If the kites touched the ground, the lines were caught up in the harsh snow and we could not get them back in the air again so 3 of us ended up walking the last two hours to our camp as the visibility was also declining. Now, the strong wind and furious snowdrift of the night was slowly dying down. Hopefully, we will be able to set off again in the afternoon. At least we can see between the two tents at the moment.
Taking off from Skremterne, we are moving through the Geike Plateau (the size of Langjökull in Iceland, 935 square kilometres, against a strong headwind from the West of up to 20 m/s. Walking, and finally kiting got us 30km into the plateau where we are camping. We continue to strugglee but we are moving closer to the Katabatic winds (wind that carries high density air from a higher elevation down a slope under the force of gravity) of the Ice Cap and we will finally have the winds in our back!
Expedition live: After a brilliant day, warm sunny and calm (not exactly what you hope for on a kiting expedition) there are a lot of things that have to be done before a long day’s hiking. In other business, getting some filming done and using the warmth to wash yourself after 11 days days of going was pretty wonderful.
The day started with a blast. There was a good wind, and we packed our things in a hurry. When we were setting out our largest kites, the wind managed to grab Einar’s kite before he was ready with his skis and his sledge. 18 square meters os sail have a lot of power and I saw Einar get pulled off his feet and get dragged away, sliding on his back in the snow.
It took while to repair the line and get everyone ready again and then of course, the wind had died down. We continued struggling with the kites for several hours and sailed many kilometres back and forth in this beautiful valley, but unfortunately only several meters in the right direction, so we gave up and walked the rest of the day.
We are not mentioning how many kilometres we managed but we have been eating very nice food. Each of us did bring one day of food and Hallgrímur had his food bag yesterday giving us beef filé for dinner and a luxury dinner today. Now, Skúli is baling pancakes for us for desert. We will be two weeks into he expedition before we have to start eating normal, dried expedition food.
On more serious matters, hopefully the wind will be in our favour in the next days, since we have along distance to cover in the next 20 days than the full south pole expedition.
There was a strong headwind today, so not kiting, barring a little practice in the afternoon breeze in the camp area.
Clear sky, sunny and hot so today there was an average progress of only 12km and 400m altitude. We are finally out of the crevassed area and can see the next 50km of glacial valley surrounded by magnificent peaks, a breathtaking camp site. Tomorrow, the heading is true West and we hope to be able to kite a lot in southerly winds.
Today, there was great relief: we managed to climb with all the sledges to the top rim of the West Borgen glacial valley above. We roped up due to the huge crevasses in the top section.
It is truly a strange feeling to be probably the first humans to penetrate through this giant and rough terrain. The view down tot he magnificent and frozen Scorsby Sound with it’s huge icebergs in the sunset is magnificent.
All our best to those at home.
The Spring is arriving in Scorsby Sound. The temperature is rising and there are flocks of birds in the sky.
The snow is slowly getting firmer but the main difference was that the hunters, the hunters that were that we hired to take us over she Scoresby Sound, were able to get a snowmobile assistant to finish their task. After being only able to travel 5 km yesterday, they did get snowmobiles to compact the snow snow for the dogs.
With the aid of the snowmobile, we drove back and forth through the frozen fjord so this morning there was a compact track that they were able to follow so we managed to get over 30 km to the south coast of the enormous fjord.
On arrival to the west Borgen Bugt (bay) we crossed fresh polar bear tracks from a bear that has been wandering around in the small bay were we are now camping. We are glad that the hunters are still with us and the dogs are on guard if a Polar Bear passes.
Tomorrow the hunters will return and our task will be to find a way up the steep and crevassed Borgen glacier. Even through the glacier is rising up to 2000 m then “only” the first 1500 m are really steep and impressive.
I have to admit that I’m a little bit worried as we sink to our hips in the snow when we take the skis off and our sledges with 36 days of food are full and heavy but we will see how this will go on the next days.
The snow is getting firmer, but that only made it harder for the dogs. As we are getting closer to the mountains, the new snow is about 80cm and as we are going ahead of the dogs to compact the snow on our fat Atomic skis we were still sinking in to our knees. The total distance travelled has only been 5km. Yes, for the whole day. There are still way over 1000km to go so we are not worried at all. Our philosophy is to continue to struggle for the next two weeks or so and then we will take stock of the situation, think about how we are doing and if there is whiskey, we will certainly last the whole journey.
The Greenlandic hunters that we hired to take us over Scorsby Sound fed us Polar Bear for dinner. It actually tasted good, but then again most warm food after a long, cold day would have tasted good.