Snow Wading (Log #18)
L O U ' S D I A R Y
Day 19 in Antarctica. A challenging day wading through deep and soft snow. Lou stays positive, reminding himself that the sastrugi has mostly filled in and flattened the surface under his skis. With more blasts of wind and lower temperatures it might set hard and make movement less challenging. Today the temperature has stayed mild, around -15C, which meant Lou was forced to wear his thermal top, taking his gloves on and off throughout the day...
Nov 21 2018 -
Good evening everyone…
Reporting in now from day 19 of the expedition. A pretty challenging day today, to say the least. It was quite poor visibility but the biggest problem today was the soft snow; where it has snowed quite heavily in the last couple of days, it was really deep and soft today. I was literally wading through it on my skis, and the pulks was just sinking right down. There were times I could barely move it, it was that soft. On the plus side, it’s filled in all the sastrugi so it’s a really flat surface now as far as the eye can see. And once I get a really good blast of wind, or some really low temperatures and it sets it hard, it should be a brilliant surface to ski on.
But at the moment, it’s a complete nightmare. It’s so soft and really mild temperatures today – I’m guessing around -15 and I was skiing in my thermal top, no hat on, I kept taking my gloves off as my hands were sweating with the exertion. Really mild, which is not good at all. I could do without that. I got to the point today I got to some really deep stuff and I physically couldn’t move the pulk with the weight of it.
Hopefully tomorrow, we’ll see, the forecast doesn’t look great – it could be more of the same, so we’ll just see how it goes.
On the competition side. I’d ask, that if you want to enter the competition, you make a minimum donation of £10 on my justgiving page to ABF The Soldiers’ Charity and that way you can enter a response. The question is – which piece of equipment have I used on every single expedition so far? From my very first journey with Henry, to SPEAR17 and then Greenland this year and obviously on this expedition.
There’s only one piece of kit I’ve used on every single trip. Every other piece of kit has been updated or changed, but there’s one thing – it’s not a personal piece of kit, it’s something I would have to have for this kind of expedition so anybody could guess it!
So if you think you know, you can post your messages to the expedition manager Wendy Searle (betweensnowandsky@gmail.com), put them on facebook, or post the answer with your donation on the Just Giving page https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/spiritofendurance.
Just to finish off. I’d just like to give a shout out to my daughter Amy. I’d just like to say a huge congratulations from me, having recently passed her RAF entrance test and will start training in early December. I’m really proud, I know how much it means to you, and how big the challenge has been, so I'm super-proud Amy. Well done and I look forward to catching up with you when I get this crossing done!
That’s all for tonight.
Onwards...