John says "hello" to friends, family and everyone following the expedition.
Date: March 28, 2009 Location: N85° 19.943' W074 39.113' Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes Distance Traveled: 8.0 nautical miles AM Temperature: -38°F PM Temperature: -28°F slightest W/NW breeze, calm and sunny 280 nautical miles to the North Pole
By: John Huston
Audio Transcript:
"Tyler and I are lifelong educators. We have worked at Outward Bound for many years and Tyler still does work there. We are passionate about educating and teaching people to push their limits and to follow their dreams and to explore this wonderful world of ours.
The Victorinox North Pole '09 Expedition has partnered with two organizations to bring our expedition into classrooms around the country. We partner with Reach the World - Chicago to get our expedition into several public schools which I had visited a few elementary schools before leaving for the expedition. So a warm "hello" to those schools that I had visited.
We are also partnering with the Will Steger Foundation out of Minneapolis, Minnesota and Tyler visited several schools in the Minneapolis area. We also have friends who are teachers and just meet people who are teachers and have been in schools throughout the fall talking to students about our expedition, about following their dreams and about climate change.
So a warm "hello" from a cold tent to all the students from the different schools that we have visited. And just a reminder to dream big, be positive about yourself and about the people around you and to go out there, explore the world and learn about the environment. The environment is changing drastically these days especially on the Arctic Ocean.
And the Arctic Ocean for us changes every day. Today we started with perfectly smooth ice for the first two hours and we were thrilled about our progress and then things got slower and slower and slower and eventually we ended up in rubble like we had not seen for two weeks. Basically car size blocks of rubble everywhere in our path where we are camped right here. So it can be frustrating sometimes to run into little roadblocks but what we do is keep going forward with optimism and positive thoughts and we know that things will turn out in the end.
Well thanks for listening, everybody. We are happy with our travel day and hopefully we will get past this rubble tomorrow."
Date: March 28, 2009 Location: N85° 12.012' W074 30.144' Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes Distance Traveled: 8.9 nautical miles AM Temperature: -39°F PM Temperature: -28°F clear and sunny all day 288 nautical miles to the North Pole
By: Tyler Fish
Audio Transcript:
"Last week, John and I noticed, or made a few observations, about our progress. One is that the terrain flattened. We found ourselves traveling primarily on wind packed pans of ice, flat plains separated by lower and higher ridges. The lower ridges of rubble we could ski over and the higher ones sometime we have to take our skis off and climb over or down from.
We are also able to ski faster. We notice that our pulks are getting lighter as we eat and as we use our fuel. And we also changed from full skins on our skis to partials skins on our skis, which increased our speed dramatically. And our distances become more and more consistent. It's a better distance. It's longer and we notice that it's easier to ski all day and more enjoyable. So even though we're putting long hours and skiing further, we're actually, in some ways, less tired. Those are our observations.
The question that we've had this week and we've been unable to answer is, "How is the ice?" We know that in 2007 it was the lowest extent of summer sea ice ever, so the least area ever recorded. We know that in the 2008 it was not the least area but it was the thinnest that they ever recorded. So if we sit here on the ice of 2009, what is it? We really don't know. It's very hard to tell for us. But we're definitely curious.
And then the realizations about us and our expedition. Right now our expedition is sustainable. We feel really good about the work that we've put in. We eat well, we sleep well and we appreciate what we're doing. We're also calm. We feel like we have been doing the right things; either based on the advice of others - and we have got a lot of great advise and feel like according to most people's words we're doing well, or based on our own judgment, we feel like we are on our way to the North Pole. And things are dependable. We now know how to depend on our gear and we know when to use it, how to use it, and our routines are good. And we're a dependable team. We trust each other and we are going to make it."
Date: March 27, 2009 Location: N85° 03.187' W074 37.884' Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes Distance Traveled: 8.7 nautical miles AM Temperature: -42°F PM Temperature: -30°F light 1-3knot N/NE wind, clear and sunny all day 297 nautical miles to the North Pole
By: John Huston
Audio Transcript:
"Well, two days ago we stated that we hoped we would cross the 85° latitude in two days and today, thanks to great skiing conditions, we did that right around 2:30pm or so, maybe 2:00pm. We then traveled another 3 miles into camp. So we celebrate our crossing of the 85° latitude with a special concoction made by Tyler of leftover lunch nuts, a macadamia, pecan, and Brazil nut variety mixed with a little sugar and butter. We are quite looking forward to that. And just a wee bit of scotch mixed with a little water provided by some friends of mine in Chicago who donated that to the expedition.
