Do Not Go Gently... (Logs #27 & #28)
L O U ' S D I A R Y
Day 28 in Antarctica. That's four weeks on the ice for Lou Rudd. Brutal going with another whiteout day and more sastrugi. Lou begins to feel some mental fatigue, frustrated by the rough ground. In the end he invokes a little Dylan Thomas to keep himself moving. By half seven in the evening he's reached 87 degrees South and covered 13.6 nautical miles...
Nov 30 2018 -
Good evening everyone...
Reporting in now from day 28 of the expedition. Crikey, that’s four weeks now I’ve been out here slogging it out. Headline for today: probably one word: brutal. It was whiteout again. Really difficult going. The ground – there was a lot more sastrugi today; some really big areas of sastrugi (from what I could make out. I could see absolutely nothing again for second day in a row). It’s quite mentally fatiguing. You have to really concentrate; feel with your skis and your poles and your feet, the ground you’re going over, because you just can’t see it. And then you’ve got to really concentrate on your direction with the compass and it’s pretty relentless for 11 hours of doing that. And for the second day in a row, so it got to me a bit today – it’s mainly frustration because I know I can go much faster and travel much further in a day, if I can just see what I’m skiing over.
But my target for today was to reach 87 degrees South, which I did. It took me all day, and it was a battle. I did 13.6 nautical miles to get there, but by half seven this evening I reached 87 degrees South and to see that click over on the GPS was a huge relief. That puts me three degrees from the South Pole – 180 nautical miles. My next target is two fat ladies; 88 degrees South. I’ll be battling my way towards that; hopefully I can get there in four or five days, depending on weather conditions and praying for better conditions tomorrow – although the forecast doesn’t look any better to be honest. So I’m mentally preparing myself for the fact that there could be another day of it.
One of my coping strategies today; I was quoting a line from a poem – I can’t remember where it comes from – but basically, I spent the day chanting to myself:
Do not go gently into that good night
But rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Onwards...
...
Day 29 in Antarctica. Lou steps into the final full month of the expedition. It's a day of better visibility. The sun is out and the sastrugi appears clearly underfoot. Lou can now weave through the undulations and cut a safer path over the ice. He chips through a two-hour slog up to an altitude of 7,420ft and finally stops, having covered 14 nautical miles in 11 hours...
Dec 1 2018 -
Good evening everyone...
Reporting in now from day 29 of the expedition and 1st of December. It’s great to be into December – the final full month of the expedition. Visibility much better today. The sun was out and I could clearly see the sastrugi I was in amongst. And this particular area I’m in, around about 87 degrees South, is renowned for big sastrugi and it was good that I could clearly see where I was going today and weave my way among the worst of it, although at times I was forced to cross quite a bit of it. Also a big climb today – I had a short downhill section that lasted about 15 minutes which was absolutely fantastic. But I knew what that meant; that I was on my way down to the base of a big climb. I had a two-hour slog of weaving my way up through sastrugi and quite a big climb. I’m now at 7,420ft so gaining good altitude today. I’ll get a lot of the climbing done now and then have a bit of a level run for the final piece in towards the Pole. I got 14 nautical miles in, in my 11 hours, so quite happy with that considering the sastrugi and the climbing.
I’m going to now start talking about the evening routine, which is a complete contrast to the morning routine. The evening routine is just heaven. You finish a hard day’s skiing and you’re looking forward to getting into the tent and out of the elements and warming up and hot food and hot drink. It’s actually quite busy; there’s a lot of stuff that I have to do, so I’ll have to do this over a couple of blogs to cover everything I do.
The minute I stop, I throw on my down jacket and the tent is always right on top of the pulk. Tent out; and I get the tent up now in between 10 and 15 minutes so pretty quick. I get it all pegged out and then I have to dig in the snow valance all around the edge. I’ll dig in the snow valance and then the final bit of digging – in the vestibule, I dig a little foot well in there and it just makes it a bit easier to sit your feet in there when you sit in the tent to get your boots and everything off. I also pour all my wee in there from my wee bottle during the night, and any waste food. I actually, on the journey with Henry, I called the foot well The Pit Of Despair, cause on the journey with Henry I struggled with eating breakfast, even back home I’m not a breakfast person, unless it’s a full English at brunch time. I really struggled with getting all the porridge down. I always ended up, in the mornings (and still now), end up pouring part of my porridge into the pit of despair and I call it that because I despair that I know that it’s calories that should be going into my system but I just can’t get it in. On my journey with Henry, my first journey, I used to dread the day each day, it was such a difficult trip. I’d dry retch – I’d have a few mouthfuls of porridge and I’d be dry-retching over the pit of despair. It’s kind of stuck ever since then.
I shall talk more about the evening routine in the next blog.
Onwards...
