Date: April 24, 2009 Location: N89° 31.944' W042 17.048' Start: 3:45pm (2/23) End: 3:45am (2/24) NW wind, 10-15 knots then calming to W wind, 5-8 knots visibility variable, haze 28 nautical miles to the North Pole
CaringBridge Family: Bob Reichl John and Tyler are commited to raising funds and awareness for CaringBridge.
Date: April 23, 2009 Location: N89° 20.353' W044 13.828' Travel Time: 12 hours Distance Traveled: 15 nautical miles 40 nautical miles to the North Pole
CaringBridge Family: Josh Crosby John and Tyler are commited to raising funds and awareness for CaringBridge.
By: Tyler Fish
Audio Transcript:
"John Houston and I are in a race against time to get to the North Pole. We consider ourselves on the "international speedway" to get there. Our plan is to travel 12 hours and rest for 3 or so, and then travel 12 hours and rest for 3 and travel 12 hours and rest for 3 until we make it. The skiing is fairly straight forward, mostly north. But it's the supporting the skiing that I wanted to explain. There's basically 2 ways that we do that. We have "rest stops" and what I call "pit stops".
The rest stop is like going to a rest area. You pull over. You sit down. You eat some lunch, basically some truffles, some soup, some nuts. You rest for no more than 15 minutes. Maybe you shut your eyes for 2 of those, and then you get up and you go.
Then there's "pit stops". The pit stop is where we actually set up the tent, cook water, have a meal, take a 1 hour nap, get up, pack everything up and away we go again. Sort of like the refueling. Getting everything ready like a race car pulling in to a pit stop and getting new tires and an oil change and whatever else happens at a pit stop.
We want everybody to know that we are well. We will, for sure, be very, very tired and sleep deprived and thinking strange things and a bit giddy at times for sure but we are going to do our absolute best to make it. So, expect the blogs to be short because we are busy. But we will be smart. We will be safe and we will be taking care of each other.
Today, we were skiing for Josh Crosby. He is a 12-year old. He is a leukemia patient and he really appreciates the notes on his CaringBridge website. So, we skied for you today, Josh.
Caring Bridge provides free personalized website for patients and families in health crisis, treatments and recovery. If you would like to support CaringBridge and we sure hope that you would like to do so, if you can please go to our website, www.northpole09.com or the CaringBridge.org website to find out how you can support them financially and if you can't do that, well then, please spread the word for CaringBridge which is their wonderful organization. Thank you. We'll be in touch."
Date: April 22, 2009 Location: N89° 08.131' W051 20.827' Start: 5:45pm (2/21), -2°F End: 9:45am (2/22), 0°F W wind, 15-20+knots
John and Tyler are commited to raising funds and awareness for CaringBridge.
By: John Huston
Audio Transcript:
"What a day! We really had a big mental day. Tyler and I began this day south of 89° latitude even though we camped north of 89° latitude. What's been happening is that we are drifting south at a pretty quick rate, between 4 and 6 nautical miles per 24 hours and that's really been hurting our travel schedule. And it's been frustrating to have entered 88° a few days ahead of schedule and have exited 88° a day or two behind schedule.
We have adjusted our working hours from 13 to 16½ and still have encountered quite heavy conditions, rubble with lots of wind blown snow and a few open leads that take time to swim across. Given these factors and given the drift pushing us south so quickly reaching the North Pole by early morning on April126th will be a huge push and we're ready for it.
Tyler and I knew that we would have some sort of huge push at the end and while that was a possibility all along it was something that we kind of dreaded and we worked very hard to avoid. But at this point due to the drift and due to the pretty hard weather conditions - we have 20-knot winds out of the west pretty consistently with a lot of blowing snow and that blowing snow accumulates in drifts in all the rubble fields and makes a lot of new snow waves, or sastrugi, that really slow down our progress. So, given those factors the wind and the drift, it is a very difficult path to the North Pole from where we are at 89°, 5 minutes of latitude or so, even though we camped almost 2½ miles north of here 10 or 12 hours ago.
So, that's where we're up against and we have very little food left. We have about 3½-4 days and food. We have 3 liters of fuel, which is right where we expected it to be; that is plenty to get us there. And Tyler and I are proceeding north at our own steady pace. We know that we can only ski so fast and that to try and push our bodies, which are thin by 30 pounds each and tired and don't have the normal strength that we had in the beginning of the expedition, too much would be an unwise thing to do.
So we are heading north at our steady pace. We are lightweight because we have very little left. And we plan on skiing a whole lot and sleeping very little. From this point forward, we will blog but they will be short and with our progress updates because we are going to concentrate 100% on taking a few naps, getting a few meals and continuing north. It's going to be exciting. We are extraordinarily optimistic that we will make it to the North Pole on the morning of April 26th and we hope that you enjoy the ride.
Thanks for listening. Think of us out there skiing and send us your positive thoughts and we can't wait to see you at home."
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."