So today was a very sunny day. It didn't seem quite as warm as yesterday although the temperatures were the same and most of that was due to a very small light breeze out of the north-northeast. It doesn't take much wind to really enhance the feeling of cold at these temperatures.
We are really enjoying the skiing these days. Our half-length skins on our skis are functioning perfectly and we are getting some more glide and our pulks are moving along much more quickly as well. There's a lot less friction due to the sun, but mostly due to flat ski conditions and nice hard-packed snow. So we are quite happy. We are very secure with where we are on our timetable, and we are right with or slightly ahead of other successful North Pole expeditions from recent years from Ward Hunt Island.
So, thanks for listening everybody, and have a nice evening. We will, too."
Tyler in full anti-wind garb battling strong winds a few day ago.
Date: March 26, 2009 Location: N84° 54.501' W074 30.444' Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes Distance Traveled: 7.9 nautical miles AM Temperature: -40°F PM Temperature: -28°F very clear and sunny all day 306.43 nautical miles to the North Pole
By: Tyler Fish
Audio Transcript:
"Today was our best day so far, at least as well as distance is concerned. We traveled across wind-hardened snow, small rubble ridges, and leads frozen for apparently a long time. It was a day of smooth sailing. No wind. Plenty of sun, which by the way, rises in the three o'clock hour these days.
Yesterday John looked at me after arriving in our selected camp and he said, ‘Can you believe this is our world? Just the two of us. All this stuff.' I thought that was a great comment because in a way it was John stepping back, looking at our situation, and totaling accepting it, pleased with what it is.
John and I are able to do that more and more now, and it's a great place to reach in the expedition. We're content because gone is the severe cold, and our routines are becoming well-developed, and John and I now laugh at some of the unique aspects of ourselves that at times have made it difficult: I think John tries to control too much and John thinks I'm stubborn and both of these things are true. And we're becoming the very best team we can be and we trust each other very much. We appreciate the hard work that each of us puts in. We sleep well, we eat well, and we both agree that our routines are sustainable for days. That's a great place to be in an expedition, like I said.
So moments like these where we're feeling really good, they happen now and then during the day, and usually it's when we're warm as we just had a break, and we're usually well fed, the light is probably nice, maybe we're skiing along and the temperature is perfect. And we're able to pick our heads up, look around, and really appreciate this awesome place where we are, where nobody else is, and probably where we will never be again. And I think, ‘Who's living better than us?'"
Date: March 25, 2009 Location: N84° 46.801' W074 29.952' Time Traveled: 9 hours 30 minutes Distance Traveled: 7.3 nautical miles AM Temperature: -30°F PM Temperature: -28°F calm S/SW wind, clear and sunny 314 nautical miles to the North Pole
By: John Huston
Audio Transcript:
"Well, this morning, a new event in the expedition. We turned on our DeLorme GPS's and, lo and behold, we had drifted north, and a tiny bit west, but mostly north. And that is fantastic. It's free mileage, but we can never count on that in our plans for getting to the North Pole, but we expect to drift all over the place. So sometimes it's to the east, most predominately, actually it's a little bit to the east if everything's the same as past years. And sometimes it's to the west, and sometimes north, and sometimes south, but this morning it was almost half a nautical mile north. We are actually drifting slowly right now as we sit here, almost directly west. And as I am talking to you Tyler has already fallen asleep because he's pretty much a narcoleptic once he touches his sleeping bag.
So the drift happens because the Arctic Ocean is made up of huge plates of sea ice and we don't actually feel the drift or notice it unless we are near open water, which we have seen none of so far. We don't feel it or anything; it's just like the earth is moving as well and people don't feel that in their normal day-to-day life. So we just are moving slowly as the ice drifts with the wind and ocean currents.
Today was a pretty normal day. We had clear conditions all day which was fantastic. And it was also calm winds or no winds at all all day. It was nice and sunny; we hadn't seen the sun for a few days due to overcast conditions and the past few days have been quite windy as well. So today was a welcome respite and the skiing conditions were very good.
Mostly flat terrain, although we did battle with a few hummocks, our share of snow waves again, and some rubble. And as we look north out of our campsite, things look good for tomorrow as well. But it's the Arctic Ocean and things change by the hour and sometimes by the 15 minutes or so as far as our ice terrain goes. So we never know what we are going to get each day. We hope for the best. Right now we're hoping to be at 85 degrees in 2 days. But that's a hope, not an expectation. Expectations will kill our morale out here. We just put in our 9 hours 30 minutes every day, stay optimistic and happy, and whatever turns up on the GPS at the end of the day is what we have done. There is not too much control over the terrain that we have and we cannot ski much faster than we are without tuckering ourselves out.
OK. Thanks a lot everybody, and now it's time for bed. Good night."
