Day 12 - Beautiful Journey 3/13

Posted by: vnorthpole09 on Mar 15, 2009 Print PDF

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The view to the back of the lead skier.
The view to the back of the lead skier.

Date: March 13, 2009
Location: N83° 39.210' W074 18.240'
Time Traveled: 8 hours 45 minutes
Distance Traveled: 4.6 nautical miles
AM Temperature: -38°F
PM Temperature: -32°F
Clear skies, breeze out of NE
Distance to North Pole: 383 nautical miles


By: Tyler Fish

 

 

Audio Transcript:


"It is March 13th. As I was skiing along today I was thinking about Cecilie Skog's book. She wrote a book called, "The Three Poles", referring to the North Pole, the South Pole and Everest - which is sometimes called the 3rd pole. The book is in Norwegian and I manage to read it while I was getting ready for this expedition.

 

She talks about the North Pole expedition from Ward Hunt to the North Pole as being the world's most beautiful ski trip. And I've been trying to figure out what she meant, whether it was the sunset in the beginning that I already referred to or just the beautiful blue blocks of ice that we've seen; sometimes boulders, sometime just small cobbles. Or is it just the snow? Is it the wide expanse of the Arctic Ocean? What is it?

 

But I think today I came upon it. It is the light. For the vast majority of the day John and I ski through, I don't know what to call it, some people could call it the golden hour, some people call it alpenglow. Whatever word you have for light that makes everyone skin glow when it hits them. That's the kind of light that we have all day. Not that there's much skin showing, actually, here. But it's really quite amazing that we have this wonderful light all day. So that's it for today.

 

A little bit of a highlight from yesterday, we did come upon a frozen lead that was heading northwest. Now the advantage of frozen lead is that it's very flat and very easy for us to pull even our heavy loads along it. So, we took that for a little while. Hoping that it would have been north and really give us the miles north but it did not do that. And although those little miracles won't get us to the North Pole, we do get excited about them. They add a little spice to the day. But it is truly the getting up everyday and going everyday, however fast or slow that we can go, that is going to get us there.  So, that's all for now. Bye."

 

 


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