Date: April 20, 2009 Location: N89 00.325' W059 30.651' Time Traveled: 15 hours Distance Traveled: 15 nautical miles AM Temperature (4/20): -6° F PM Temperature (4/21): -10° F AM: clear, slight NW breeze 10 knots PM: overcast, W wind 20 knots, visibility poor, blowing snow 60 nautical miles to the pole
John and Tyler are commited to raising funds and awareness for CaringBridge.
By: Tyler Fish
Audio Transcript:
"This morning I realized I was tense. I had to ask myself why. Well, maybe it's because I'm on a very long and difficult unsupported expedition, one of the greatest expeditions anybody can do, and there is a chance of failure. And while we haven't talked about this much, but it is possible, we are racing a deadline, the 25th of April. We need to make it to the North Pole by then or we won't make it. So, John and I, as we approached 89 degrees, have been discussing, making plans, and doing everything we have to do so we are ready for the final push, which we are now doing.
So, we've taken care of that, so why are these tense feelings lingering? Well, I realized because I'm letting them linger. We want to get there. So, I decided I needed to let them go. We have our routines; I just need to do it. So, I decided to simplify things. I thought, you know, there's two things going on from here to the end of this expedition: there's skiing and there's drifting. Skiing you can control, drifting you can't. So, I decided I needed to let go of the drifting. Whatever drift happens will happen. All I can do is ski and everything that supports skiing: the sleeping, the eating, the being smart. So, that's all I can do. So, that's what I'm going to do for the next, hopefully, four days: ski as much as possible in the right direction, north.
Today was a great day. It was fantastic. It began with sunny with a slight breeze and then we saw a crack that had opened up just over the pressure ridge, just beyond where we camped, maybe 100 feet away. We heard it in the night and then we saw it in the morning and went, ‘Wow, impressive.' It was only about two to three feet wide, but interesting that we heard it. And we saw quite a few cracks today, evidence of the new moon's effects on the tide. As the day progressed, as we skied quickly, quickly, quickly, it became cloudier and cloudier, and the breeze turned into winds. So, when we camped tonight, well, our tent, as you can hear right now, is buffeted by winds. It is quite windy, probably 20 knots, so we're worried that we're going to drift along, but we're going to sleep on it and see what happens. So, please pay attention. A lot could happen in the next couple days. Take care."
Date: April 19, 2009 Location: N88°48.391' W063 32.578' Time Traveled: 15.5 hours Distance Traveled: 15.1 nautical miles 10:00AM (4/19): -6° F 1:30AM (4/20): -2° F AM: SW winds, 15-20 knots, low contrast, snow PM: clearing in afternoon, some sun 72 nautical miles to the pole
John and Tyler are commited to raising funds and awareness for CaringBridge.
By: John Huston
Audio Transcript:
"Today was a bit of everything. Tyler and I began with a little tent project or two. He fixed his ski binding using his Victorinox Swiss Army Swiss Tool and a few nuts and bolts. We also had family day this morning. Tyler talked to his wife, Sarah, and I talked to my girlfriend, Jennifer. It's always a highlight to connect with home and everybody at home is excited to meet us in Oslo after the expedition, so we are always thrilled to be thinking about that.
We started with very overcast skies, low visibility, and almost whiteout conditions, which means we can barely make out what we were skiing into as far as things to look at on the horizon to navigate by and what is right in front of our skis. So we're always running into snowdrifts and that sort of thing. The winds out of the southwest at 10, 15, and 20 knots all morning long were the highest of the expedition. They brought blowing snow and also snow with them and that made a tough morning weather-wise. Thank goodness it was warm. It cleared off nicely later in the day.
And after some discussion due to the high speed of our drift to the east and south, and also the fact that we want to have some margin in our schedule to reach the North Pole on time before the 26th of April, Tyler and I decided to bump up to a 27-hour day schedule. So instead of working on a 24-hour clock, we're now working on a 27-hour clock. So we're traveling around 16 1/2 hours each day and then we spend the remainder of that 27 hours sleeping and having breakfast and dinner in camp.
It's a long travel day. We're tired. We feel really good with our progress. It's going to be very interesting to see how our drift works out. Hopefully, these northern winds that are forecast don't push us south too much, but we feel that our travel schedule allows us to adjust for that. Also highlight for the day, we swam one short lead, and crossed the same lead later on, which was kind of funny, but it had changed directions. And we are now into the routines of the big push to the pole.
So, thanks for listening. The steady Victorinox North Pole '09 train rolls forward tomorrow, and we are having a nice sleep right now. OK."
