Physical strain

5th December
The daddy of all hills was finally conquered yesterday evening! It took three days and an awful lot of effort, but at about 5pm yesterday we got the last sledge to the top of the pass. The GPS shows that we climbed 500m and that the average slope angle was 30 degrees!! And you have to remember that we’re not travelling light. We're hauling:

• rock samples
• spare tents
• spare fuel
• spare food
• ropes
• crevasse rescue kits
• a generator
• a laptop
• two satellite phones
• and all our personal kit!

Despite the physical strain of the last few days there has been no let up today. We’ve spent six hours hauling the pulks down the other side of the pass and then 10km down the Horseshoe Glacier.

Considering this is a scientific expedition you may ask why we’re doing all this hauling. It is simply because we have no other way of getting back to Patriot Hills where we fly out from. No transport back to the base has been budgeted for. It wasn’t all hard work today though.

At a few points the slope was briefly steep enough to allow us to hop on board our sledges and toboggan along. This was great fun until I found myself heading, at speed, towards one of the guides who had fallen off. My solution was to apply the emergency brake – that brake was me. I flung myself to the ground and, as I was still attached to my sledge by my harness, eventually the trace went tight and I became the brake … I stopped the pulk with only metres to spare!

One of my concerns is the amount of calories we’ve been burning over the last few days. To try and get my strength back I’ve upped my food intake. For example I reckon that tonight's dinner of a cup-a-soup, two tortillas (tuna and salami), rehydrated spag bol with pemmicam, chocolate and haribo was about 2000 calories! And I’ve probably eaten another 2000 calories over the rest of the day. Yet despite my intake being double the RDA for an adult in the UK I’m probably still deficient. This is due to the tremendous effort everything takes here: walking through the snow is tiring, keeping warm takes lots of energy, etc.

It’s not only physical fatigue that comes from everything taking thought and effort, it’s also mental fatigue: boiling my water for drinking during the day takes an hour, going to the loo requires thought about clothing, even brushing your teeth requires you to remember to defrost the toothpaste!