Crazy labyrinth maze on Day 30

Day 30Hours traveled: 8
Miles traveled: 12
Total miles traveled: 358.9
Miles to pole: 218
Elevation: 6558 ft.

Translation from voicemail: Hi, Team 3belowzero, Day 30. Well it was another really tough day of really tough conditions today. Sastrugi was just a crazy labyrinth maze to get through today. We only had fun for a little bit then we had low visibility and then white out so yeah, it was tough going. We went eight hours, and then called it quits. Couldn’t really make it any further in the white out conditions. We decided to hope for a better day tomorrow.

It’s New Years Eve. I’m imagining many of you are having some fun plans this evening. We definitely will not be staying up ’til midnight here. In fact we will be going to bed early trying to grab a little extra sleep. So maybe you guys could do a little extra celebrating for us.

And we thought we would take an opportunity to answer a couple of questions tonight. From Joshua in North Bend. He wanted to know if we brought along a grappling hook in case we were to fall into a crevasse. And the answer to that is no, we did not bring a grappling hook, but we do have some crevasse rescue equipment, a rope and some other pulleys and things like that, that we could use in the highly unlikely event that we were to fall into a crevasse. Crevasses are very much off our route and we are going around them, But, we are prepared in case something unlikely would happen.

We got another question from Brooklyn and she wanted to know how we get oxygen if there are no trees in Antarctica?. That’s a good question. The oxygen that we’re using here would have been produced other places in the world and come over here where there aren’t trees. We do miss seeing trees, having greenery all over North Bend, (Chris and Marty’s home town), we definitely miss seeing all that green.

And a final question from Mrs. Piper’s class. What’s it like now that you’ve been in silence for so long? Are you used to it? It is definitely different, and we are getting used to it. We made, mostly hear wind, the scraping of our skis, or breathing during the day. But at night it’s pretty quiet in the tent if it’s not very windy. So it’s nice and I think we’re gonna have some adjustment when we get back. So, and we don’t always listen to music or audio books. We do walk in silence, sometimes, like today. All right, Happy New Year to everybody and we’ll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks, bye.