Day 4
S80 13' 45.12", W80 36' 27.36"
///situate.cisterns.bedstead
Challenging conditions continue. The team are now within sight of the Three Sails mountains. A good indication that most of the climb from Hercules Inlet is behind them. Martin is feeling frustrated, although better weather is forecast.
“Hi everyone it’s Martin here.
We’re now at camp 4. We’ve done 8.8 nautical miles today, so slowly building up the distance. The morning started really challenging – there was a hell of a lot of wind last night, so it was hard to get any sleep, and it was still really quite windy when we set off this morning. Again, another head wind, so driving into that; the pulks are still very heavy obviously at the beginning of the expedition, so that was really hard work.
Then the visibility wasn’t great, there was a lot of spindrift, and my googles steamed up fairly quickly early on unfortunately, so I was skiing by feel, and that proved to be physically quite demanding. We’ve now got a mountain range to our right-hand side as we ski at the minute. And it’s beautiful to look at. Unfortunately that beauty is often taken away by the harshness of everything else. The wind, the terrain, it’s hard yards at the minute. I’m finding my arm quite a hinderance. Trying to do anything in this environment with one arm is a lot more challenging than I thought it was going to be. Everything is so slow. The wind speed – it’s about 35 knots – and even just trying to get into your pulk to undo a zip, to get a jacket on; any basic tasks in this wind, with one hand, just become really challenging. And then of course there’s the skiing; putting all of the load through the left arm is making me quite tired quite quickly. So the balance work is proving to be hard.
I was sick today, which was a real nice treat. Not because I’m ill, just because of the exertion I think; just trying to balance everything with one arm is quite hard over the sastrugi. So yes, fun and games, puking up. What a treat. [second message added later, so not in first audio].
But, despite that, we’re getting further each day. I’m having to rely on support from Lou, a lot more than I thought I would, which is frustrating. He’s doing the vast majority of the work in the tent. I’m trying to help out with the cooking tonight, which I started doing but then he took over. It’s just – you can’t afford to mess around here. The environment is what it is, and you’re at risk of getting an injury pretty quickly, if you’re not efficient. So it’s just faster for him to get my jacket on for me when we do our stops, and zip it up, than it is for me to mess around and do it.
So it’s frustrating, but that’s just the way it is. We have to work together.
Hopefully the weather forecast is improving, so we should get a bit of lighter wind tomorrow, and that might help with progress. We’re ready for bed, and hopefully we’ll get some sleep tonight, unlike the previous three nights because of the wind.
I hope all’s well back there. All the best.”
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