Ice Tusks (Log #31)
L O U ' S D I A R Y
Day 32 in Antarctica. Lou wakes up to relatively good weather with a strong and steady wind and wind chill dropping to around -30C by the day's end. The low temperatures allow Lou to do his best walrus impression by sprouting two long ice tusks. And he also makes another 14 nautical miles...
Dec 4 2018 -
Good evening everyone…
Reporting in now on day 32 of the expedition. A good sort of day today with regards to weather. A strong, steady wind but quite happy with that, it keeps the temperature quite low. A huge build-up of ice all around my face; I’ve just submitted a photo of a selfie I took at the end of today, and hopefully you can see just how cold it was, with huge ice tusks I’d developed by the end of the day.
I didn’t realise they were there till I was trying to set the tent up. I felt this prodding on my chest and I thought ‘what on earth’s that?’ and I looked down and realised how much ice had built up around my face during the day. I took a shot of it and hopefully you can all see that. I must have been into the -30s with the wind chill today.
I made good progress – I achieved 14 nautical miles. I was quite pleased with that. I think earlier on in the day I was struggling; I think it’s the effect of the altitude as I’m getting used to it. I’m at 8 and a half thousand feet now. Although not particularly high in mountaineering terms, with the cold air pressure it makes it feel quite a bit higher. I was quite sort of breathless and struggling in the early part of the day. I seemed to recover around about lunchtime and pushed on and made good progress.
So hopefully I’m getting used to it. I’ve only got about another thousand feet of climbing to do now, before I get to the Pole. I’m camped tonight just about 4 miles shy of reaching 88 degrees South. That’ll put me two degrees from the Pole, so at the moment, I’m 124 nautical miles from the South Pole. That’s great. It feels like it’s getting closer now and is achievable, so that’s fantastic.
Overall a good day. Cold temperatures and quite a bit of climbing, but still making steady progress and hopefully more of the same tomorrow.
When I get a quiet day and not much happens, I’ll continue the blog about the evening routine. I only got as far as putting the tent up and digging the pit of despair, so hopefully tomorrow night I can continue explaining all I do in the evenings. It’s pretty busy before I manage to get to sleep!
That’s all from me for this evening, I look forward to speaking to you tomorrow.
Onwards...
