South Pole

While recovering and waiting, I’ve been reading polar books, chatting with other explorers here and had a logistics talk with a member of the ALE team. All to start working towards the big expedition everything I am doing now is leading up to…

And holy shit!
For starters, this is physically, mentally and spiritually demanding at a level that borders on the absurd, much more so than even I could have imagined. In addition to that, it is an extremely daunting logistical challenge as well

chomping at the bit to get back out again. From time to time, I find myself thinking, maybe I could still do the North Pole. But no, I absolutely cannot 🙂 Not with how black my 2 fingers got.

While I am a bit disappointed from time to time, overall I’m in great spirits and the plan hasn’t changed one bit. All that’s changed is the timeline.

I may not have reached the South Pole this time, but I will be back and am still damn proud of what I did achieve out there…

It’s been challenging and humbling readjusting to life being unable to use these 3 fingers. I can’t put any pressure on them at all or they will get worst. So everything is taking a bit more time to do than it usually would.

I feel immense gratitude to be surrounded by such amazing human beings. These men and women who all looked out for me in the last couple of days are a testament to the human spirit at its finest.

The call was then made for me to be evacuated. Right now I believe they can still heal. But the doctor said if I expose these fingers to the cold any more, I’d lose them.

We woke up this morning to the wind continuing to hammer our tent. The temperatures dropped and the wind got even stronger. It was too dangerous for us to move, so now we’re tent bound for another day.

We woke up this morning to 25-30 knot winds hammering our tent. The extreme wind was less than ideal, but we thought we’d give it a shot and get moving.

It did not go well…

110 years ago today, Roald Amundsen became the first person ever to reach the South Pole. He pioneered a new route from the Bay of Whales up the Axel Heiberg glacier to the Pole.

And today, 110 years later, following in his legendary footsteps, we have successfully climbed the Axel Heiberg glacier. It is a special feeling to have done it on this very momentous day in polar history…

We got to the base of the climb after 1 shift of skiing. I was super excited and about to go back into my “cage.” Then suddenly the clouds swarmed in around us…

We are now back in our tent, it is snowing outside and we’re in a whiteout. On the plateau, it would be fine to move in these conditions. But we can’t move up the crevassed glacier with zero visibility.