Ideas
My brain seems to work differently in the Arctic. My ideas respond to the crisp, white silence and solitude like bacteria do to that jelly stuff in a petri dish, and today they were dividing and multiplying so fast that I seriously started wondering if a dictaphone could be incorporated into the handle of one of my ski poles for future expeditions.
I think Tony works the same way. We take it in turns to lead during the day, and at least once during each 'session' the leader will stop dead in his tracks, spin round with a grin on his face and shout back 'guess what?' or 'I've got it!'
We've come up with dozens of tweaks to our equipment, improvements to rations, brainwaves for fuel saving, modifications to clothing and a million madcap ways to use what little gear we have in as many ways as possible (using our snow shovel as a tripod for our video camera was one recent success).
And we still find time to make up rude limericks about each other.
Our daily routine is getting pretty slick now – one of our main reasons for coming out here was to fine-tune this to a point where we're able to, let's say, put the tent up quickly and safely in a zero-visibility snowstorm. While the weather's been incredibly kind to us so far, I'd say we've nearly reached the kind of robotic automation that I operated with on last year's expedition and we've both carved out definite roles in our day-to-day existence on the ice.
We bashed out a decent mileage today (11 miles in five hours) and climbed another 900 feet for good measure. I'm pretty pleased with our pace and fitness so far.
Apparently quite a few of you responded to my plea for help yesterday – I'll let you know how we get on with recovering the photos when Ilm back in the UK.
Last up, a huge congratulations to Sofia for summiting Mont Blanc (plenty of unclimbed peaks in this neck of the woods if you still have the bug!)
— Filed under Greenland