Day 11: Goood news i 've got my sled back!

South Pole: Solo but Not Alone
Howard Fairbank
Sat 3 Dec 2011 00:54
84:25.909S 76:44.455W

A pretty productive day today, 26.5 kilometres and most of it because I got my sleed back! About four hours into the day the soft snow and plough were things of the past..Well hopefully! I put it down to a certain elevation level, where the main snowfall from weeks back dumped itself. After all this is supposed to be the ddriest continent by far.

The day was a variety of weather. I woke this morning to a grey day outside, and a light dusting of snow on the tent and sled. I had a bit mmore light snow, then thee oppressive fog and limited visibilty, then a 20 knot (50 km/h) headwind. As usual the wind chill picked up. It seemed a bit colder than I 'd had before, because at one rest break, I temporary froze the toes on my one foot, but unlike normally, I couldn't get it back to full feeling on the ski. I battled for 90 mins, with no luck, so resorted to my real cool (warm!) Forty Below, neoprene overboots. They did the trick, and felt reeal good...Thanks Joel, they are thee right ones, and very easy to fiit over my ski boots. (I'm trying quite a novel footwear solution, Richards idea, and seems to be working well.

Solo but not Alone, takes on new meaning: Way off in the distant horizon today I saw another expedition..! Gee, who could that be? Not Ruth's group as they are about 3 days behind me...... It can only be the Norweigan group that started 2 days before me...Hey, that's grea news...I thought they would have made time on me. They must have struggled with the snow.

Today was garbage burning day! I have been keeping al the plastt wraps for my food, and it finally started bugging me so we had a little bonfire, and the bad deed was soon done. Pretty good hey: all my garbage for 11 days fitted into a 'standard' supermarket carry bag. Real sustainable living getting closer!

So comment / questions answered:

Fuel: Yeah, I use about 230 ml of camping fuel each day to make water fom ice, and also cook my breakfast and dinner.

Spares: Weight is a critical part of sled pulling, and each item put in the sled must be carefully thought whether it's needed or not. A few kilograms of extra sled weight make a huge differeennce n speed and calories neeed to pull it. So deciding what spars one tkes a long is a very immportant process, and one cannot use the multi redundancy approach to takee out risk. Adventures, by definition 'must' have risk, it necessary but not liked!

Why did I have a shaving razor with me, if weight is a problem? I don't shave on thee expedition, but I do know of people whho had faccial hair frosting / icing problems that caused havoc, so just in case. However more importantly, I'm hoping there will be rromance at the Pole, so I better look the best I can.....haha!

I finally feel I have a way of liife now that is pleasant with it's 'to look forward to' times, sustainable and daily repeatable. At the end of a day skiing I'm totally exhausted, but godd, hearty food (Thanks again Josee!), tent time, and good sleep, I wake as good as I was the day before, and ready to do the job out on the ice.

That's all for today, short Blog so I can have an extra hours sleep!

See ya'

H