Update from Ryan, Mountain Professionals.
We are making our way headlong into the 83rd degree of latitude and had a really strong day out today in some rather tough surface conditions. There is an ice stream that begins close to where we are now and so the elevation gain is quite a bit more dramatic as we can look out to the east and see the flat horizontal cloud layer at odds with our own ice horizon so we could visually see we were climbing, ever so gently. We skied 6:45 hrs/mins and covered another 10.79 Nautical Miles today. We decided to have a gathering in one tent for dinner, and it was good to not only go over some map and more technical stuff but also to just decompress and cover random topics that had us laughing out loud. A good break from the day in and out grind this far of the ski!
We have set our short term sights on 84 degrees with a longer term goal at the navigational waypoint we are skiing towards now some 98 Nautical Miles away, to avoid the crevasse fields of the Foundation Ice Stream. The tent is very warm and pleasant as it is just -10 Celsius out with no wind, so the sun has a greenhouse effect on our tent making them easy to lounge in. It does get quite cooler in the middle of the night as the sun sinks ever so slightly close to the horizon.
Scott checked in as well. �For those not familiar with nautical miles Scott said they travelled 20km today. �They are making good progress. �They did not plan on being able to cover 20km a day until further along in expedition. �Scott said he washed his feet in snow today. �It was very cold but felt good!