Something to see out the back door.

Hours traveled: 9
Miles traveled: 12.6
Total miles traveled: 141.4
Elevation: 3400 feet

Translation from voicemail: Hi Chris and Marty here checking in on day 13 from Antarctica, and tonight we’re camped where we actually have a view of a mountain range, Mount Patuxent, which is out our back door. We can see it off in the distance, which is rare sight to see so that was something pretty exciting for us. Because we basically don’t see anything all day long.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to answer some more questions we just got in today. And we’ll answer as many as we can before time runs out here. First, from George in Washington, (State), How do you discard your body waste? What we do is we dig a hole next to our tent. And that’s where we go to the bathroom. And then when we leave we bury that, but we’ll leave,… the toilet paper that we use we carry that with us. And then the last degree, thats 89 to 90 which is 60 miles, we will be carrying all our waste out for that part.

What happens if your gloves break or you lose them? Thats a question from Emmett in Washington. Well, interestingly, I have a pair of gloves that just got a hole in it today so I, we have a needle and thread. I will be sewing that to fix that. And then we also have two pairs of all gloves. So, hopefully that will have us covered.

Another question here. What do you do with your clothes that get sweaty? We know you can’t wash them so how do you stay clean? That’s from Mrs. Piper’s third grade class. Well, we have about two pairs of clothing each and basically we just keep wearing them over and over. So they smell, yep, they sure do, and that’s just how they’re gonna be til we get home so that’s how it is. That’s what it takes here.

Let’s see, How hard is it to stay hydrated in the dry climate? Do you have to melt snow for water or carry some as well? That’s from Betty in Ohio. And yes, we melt snow and we carry a couple liters of water that we drink during the day, with us. So, and then we melt more in the evening, hydrate up and then head out. So it’s not too hard to stay hydrated but it is pretty dry here.

And finally, Dr. Toyo Matsumoto asks how we are maintaining our weight so far. And that is kind of hard to tell. We probably lost a little bit but we’re doing pretty well with that I think because we are never, we are not hungry yet. So we have more food than we can eat. That’s it for today and a shout out to those folks at F5 Networks. Over and out.