A Good Day

After the frustrations of the last two days, today has been a good day. Having started the vehicle preheat before the sun rose and quickly reassembled the Ice Train, we were on the move by 0830. It was an overcast start with poor contrast and no horizon but the vehicles are now both running well and we were soon clocking up some distance. It stayed like that for much of the day until late afternoon the clouds broke slightly to give sudden views of the spectacular mountains which now surround us. Brief sunny patches lit some of the peaks until the clouds rebuilt and hid everything put the lower few hundred metres. A quick stop to refuel and then we were pushing onwards until late evening, covering 33km in total today and passing 7km to the east of PE Station this afternoon. Considering the terrain and the continual height gain that is a good day.

Today’s good progress puts us in a strong position to pass through the first difficult crevassed area late tomorrow morning. This area had already been GPR’d and is well flagged. We will be using winch cables to pull the loads. If all goes well we will complete this section tomorrow and move on to camp at the base of the first difficult climb.

Brian Newham, Ice Team Leader