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1.4
Location: N 79.11.88 E 17.16.71 Hello again. After chilly night (-35 C) we continued from where we stayed yesteday;
opening the track. Circumstances became easier during the day and snow began to
carry better. Our skis also slided better because of higher temperature. After eight
legs we had moved generous 12.3 km. That's not enough to reach the moon, but maybe
80N.
The Veteranen-glacier that we are skiing along at the moment, is really special one. A few kilometers wide glacier is surrounded by marvellous mountains on both sides, as we would be skiing along some kind of huge couloir. We are also losing altitude, even it's not noticeable in fresh snow. But as said before, the weather is getting better -little by little. The heart of our camp is MSR-stove, which is ran by white gasoline. It is the only heat-source besides body heat. No wonder it draws hikers like poo attracts flies. Well, at least we are getting so dirty that we smell almost like the thing that attracts those flies... On sunday we have a special day. It's time to change underwears and socks. My socks has that steely feeling already. Once more about MSR-stove; when we turn it off it sounds like death rattle. That's the moment when a hiker knows that soon it will be cold again. Those small revolting things in our lives. V.L. 2.4
Location:79 17.00 17 12.41 Last night was horribly cold and I broke our thermometer. At 8.00am there was still -31C, so I estimated -37C as lowest temperature of the night. We have a backup thermometer, so we'll still get the data in future also. Man I was freezing at night, even I wore Ruskovilla woollen underwear and fleece-underwear on top of it. And two pairs of woollen socks. Next night I'm going to sleep in double sleeping bag even it would be +15C -I'm not going to freeze anymore. Now that the weather is awesome, we expected a long daytrip. However, the surface of
the snow was so sticky because of frost that our sledges almost stuck on it. And so
we skied also this day trudging slowly forward. Today we changed our route a little
bit. We will ascent to the top of the glacier from a bit lower of Veteranen-glacier
than we have planned before. This way we'll save 10km that would have got us to the
Perriertoppen. We have set Perriertoppen as a goal aside and will concentrate on
80N, that is 80km away from our current location.
We have been in good spirit, no more arguing about sledge weight. Only focused skiing. Maybe we are far enough? Some observations; we are running out of fuel sooner than we expected. If we keep on consuming it this way, we have enough fuel for 16 days in our tent. I think it's enough with a bit of controlling. Recharging of electrical equipment has been troublesome all the time. I think that we'll get over it, because we have Sami "The Electrician" with us. Sitting on my side at the moment. We haven't seen polar bears yet, but we'll get to issue in a week when we get to Wijdefjorden. I can't hardly wait. P.M. 3.4
Location: N 79.18.89 E 17.00.19 The morning broke discouragingly. Sami showed his toe and it didn't look good. It had begun to get darker. We needed make a quick decision: a call to Sysselmannen and a helicopter to get him. No goal is worth loosing a toe. The weather has been so bad that this could have happened to anyone. Now it was Sami's turn. Luckily the weather was good and the helicopter arrived in two hours and Sami left with his sledge. We heard from the Sysselmannen staff that they had to pick up a guy from another team yesterday. Maybe from that Belgian team we met earlier. Well, we couldn't help it and it's better to make decisions immediately than too late. When the helicopter left, we were gloomy. It was hard to find
motivation to do anything. But we had to go on. This day's
task was to ascent 500m following a narrow coloir. It was quite
a task, even though there was crusted snow. Still everyone thought
that it was easier than pushing downwards in deep snow.
