Day 5 - Whiteout and broken promises

The tent was banging really, really hard all night. Even in spite of the fact that the entire facility was buried pretty well in the snow during the rest day. Thus, the sleep was mediocre at best. When we woke up to a new day in the morning, we noticed, to our disappointment, that the skiing weather was anything but good: strong wind, poor visibility, and a lot of horizontally moving snow.

However, we had already been lying around for a day, so we had no choice but to go on our way. Optimistically changing the ski skins from long to half-length during the rest day turned out to be a mistake right from the start: the ski didn't hold well enough, and the stumbling caused by poor visibility only made the situation worse. So, after only five minutes of skiing, we “we swallowed a camel eh penguin” and changed the long skins back on.

When we bought the tickets for this madness, we were promised a lot of sun and a few attractions, e.g. the important waymark "Three sails". Today we saw neither, or actually nothing: the sun remained well behind the clouds, and the visibility was measured sometimes in centimeters, sometimes in meters. Not even a glimpse of the Three Sails Mountains has yet to be seen. Six of the seven legs were pure whiteout, so the only option to go straight was to forget what the brain was serving as reality and just stare and trust the compass. All the time. And then just take the bumps and bulges when the skis hit them. Miraculously, we never fell over.

During one of the breaks, Mikko let go of his leg bag. We didn't even have time to say goodbye to it when it took off at a speed of 12 m/s towards an independent life and the ocean. You have to be really careful with your stuff here.

Normal soups, repair sewing, and maintenance in the tent. It wasn't an easy day, but it's good that we moved anyway.

In the photo of the day, the hero skier Mikko is heading towards the South Pole.