Blowing Snow

By Brian Newham (written on Saturday evening)

A grey and breezy start to the day which gradually deteriorated into blowing snow and visibility of only about 100m. Anyone who knows the term “whiteout” will know what we have been experiencing – the sky merges with the ground, there is no contrast at all and its quite disorientating. Despite the conditions we were able to push slowly southwards and clocked up 36km before we called it a day.

Outside now it is verging on a mild blizzard and we are expecting considerable drifts to form overnight. We have separated the components of the Ice Train and tried to park them so that the drift from one doesn’t bury another. It’s what you do down here and it can save a lot of digging. We will have to see in the morning how well we have fared in our first spell of poor weather and we will keep pushing south as soon as we can.