Day 53
S79 45' 39.60", W82 51' 24.84"
///mushed.hyperlinks.devolve
Trying to keep busy at Union Glacier as poor flying conditions mean no chance of getting to base camp today.
“Hi everyone, it’s Martin on day 53 of the expedition.
We’re still waiting for the weather, is the long and short of it. The visibility at both Union Glacier and Vinson base camp isn’t good enough for the pilots to land. They’re doing it on visuals, because of the snow and the ice they’re landing on there’s no technology that they use to land at all. They’re purely going on human instinct. So they need decent visibility so that they’ve got good contrast to make those decisions. At the moment they don’t have that.
So today we had a table-tennis competition, which was quite interesting. I’ve played a little bit of table tennis in the past, not a great deal but I thought I could at least hit the ball, until I realised the standard here. There’s a lot of people here who claim to be mountaineers and expeditioners, but actually they’re pretty much professional or semi-professional table-tennis players. And I got knocked out in the first round, which was good fun. Lou didn’t even enter, such was his lack of confidence in his ability. But we had quite a few good players, and Nims – who’s just got a documentary and book our called Project Possible [the documentary is called 14 Peaks], which is worth a watch if you’ve not seen it. Nims won it, and not only is he a good mountaineer, he’s a pretty Ninja table-tennis player. That was quite entertaining.
And tomorrow; if we’re not going to go tomorrow, we’re not quite sure what the forecast is still – we’re not quite sure what the forecast is so we’re still on hold. All our kit’s ready now, so we just basically rested (other than playing table tennis) today.
Tomorrow we’re going to start ticking over with the exercise again. It’s a different set of muscle groups we’re going to be using on Vinson, to what we were using on the Pole. There are not really any mountains you can climb in the immediate area around UG, there’s a lot of crevassing around here. So we’re just going to be going on the walking route, cycling, keeping the legs spinning over, ensuring that we don’t get lethargic.
I just want to do a shout out on the note of physical training. A lot of the physical training for this; I was very fortunate to do with my neighbour actually. My neighbours have got a young lad, a young son, called Harry, who’s 28. One of the things you want to look at when you’re training for an expedition, is to try and train with people that are fitter than you. And trying to train and keep up, and increase muscle mass with a 28-year-old, who I’m pretty confident will go for the international Crossfit Games within the next couple of years. He’s already at national level. It’s a good way for a 41-year-old to get beasted. It also improves fitness. And another shout-out to Jonny, and together we form a little private gym group in his garage called Testudo. So a shout-out to to them; thank you for all your help and support over the past year. We’re going to have some work to do when I get home, because I’ll have lost a lot of muscle mass on this expedition, from my body. So they’re going to enjoy getting me back in the gym, and getting the squat bar out.
That’s all for now. Keep following, and we’ll give you an update on the weather tomorrow.”
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