Day 47
S89 33' 24.12", W77 6' 50.04"
///solemnly.squeaker.juxtaposing
More steady progress South. The Pole is just days away.
“Good evening everyone, it’s Martin on day 47 – yeah 47 – of the expedition.
Today’s gone well. The Achilles is holding up. It’s not normal obviously, it’s still giving me a bit of gip, but we’re getting through the day. We did 13.5 nautical miles today, over 13 again, so that’ good. And that’s taken us closer to the Pole. We’re now less than 30 miles from the South Pole. So we should be getting there on either the 4th or the 5th of January, depending on weather and Achilles. If it keeps on allowing me to do the distances we’re doing at the minute, we should be there on either the 4th or the 5th. So that’s all great.
It’s cold up here, -28 today. We woke up this morning, and I could feel it. You really do. We’re actually walking in quite a small number of layers; because you really can’t afford to sweat. The plateau of Antarctica itself is quite heavy snow. You’re still working to pull the sledge through that. You don’t want to be sweating. So I’ve only got a merino wool base layer on underneath my Shackleton jacket, which is a windproof jacket. I’ve got a little gilet on top of that, just to try and keep the wind off. You feel the cold, but when you get moving it’s fine. And then as we stop for our breaks to get some water and food, trying to get the food, the snack bag down now is getting challenging as well, because of the cold. In that everything is so deeply frozen that it takes a bit of time to heat up in your mouth. Chocolate for example – the Grenade bars that we’re eating – everything just gets so hard. That’s a bit of an interesting challenge; before we even get to eat. We’ve got these full face masks by a company called Noronna – brilliant facemasks. And that protects our face from frostbite, and wind chill effect. But that – when you breathe out through that, the moisture just freezes around the mouthpiece – there’s a little mouthpiece that’s open – so that’s where it comes out, otherwise your googles would steam up inside. Even with the expeditions I’ve previously been on, you always get a bit of snow round there, but now the snow that builds up around there is three, four inches in height. So you’ve got to snap all that off before you can start eating. That’s all fun and games. So really cold up here, but the progress is going well.
I just want to do a shout out and a thank you to the team that help us with our UK hillwalking weekends from a professional perspective. We have mountain leaders that help us. In particular wanted to say thank you to Lachlan, from Mountain Addiction, and Paul Spackman from Mountain Mindset, and Tom Rothwell from Mach 2, and Tom Bodkin from Secret Compass, and Richard Boardman. All of whom help us keep our team members safe when we do our hillwalking weekends in the UK. Which is the first stepping stone for anyone to come on an Adaptive Grandslam challenge event. If anyone’s interested in getting involved in Adaptive Grandslam, those UK hillwalking weekends are an introductory experience for anyone to come along. And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you know anyone who’s registered disabled, who could do with a challenge in a supportive environment with people who know what they’re doing, not me obviously, the MLs [mountain leaders], get them to go on the website adaptivegrandslam.com. Scroll down to the mission section, and you’ll see the Cumbria challenge there and the Yorkshire challenge; it’ll give you a flavour of what those weekends are about, and then get them to get in touch.”
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