Date: April 18, 2009 Location: N88°33.777' W065 03.242' Time Traveled: 13 hours Distance Traveled: 13.3 nautical miles AM Temperature: -8° F PM Temperature: -6° F AM: cloudy, poor contrast, clouds clearing throughout day PM: some sun 86.5 nautical miles to the pole
John and Tyler are commited to raising funds and awareness for CaringBridge.
By: Tyler Fish
Audio Transcript:
"Well, it's been an eventful week for me and John full of things that we would consider good and we consider bad. Now when I say good, I think of things that move us forward quickly, make us feel really confident, and when I say bad, I don't mean bad in that necessarily dangerous or tragic or disappointing way necessarily, but more that this is an opportunity for us to learn something to help us get to the pole faster.
So, you may remember the last week ended with us somewhere in the 87's trying to reach 88. Well, it was within this week we reached 88° of latitude and celebrated that. We also switched to a 13-hour day, a 13-hour workday, which means we're working more, sleeping slightly less, but once we got in the routine, we felt really good. The week began with a little bit of Easter celebration, family-day phone calls; those are great. When Day 43 came, and we approached a lead and we decided for the first time that we wanted to swim. We put on our dry suits, which are very protective, to get across this small stretch of open water. And we realized at the end that our systems were not quite ready for our swim and we made a very safe call, a good thing, not to swim. Of course the bad thing, was that it cost us a little bit of time and we ended up camping on what ended up being the wrong side of the lead because it opened up more in the night and became about a quarter of mile wide.
Of course that led to the good thing the next day by moving up along our lead until we found a crossing with a very easily swum location. So we did swim and we felt very wonderful about that and we tested it like, just what is it like? We had these dry suits on and it was very safe to do. Then we had a few days of testing out some leads, taking a little bit of photos and video, which we hadn't done much of at all because photos and video are really hard when it's cold, I'll be honest.
Day 46 came and it was a great 13-hour day. We felt very steady and John wrote the blog ‘How Hard Is It?,' which was an appropriate question because people have that question, ‘how hard is it skiing unsupported to the North Pole?,' so read that one from a couple of days ago if you are interested. Well, how hard is it was a question we got to ask ourselves because Day 47 began with a wonderfully quick start and then a bad thing happened, although not an unusual thing, almost all polar expeditions have it happen, John went through the ice up to his neck and swam for a little bit. I pulled him out, helped him out, and we dried him out, fed him, and he was very safe. Again, these things happen, a bad thing, but mostly it was an opportunity for us to be reminded this is the Arctic Ocean, we need to be humble, and not over-confident. We need to be smart. We know what to do; we just have to do it. The bad thing is it cost us some time and definitely some energy and some miles, but we're feeling positive and we're definitely recovered. But the good conversation has lead us to a great day yesterday, very steady; we feel like we've had a good plan for the rest of the expedition to make it to the pole. We are less than 100 miles to the North Pole, half way to 89 degrees, in the final push.
Another change will be coming this week: John and I will begin rolling the clock, probably not tomorrow, but the next day. That means that we will add hours to our day and essentially live longer days. We will probably live on a 27- or 28-hour day. That means that we will have longer work days, maybe a little more sleep, and try to cram as many nautical miles into our time as possible in order to make it to this ever elusive North Pole.
I'll leave you with this: John and I have been constantly thinking: what is going to get us to the North Pole? We fantasize about red carpets, moving sidewalks, or little ice slides that will magically get you there faster, well, maybe not in record time, but certainly with a cushion. But in the end I think we both realize that it's hard work, patience, and care for each other. Those are the three things that are going to get us there, and we just have to do them every day. Work hard, be patient, and take care of each other and that will get us to that ever elusive farthest north."
Date: April 17, 2009 Location: N88° 22.131' W064 57.022' Time Traveled: 13.0 hours
CaringBridge Family: Dora Wild John and Tyler are commited to raising funds and awareness for CaringBridge.
By:John Huston
Audio Transcript:
"Whoa! What A DAY we had today! We will never forget this day. And it will probably go down as the most difficult, intense day of the expedition. This is an expedition of managing a lot of variables and when things go well, everything can seem smooth and relatively easy and comfortable. When things go wrong, it can be the exact opposite.
Today, this morning around 10:00, I fell through the ice with my skis on when I was attempting to cross a newly-frozen lead. I was in the water for about a minute. At first, it felt not that cold and then extraordinarily cold. Tyler was right behind me. I was able to swim out with the help of my pulk and ski poles. The wind was blowing around 7 to 10 knots out of the west and it was sunny. And we stripped me down, changed my clothes, which is a frigid, frigid experience right there on the side of the ice, and stuffed me into a sleeping bag, and gave me a little food. And I was warm enough and Tyler went and set up the tent and for the next hour and a half, we dried out some of my layers and prepared to go traveling again. Skiing is the warmest activity out here. We don't have a lot of fuel left, so we can't waste fuel drying all my wet clothes, so to have some damp clothes on and ski, is the easiest way to dry things.
