Merry Christmas from Team 3belowzero

Hours traveled: 8.5
Miles traveled: 13
Total miles traveled: 264.9
Miles to pole: 311
Elevation: 4750 ft

Translation from voicemail: Hello, Team 3belowzero, Day 23. Happy Christmas Eve to everybody and today was another sunny day here. The winds picked up to about fifteen miles per hour all day. WInd chill probably about negative ten here. So’s quite a bit different than yesterday where there was hardly any wind.

Some interesting things today were that the, those Theil Mountains we’re still on our right all day long, but we just caught sight of this giant wall of snow that we needed to climb up hours before we got there. We kept thinking, we’re almost there, we’re almost there. Took us three and a half hours to climb this giant snow wall today. Which kind of looked like a giant swell out in the ocean. but it was kind of a highlight because it was something different to see.

And we also made another turn, our final major turn towards the pole. So now we’re going directly, on a director route to the pole. And we are right into the wind. So, yes, because it was such kind of a windy day we, we had no ipods in today and really just were with our own thoughts today and what I kind of noticed is that wind really makes you kind of pay attention more, for some reason. You really focus your senses and It also keeps you a lot, cooler so weren’t so hot like yesterday. We were definitely all bundled up today and it’s interesting when you wear your hood you notice that it seems like the winds die down, and then you pulled it off then you’re like oh know it didn’t die down, it’s crazy out there.

But it’s also a little tough to take much of a break when the wind going pretty strong because you get cold really fast so we did a bunch of fast breaks today instead of kinda our normal, sit down, ten minute break. And also, I got a little tip from Marty today that if you put these little down mittens in your pogies that are on our ski poles, our hands stay alot warmer in the wind so that was awesome.

So, yeah, it was a bit of a windy day and we are sitting here enjoying our Christmas Eve fettucini alfredo. We talked to Keenan today. and are missing him quite a bit so hope you’re all having a a great holiday. Special shout out to you folks at Whole Foods, P. C. C., Issaquah, (Washington State) and R.E.I. Issaquah who are following along. We really appreciate that. It is fun to hear that you guys are all following along.

(Photo is of poggies on our ski piles to keep hands warm.  Notice Keenan wrote on them “I love you!  I know you will make it”. This keeps me motivated every day!)