had to remove gluey snow from bottom of skies. Every time you thought "now I’m going to ski" your skies got stuck again. Our sledges felt heavy in this melting surface. After five hours of struggling we decided to stop teasing ourselves. With 3 more hours of work we could have proceed few kilometers, but that would not help us too much. So we decided to concentrate on literature. I have started Henry Thoreau’s “Life in the woods”. Vuorenmaa is fan of theatre plays, and can now do manuscript of Klaus Klemola’s "Towards cold". Vuorenmaa has listed characteristics of his face:"Not much skin in my forehead. Not much left of nose. And in general, my face is ruined". So we are doing fine! We had news about another expedition at east cost (doing Greenland crossing) who have been stuck into tent for 36 hours due storm. Sun they haven’t seen for a while and cannot recharge their batteries. We could provide them sun and warm winds. Thank you for all the messages. It is fun to read those and we wait eagerly our daily reading session. Unfortunately, we cannot answer any mails due to capacity of network. Sending mail (diary update with one 15 KB photo) takes approximately 4 minutes. Wrap-up of incoming emails that web-masters send takes 15 seconds to reach us. All attachments are removed by them, since we could not receive those. Sorry brother… I want to send greetings to my daughter Saana, as she has her 16th birthday today. It’s already quite a lot! 3.5.2008Location:63 14.81 N, 47 14.65 W
There has not been too much discussion on our food, yet, but I can tell the food Vuorenmaa cooks is quite interesting. At beginning, it contained no spices at all. Only meat, macaroni and vegetables. Not even salt. Now we add 100 g of butter, which gives at least some taste to food. We have also started to add spinach and cheese soup to it. Luckily, we are always hungry and eat what is given 4.5.2008Location:63 52.11 N, 47 01.50 W My sleeping bag is starting stink to the extent that I myself can already smell it. Usually on this type of expeditions one gets so used to the odours in one's own tent that they don't bother at all. That is never the case with any other tents, which become almost unapproachable because of the smell. Today we started off with kites around 9:30. During the first hours of the day we were really making progress. Every now and then we fall and crash in to the snow and fear that our sledge will fall on top of us. So far there has been no major injuries, but Vuorenmaa's knee got bent a little. We have learned to control the kites quite well and after taking a tumble we are able to let the kite pull us up and continue going forward immediately.
Thank you again for the messages you have sent. I will answer some of your questions. We have not even considered skiing at night. Time for that will be in June-July. The weather changes rapidly and one couple warm days is not rare. We use the sun and the snow dunes in navigation and during the night we wouldn't be able to see either one of them. It is still dark here at night. It would be impossible to use the kites without daylight as they have so many thin wires that need to be kept in order. We do have a weapon with us. It is a shotgun (Baikal Russia) we bought from Narsarssuaq. At the moment it is at bottom of my sledge since we are so far from the sea. One more answer: we have spent altogether one year living in the same tent. We get along very well and we know each other extremely well and we eat the same amount of food.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
© 2007-2008 Petet |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Morning we started 9.00. Night was calm, but soon after start there was
a mild blow from south: kites out from sledges! We enjoyed this southern wind approximately one and a half an hour, but then
it came calm again. But we were able to do 7 km with that wind, which we were very happy about. We continued skiing
in quite hot conditions. Expection was much more colder conditions, but what can you do. So we won't complain it.
In the morning, when we start we usually get minus degrees. This morning we had -10 Celsius. During the day temperature goes up and makes one
feel hot. Today we skied in underwear only at afternoon.
Location:62 27.84 N, 47 07.41 W
Occasional Siberian jay (a bird met at Arctic Circle) woke us up today by singing tales. It told about “pretty-Jussi” (Finnish Lapland legend), who skied in south Greenland 50 years ago and fell into crevasse during his expedition. This bird flew there to help him and asked whether he would use some help. Pretty-Jussi told he might use some and so bird pulled him out of crevasse and so Jussi were able to ski to Qaanaaq. So that’s Siberian jay. It is lucky bird for Lapland and Greenland expeditioners.
Hard wind continued all night. At beginning, we measured 13 m/s but were amazed how warm it is even though we had head wind. During the day wind got harder. Our clothes should have covered by ice, but now they were filled with water. The wind has quite bad consequences: snow is melting beneath us in a rapid pace.
Today we moved balloon on the map a bit more than usual. At morning, there was a lot of ice to break, since temperature had dropped a lot. It was the first night I closed my sleeping bag all the way. At start we had -14 and 8 m/s wind from east. Since we were quite cold after packing the camp we decided to ski first hour to get warm. And it was, since first there was a hill to climb. We put on our kites at top of the hill and started kiting. It went extremely well. At top hour we made 20 km. At highest we were at 2500 meters, and from now on it is small descending before the climb towards mid-glacier starts. We were on the move 8 hours, kiting the whole day and I must tell you my feet are so tired. But it was a good to kite, for a change.
Ski kiting is a fun sport, when one cruises on the ice covered lake
for some 15 minutes and then takes a break. Here it is a little
different, it's usually fun for the first ten minutes before the
thighs start to cry for help. Wrists get twisted around with the
steering bar and biceps become exhausted. With the harder winds (7-9
m/s) one has to alert all the time, because the kite flies up from the
surface in a second. So it is really different compared to the steady
skiing and pulling of the sledges.