So, that was a traumatic experience, and dramatic. We handled it very well. And we are mad at ourselves that we did not test that lead better because going through the ice and making everything wet makes everything harder for the next few days because it takes more time to manage the wet clothing in the tent. So, we were feeling good after that and then we received the beating of the wind out of the west for all afternoon. The sun went away for the most part and we had a 15 to 20 knot wind for most of the evening and afternoon of our skiing. We skied almost 13 hours total from camp to camp, including the incident, and suffice it to say, my soft Bergans of Norway sleeping bag never felt better.
I was extraordinarily impressed with Tyler throughout the whole day. I had a rough day skiing mentally, but I recovered and we ended on a high note and felt like we had persevered. We felt like that we are still on track to be successful. We're on schedule and it's going to be an interesting finish. We're running right to the margin of food and fuel as expected. And we feel that we have everything in place to reach the pole on the 24th or 25th of April.
Today we skied for CaringBridge user Dora Wild. She is a 60 year old from Waterloo, IL and she has been fighting cancer for 1 1/2 years. So Dora, as we had our tough day, we thought of you and sent you positive thoughts and we thought of all the other CaringBridge community following us and supporting people in need. CaringBridge provides personalized websites for patients and families experiencing health crises, treatment, or recovery. It connects their personal community to their experience in a very easy to use way and we are trying to raise $100,000 for CaringBridge so go to our website www.northpole09.com or CaringBridge.org for more information on how to support our efforts.
All right, keep on watching. We'll try to stay dry. Thanks for listening."
"We've been skiing for 46 days straight and we didn't plan it that way. We didn't plan to save our rest days or day for bad weather or a storm and we haven't had a storm that's made us think we should stay in the tent and we really had no storm at all. So 46 days of skiing, how hard is it? And this trip, an unsupported ski expedition to the North Pole, has been called the hardest trip on the planet.
Well, answering that question can be done in many ways. First of all, Tyler and I will not likely know how hard of a trip it's been until it's over with. Just like we didn't know how hard it was to live at minus 60° for the first 8 days or so until it was over. And then we started having warmer temperatures and little things became easier and easier as far as managing things in the tent or staying warm and that sort of thing. So once we reach the North Pole and we get out of the groove of skiing every day and the mental focus, our bodies will relax, our minds will relax, and we'll likely be hit by a wall of some sort of exhaustion and we just don't know what we'll feel like, but we will have more perspective on how hard it is.
So, in a lot of ways, it's not going to be defined until it's over. Physically, it's a very hard trip. We work tirelessly to keep our bodies healthy; drinking, eating right, taking care of our feet, sleeping well, and we work very hard to travel at an even steady pace which Tyler and I are matched perfectly for. And that steady pace is easier on our bodies and minds than trying to push too much, and that's all we can do is ski at our steady pace and churn out the miles. So that makes the challenge not easier, but much more manageable mentally as well. Just get in our steady skiing groove and go north. It's kind of a comfort zone there. In a lot of sense the day-to-day life is as hard as we make it. Every day we're presented with different challenges; wind, navigation, skiing conditions, and how we feel, and how we react mentally through those different conditions defines our experience.
So, these days the skiing is very good, the temperatures are warmer, and we still have hard periods during the day, though. If, me in particular, gets dehydrated, or a little too hungry or something like that, or I just go in a mental place that is not as comfortable as I would like it to be. It's not easy to entertain ourselves for 13 hours a day all the time. So if we keep ourselves "care up" and our minds clicking along, then it feels very, very good and we enjoy the skiing. If we get out of that groove, it can seem like we're having a very hard day. So that kind of decides of how hard it is and that aspect of it.
But, all in all, when we're done at the North Pole, we'll have a lot of energy for a bit, most likely ‘cause we'll be so excited, and we don't want to define what we're going to feel, but our bodies are a lot thinner. We probably each lost probably 20 to 30 pounds and we're not gonna know how hard of a trip it's been until it's over. But suffice it to say that this definitely is one of the all-encompassing, most difficult challenges that we've ever undertaken, personally, mentally, and physically. And we feel good about how we're going about it and that makes it a lot less hard feeling. That‘s exactly what we wanted to do.
We skied for CaringBridge user Kirsten Hildebrandt, who is 3 years old. And February 15th, 2009 she was hospitalized for two months and she's now home. So Kirsten, we are thinking of you and sending you our positive thoughts just as your CaringBridge page allows your friends, family and support network to do so while you are recovering."
