Latest News
18.11.09
Training begins
The team's fight back appears to have worked. Their tents have been repaired and they've managed to get a day's skiing in. We have an update from Kylie (New Zealand) as well as updates from Reena (India) in both English and Hindi - Tim (UK Support).
Kylie (NZ)'s PodCast:
Link to Podcast
Kylie's PodCast in writing:
"Hello, this is Kyle from New Zealand on the 17/11/09 at 7:30pm.
Our coordinates today are: South 80 degrees, 19.559 minutes; West 081 degrees, 04.751 minutes. The distance covered today was 2.28 nautical miles.
We're on our training camp and this is our second night out. The tents are holding up after their expensive repairs. It's been white oute our conditions today. Very poor visibility, no definition but everybody has been doing really well - towing the sleds with their reasonably light loads. Everyone has had a few whoop-dees and a few small skates here and there because we've been skiing over some sastrugi - wind affected snow and ice. Everyone's doing really well actually. Just generally windy, quite cool.
We've skied for 5 hours today and had a rest of about an hour throughout the day. We are camped to the west of Patriot Hills. The morale is really good and everyone's in good spirits. We're about "eight out of ten". Had we covered a bit more ground today, this might be a bit further up the scale. All good. Over and out."
Reena (India)'s PodCasts:
Link to Podcast (English)
Hindi
Link to Podcast (Hindi)
Reena's PodCast in writing:
"Good Morning. Reena from India on the Kaspersky Lab Commonwealth Antarctic Expedition. This morning we got up in high winds with a lot of snow blowing over our tents.
The whole night it was stormy with a lot of high winds but these winds have become a part of our life. Everyday it is windy, windy, windy but we have learned to tolerate and deal with the it.
We got up and the the view has started to clear which is good. The visibility is pretty good outside. We can see snowcapped moutnains everyewhere. Yesterday we had a white-out and while we were coming towards our campsite the visibility was down to one metre so we used the "Ribbon Technique".
Using the ribbon was very good and very practical. By keeping the ribbon at a certain angle [as blown by the wind] it really helped navigate in the white out conditions. It's very practical for getting your bearings.
Everybody's doing pretty well and morale is high. *Laughs!* Good breakfast of oats and banana juice, and trying to finish off yesterday's snack. Of course, I had some chocolcate left over which made me chocolately porridge!
And now, in about one hour, we will be packing up from here and moving back to Patriot Hills where we can get ready for the main expedition. That's all for today. Over and out."
Photo by Robert Hollingworth