Crazy Arctic Guy's southern drift has finally stopped

DAY 17 : STOPPED DRIFTING SOUTH TODAY!
"Luckily we only drifted 1 km south in the night and it seems that today the winds are changing. We advanced 11 kms today! We needed this - it's a bit demoralising to be moving backwards all the time. Hope to give you some more good news tomorrow!"

DAY 18 : COLDEST DAY YET!

DATA LOG
Latest position: N82°09'17.6' E106°25'56.0'
Distance to go: 876km
Temperature: -37°C
FINALLY ICECAP CHANGES DIRECTION TAKING MIKE AND BORGE NORTH....

“Quite a rough day today but the good news is that we are advancing. We did 7 hours of walking and advanced 10 kms. We had to plough through very thick snow this morning and encountered a lot of pack ice, which slowed us down a lot.

The winds have calmed and we seem to be drifting NE. This is the direction that we want to go which is great! Our position is N82°09’17.6” E106°25’56.0” so we have 876 kms to go until we reach the pole and we have hit the 82nd latitude. They say it should flatten out now but we don’t see any sign of the ice conditions improving straight away.

We have a little more light than before. We can see the moon and the stars but we must still use our headlights so we can see the bumps in the terrain.

Now the clouds have disappeared, so has the warmth. It’s around –37°C today. The three fingers that I froze in 2002 are very sore. They just don’t have the circulation that they had before. I must be very careful. Whereas I have problems keeping my hands warm, Borge has problems keeping his feet warm.

In these cold temperatures we must be extra, extra careful with our equipment. I picked up a tent pole this morning and it snapped into 4 pieces. Luckily we had an extra but goodness knows what we will do if we break that!

It was strange this morning because we heard an unusual noise. We stopped suddenly in our tracks wondering what the noise was and suddenly realized it was a jet flying overhead. It’s a really weird experience to hear something like that when you are out in the middle of this vastness.

Borge and I are getting along well. It’s a great learning experience for us to be together. Not a great deal of chit-chat in the tent the evening because we are just too tired and there are no days off – not yet at least!