Day 29

Knowing when to slow down is a difficult thing to judge. With the old adage “it’s a marathon not a sprint” bouncing around in my brain yesterday I started mulling over when we take a rest day. The outline schedule includes three rest days, primarily designed to accommodate days when we are stormbound in the tents. But with the weather set fine for the next few days there is an opportunity to take some down time early and recuperate.

There is an argument that we to push on and build momentum while the good conditions last. Conversely, we’ve all worked extremely hard to climb up onto the icecap with some pretty unrelenting shifts put in by everyone. I can feel the effects in my own limbs and I can see performance starting to drop off. My gut tells me it’s best to take the rest now when we can recover relatively easily rather than pushing ourselves too far into a physical and mental hole that is hard to climb out of. At the end of yesterday’s pull I consulted with Josh and Poul to judge their thoughts before making a decision. We were unanimous in favouring an early rest day – hence today’s reveille was ‘whenever you like’. In other words, everyone gets to sleep in as long as they feel they need and just use the day to recuperate, catch up on admin, some minor repairs and reshuffling of kit that in the general routine there never seems to be time to get done.

With no urgency to shovel it down my throat even the morning’s muesli tasted vaguely palatable….. how I long for bacon and eggs for breakfast (too early….!).

The other advantage of having a rest day now is it allows us to adjust our routine to fit the conditions. In the morning while the snow is still crisp and the sun low in the sky the pulks slide readily across the ice and we make much faster progress. By the afternoon the snow starts to melt into a sticky clingy consistency that drags under the skis, drains our energy and slows us down. Tomorrow we will shift to a 0400 rise and get an extra two hours of good conditions.

One unforeseen advantage of a rest day is breaking out the improvised ‘cornhole’ European championships on the ice… with Denmark taking an early lead but “dark horse Charley” scoring a perfect ten to level the scores……

Starlink, is our primary means of satellite communications (we have Garmin and Imarsat backups). It’s a fantastic system that gives us full internet connectivity similar to being at home but it does have two drawbacks. Firstly, a heavy battery drain – manageable in current conditions with the big solar panels we have with us, but it may require a little more discipline when the sun inevitably deserts us. The second slightly more obscure drawback is it perhaps detracts a little from the remoteness of our location up on the icecap when we can dial straight back into all the concerns and issues of home.……. not that I’m complaining I love the daily update from my wife and bit of sports news but……..!