Hours traveled: 9
Miles traveled: 13
Total miles traveled: 371.9
Miles to pole: 206
Elevation: 7093 ft.
Translation from voicemail: Well, Happy New Year. It’s Day 31 here and it’s the first day of 2014. Well, just in the tent trying to recover from another tough day. It’s a, Marty and I are talking about how it’s now clear why few people do what we’re doing. This is really hard.
The last three days have been really tough. Today we had twenty five mile, twenty mile per hour winds coming at us from the side all day, relentless and endless sastrugi, a few really big hills to climb. It really took all my strength and focus to get through the sastrugi and the day itself. It was cold, about seventeen, (F.), below. A couple of times I, it actually brought tears to my eyes because I was really cold or I was hungry or, I was just sick of the relentless sastrugi. It was really hard. At least it was funny though.
So we see this is probably the time we’re gonna have to really start digging deep and this is probably gonna be the crux of the expedition. We still have some time left here, can’t quite see the end in sight yet, so kind of like when we do a hundred mile race, there is usually a low spot where you have to get through it and know that you can do it. So that’s where we’re at.
The next five days, when we look at the map and study the terrain it’s likely gonna be similar to what we’ve been experiencing the last few days. So we just hope to get through that, keep moving forward, and working as hard as we can each day and it will bring us to our final destination eventually. So that’s what’s happening here.
One of the things that we’ve been eating on the, on the trail, Is that we decided to use our dehydrated chicken fat and we make that into a little soup, along with our electrolyte tablets for salt and kind of down that on the trail. That’s been a good thing that has been kinda keeping us powered up a little bit.
Today we wanted to just thank Courtney Sherman and Body Results. She helped give some training plans when we were getting ready to come here. We feel really prepared and we want to thank her for giving that to us. All right, talk to you tomorrow. Thanks, bye.
I read your message every night. You have a lot of people cheering you two on!!!! Keep going forward and put one foot in front of the other!! I pray for you every day. You two are really great!!!! Happy New Year!! What a way to start the new year!!! God Bless!! <3
Happy New Year Chris and Marty! We have been and will continue to follow your journey. Keep the faith and strength. You guys are an amazing inspiration! My geologist daughter, Kenzie, has a question for you: Have you seen any small meteorites on the surface? It has been said that they are more easily found in Antarctica.
Our thoughts are prayers are with you guys!! Carolyn and The Days
Hi Carolyn!
No meteorites yet, but you can be sure that is one thing if found we’d probably be willing to lug home (provided it’s not too big). Thank you for following us.