Day 3
S80 6' 25.92", W80 28' 0.84"
///incompletes.ridiculous.hinders
Another tough day for the team, as very high winds keep them tent-bound for most of the day. A hard-won four nautical miles closer to their goal.
“Hi everyone, it’s Lou reporting in on Day 3 of the Adaptive Antarctica expedition, 19th November.
So, we had some really strong winds overnight, just battering the tent, all night long. It was really hard to get any sleep with the noise, it was kind of like being inside the old proverbial jet engine.
We looked out in the morning; the pulks were completely buried. A huge amount of spin drift all around the sides of the tent. And the wind was still howling. So we made the sensible decision to delay our start today and just see if the winds would ease off at all. And so we stayed in the tent till around midday. We sensed a slight lull, so we packed up and we got moving by 2 o’clock, but really it was still pretty strong. It was round about 35-40mph
and headwind straight onto us. Which drove the temperature down well into the minus 20s. And just made progress really battling forward. We were going uphill, with very heavy pulks (the sledges we’re dragging behind us) and with a strong headwind, and we were barely making any progress. It was really tough going. But we stayed out there for hours, and managed to creep forward 4 nautical miles, which isn’t
brilliant, but at least we actually made some sort of progress. But a really tough day with the temperatures, the headwind and the climbing. Certainly towards the end of the day, it seemed to level out a bit.
The wind is still howling, you can probably hear it now while I’m inside the tent. And it’s forecast to get worse tomorrow, unfortunately! We’re looking at 40 knots tomorrow, which is going to be a real challenge. But then hopefully, the longer-term forecast is going to start to ease off. So we’re looking forward to that.
So we’ve just had our dinner, our freeze-dried meals, and we’re going to have some much- needed sleep, and then prepare to do battle once more tomorrow.
I hope you’re all enjoying following our very snail-like progress at the moment, but we’re hoping for better progress soon.
That’s all from Lou and Martin.
Goodnight.”
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