Day 7
S80 39' 52.92", W79 53' 27.24"
///belongs.populates.shoed
Despite the difficulties of the last few days, Martin and Louis have made excellent progress today, at a good pace. Spirits are high.
“Hi good evening everyone. This is Lou, reporting in now from day 7 of the expedition.
I’m sure you’ll have all heard from Martin’s blog yesterday that he was a bit unwell, and we ended up having a satellite phone call consultation with the ALE [Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions] doctor. And we started him on some medication, and definitely saw and improvement today.
The doctor’s recommendation was to take a rest day today, so I suggested to Martin that we just go out for a bit of a light ski, and we did, and we covered 12.8 nautical miles. So a really good rest day, and a really successful rest day. Much better conditions, the wind eased right off. We got the visibility back, which was great, we could actually see the terrain we were skiing over. A bit of sastrugi, but it hasn’t hampered our progress too much.
We set off bang on 9 o’clock this morning and skied right until 5, we put in an 8-hour shift. And covered a really encouraging distance. A great day. The forecast is looking good as well for the next two or three days at least, so we hope we can carry on making good progress and building on that.
We’re definitely settling in now to the rigours of expedition life, and the routines are getting slicker, like getting the tent up, even when there are quite strong winds and getting quicker in the mornings with the normal routine and getting everything packed and getting on the move, and efficient at breaks as well. We’re definitely settling in now, and in for the long haul. We’re trying to clear the mountains behind us, they’re disappearing from our view now and probably by the end of tomorrow, all we’re going to have is a flat white line right the way around – 360. Our next waypoint now is 300 miles away, Thiels, at 85 degrees South. We’ve got a long, long haul to get across to there. But we’re looking forward to the challenge.
A quick thank you to Shackleton who provided myself and Martin with our expedition suits – the salopettes and ski jackets that we’re using; which are prototypes and I’m pleased to report are performing brilliantly at the moment. So that’s all going well. So a big thank you from me and Martin to the team at Shack for providing those.
That’s all from this evening’s blog.
Onwards.”
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