Music On Ice (Log #6)

L O U ' S   D I A R Y  

The music is on and Lou is now skiing under cleared skies (at least for the morning) with temperatures hovering around -20C and light wind. Lou makes 12.5 nautical miles, grapples with light sastrugi and gets his first good laugh of the journey...

Nov 7 2018 (Day 5) -

Good evening everyone,

Reporting in now from day 5 of the expedition. I woke this morning initially to very similar conditions to yesterday – it was clear skies, temperatures in the minus 20s, and a light breeze. But then about mid-morning time some low-level cloud came in and I sort of lost the visibility. It wasn’t complete white out, but it made reading the surface quite challenging, which hampered progress a bit. I found myself falling over a couple of times over bits of sastrugi that I just couldn’t clearly see. When I thought I was going up I was obviously going down and I found myself flat on my back laughing at myself completely in the middle of nowhere, which was quite surreal.

I’m really pleased with the progress; I increased the time again – added a bit more time onto the day – just an extra 45 minutes onto the end of the day and managed to achieve 12.5 nautical miles, so that’s well over a half marathon in normal mileage, so really pleased with that considering it’s still pretty heavy on the pulk. 

Today was the first time I decided to listen to some music – which is great. The last few days I really had to concentrate and just be on my guard and make sure I was focused. Today I thought I’d get wired for sound and spent the whole day listening to music which was really good. And it helped pass the long hours of hauling, so that’s probably it now, I’ll be listening to audio books and music for the rest of the journey.

A quick shout out this evening. A big thank you to my expedition partners, The Shackleton Company and Ian and Martin and the rest of the gang. A huge thanks from me for everything you’ve done in the support and during the build up to this expedition. It’s been great working with you and I think we all got on really great, and it’s been a superb partnership. I look forward to updating you all on this whole trip when I get back.

That’s all for this evening. I shall say goodnight.

Onwards.