Again the views were beautiful and the weather was good during the ascent, at first. When we got half-way of the coloir we saw the wind twirling snow ahead us and we knew that soon we’d get kissed by the north wind. Those are the only kisses we get with this kind of smell. At the end of the day we were on the top of the coloir. We put up our tents, because everyone was so tired. In the evening we took rum shots for Sami from the bottle he left to us. We found out via satellite phone that he was in Longyearbyen and is in good hands. We have lots of expectations for tomorrow. Conditions are fine and downhill begins. To be continued! V.L. 4.4
Location:79 26.07 16 46.55 Morning started with radio report. It was mainly about Sami's evacuation and that was a main issue in our discussions also. But the expedition continues as planned. Our first leg started in quite cold weather, but wind was so mild that soon we were sweating. We ascended with a slight inclination at first, then the terrain changed to uphill and downhill after each other. The sledges don't still slide almos at all -instead they kept so much noise that we couldn't hear OP's yelling and he got really mad. Snow surface was hard and there is snow dunes everywhere. These dunes are crosswise to our direction and crossing them makes our hips move like Elvis. Everyone of us but Sepe, whose hips are so inflexible that they haven't moved for many decades. But that kind of super-grandpa pushes forward like a train -no matter what. Vesa and I are more like swots -all the time while leading our distance to the others grows over that 20m that we have agreed to be the longest distance from nearest rifle. I'm in a special situation for I got Sami's rifle when he left and now I can take as long runs as I want. Our eating habits vary hugely depending on a person. Vesa eats the maximum, my
estimated consumption is 4000-4500 kcal/day. Sepe hasn't complained, but OP stops
even during a leg if he gets hungry.
This has been rough trip this far. Lots of experiences and demanding weather. It has been a pleasure to notice that our equipment work ideally. I would have expected some failures in these circumstances, but nothing has failed this far. We are heading northwards, where 80N and polar bears are waiting for us in 65 kilometers. In two days we'll continue on sea ice solely, where we are waiting to see a real emperor of this area. We have yet to pass this dune area that reminds me of Greenland. BTW, today I changed my underwear and socks. Previous underwear travelled with me faithfully for 15 days, while I didn't even see them. P.M. 5.4
Location: 79.31.06 16.41.00 Due to charging problem I had to call this diary report to Jami. That is why it is so short. All day the wind twirled the snow from the ground and made our lives difficult. Even though the sky was clear it was like skiing in a blizard. Finally after 9.5 km the low temperature and the wind beat us and we decided to set up our camp. P.M 6.4
Location: 79.39.55 16.32.74 The charging problems continue, so also these dictated reports continue. The cold is starting to affect also the remaining expedition. More than two of us have numb fingertips. Well, I think we can manage that. In any case we are pleased with the distance we proceeded today. Our createst joy at the moment is to eat almost defrosted cheese that has been close to the stove. Encouraged by today's good performance under the tough conditions we dare to make the 80th latitude our goal tommorrow. Tommorrow evening we will see did we reach it or not. The thing that is slowly almost starting to annoy us is the fact that so far we haven't had a single proper skiing day. In the beginning we ploughed through soft snow and now the wind is our obstacle and together with temperature freezes us. Well, of course we knew already back home what we are headed for, so can't complain. P.M. 7.4
Location: 79.50.35 16.17.42 Dictating continues. We had a late start, because we waited for the wind to relent until 1.30 PM. It was quite windy still then, but later in the afternoon it got better. We proceeded the 23.7 km today with the help of the downhill and the better weather. We only skied our normal 8 legs. The spirit has been better today and everybody seemed try a little harder. We are staying the night at Mossedalen. Nordenskjöld also spent some time here during his arctic trails. Now that we are no longer up on the clacier, we set up the polar bear thread wires around the tents. We spent a half an hour looking at a pair of Svalbard reindeers trough our binoculars. First they were polar bears then they were reindeers then they were polar bears again... until they came so close that no they longer looked like polar bears at all. The goal on yesterdays report was incorrect due to a misunderstanding. The goal was and still is to reach the 80th latitude tommorrow (Friday). From the Wednesdays camp it would have taken 44 km, which is a bit heavy eventhoug there is downhill in the beginning. To make the goal we need to ski 8 km to a hut. Then we leave our things there and ski 12 km to the 80th latitude and 12 km back to the hut where we will spent the night. P.M. 8.4
Location: N 79.53.62 E 16.01.84 Last night started with sewing a broken zipper of my sleeping bag in the darkest
hours. I used a cord called "bear-cord" in Finnish and it can been as an omen, because
we met polar bear today.
