Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
aPril 30
The sun is noticeably higher in the sky, and the temperature is
-21 degrees. Terribly cold, but, you'll agree, a whole lot better than -40.
Consequently, the leads do not freeze over as quickly, and we seem to
be constantly stringing the kayaks together and using them as rafts to
ferry each other across the water. It's very time consuming, and just
when I hoped our daily average distance travelled might increase to
25 or even 30 kilometres, we will only get 14 kilometres done today. It's
devastating when you consider how hard we're working. We just can't
speed up this leg. I feel guilty for sleeping and resting so much, even
though we are hauling the sleds for ten hours per day. Fourteen kilo-
metres is just not enough.
I have a song stuck in my head: Harry Chapin's 'Cat's in the Cra-
dle', about a dysfunctional family and alienation between children
and parents. I don't know how the song got in there, but I wonder if
by taking on this vast challenge I am being true to Brooke and Dillon.
I wish I had someone to talk to about this, but there has been no such
person since Lisa died. I would not voice my inner thoughts to any of
my companions on the ice.
may 1
What a bitch of a day. At dawn, I put my gear outside the tent while I
was packing up, and it got blown away. I had to chase my foam mattress
for 500 metres, as the wind did its best to blow it all the way back to the
North Pole. On the ice, though we trekked from 6 am to 6 pm, we only
covered 8 kilometres. The freezing southerly blew hard, straight into
our faces. We moved forwards into it bent at a 45-degree angle, head-
first into the gale. And there was so much open water that we were
regularly hitching the sleds together to cross leads. It was -30 degrees
again: my frozen lips refused to smile or speak.
Everything is difficult to do on the ice. Setting up a tent is nor-
mally a breeze, but not up here, with our aching tiredness and the wind
that blows away everything that's not nailed down. It would actually be
easier to lie down and die than continue, but I'll push on.