Morning started very well, Pete fixed charging problems and the sun was shining -a real spring weather, what we've been waiting for. As we moved on to a sea ice, Sepe was the first to see a polar bear rolling in the snow. It was looked funny, but when it got up and started moving towards us, it wasn't so funny any more. We were ready with our rifles, but luckily it turned out that our flares were scary enough to for the bear. After this episode we headed to a cottage where we arrived at the same time with two Norwegians, who made it clear that we are not going to sleep inside the hut. Well, it wasn't a problem to us. At least we got recent information about the weather and the ice-condition. We set up our camp and headed to our main goal 80N, which was only 12 km away. On the way we saw some polar bear tracks. After 2,5 hours of skiing we reached our main goal, 80th degree of northern latitude! Quick photos and we headed back to the camp. It was a long day and we trudged to the camp all beat up. At the moment we are preparing food and it's three o'clock am. We'll be in touch tomorrow! V.L. 9.4
Location:79 51.82 15 40.62 Last night we went to sleep at 4 am. Rough yesterday took it's toll as Vesa's toenail fell
off. I hadn't had much problems until yesterday when I poured boiling water on
my hand filling my thermos. Now there is a huge blister between my thumb and index finger.
Sepe's and OP's health status leaves something to desire for, but at least it is
stable at the moment.
Before we started our expedition, I got an mp3 player from Jami (webmaster) and I've been listening to it every now and then. It's relaxing to let the music take your thoughts elsewhere when the storm is raging. This morning I got to a song "Nobody gonna take my skies. I'm gonna ski them till the end", an old Deep Purple hit "Highway star" bringing new life to my body. Music has a strange effect to life. Today the weather was nice. As we were circling Mosselbukta we saw two seals, 25 reindeers and quite a few birds. It's truly a pleasure to have this kind of weather at last. Like I said there's a lot of life around here. This place would provide everything one really needs to get by. At least it feels like that at the moment in this nice weather. Thanks to all of you who have sent emails to us. In one email there was some speculation that a polar bear might get a stomach ache eating our Sasta outfit. I accidently chewed the collar of my Everest-jacket when eating a glumb of ice on it. So I can say that it is healthy and tastes good and there was no problems with my stomach. Yesterday's meeting with a polar bear gave nice new beat to our journey. To me it was like a wildlife documentary, because I videotaped the whole thing. Otherwise it was thrilling. In the fjord ahead of us there should be more of them. We hope to get some good photos. P.M. 10.4
Location: N 79.44.37 E 15.40.04 We were rather annoyed today. We had a plan to ski back on sea ice, as you can see in the map we have put on this site. The annoyance was caused by the fact that there is no ice to ski on. As we have learned from the bible only Jesus can walk on water, so we had to settle for the waterfront and that meant skiing on bear rocks and cliffs. I wonder what is left of our skis and sledges when finally return to Longyearbyen around Midsummer. If the sea ice doesn't start within the next 15 km, we have to climb back up to the glacier, as the waterfront is inaccessible. So thumbs up! We are now following the 19 years old tracks of Eero Keskinen or on the other had on the 129 years old tracks of Nordenskjöld. Eero wandered here with his friends and wrote an excellent book "110 vuotta vanhoilla Nordeskiöldin jalanjäjillä". I read the book back and front many times before this expedition. We would like to send our regards to Eero.
There have been some questions about the charging problems. There was only problem and that was solved by bypassing the transformer of the car adapter (charger) as the importer of the laptop recommended. So there were no problems with the charge adjuster or the laptop. Our polar bear alarm system is comprised of two parts: a wire surrounding the tents and two 130 dB alarms (these are placed inside bags for protection against snow). If a bear tries to enter our camp it will touch the wire and trigger the alarm. Then we come out of our sleeping bags with the rifles to defend our selves if necessary. Tonight the wires are carefully set, because we saw some tracks on the way here. I would like to send our regards to our foreign colleagues who are starting or have recently finished their own expeditions somewhere in the arctic. Good luck to you. Thanks to everyone who has sent messages to us, they do cheer us up. The group is all right. V.L.
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