Day 16 - Sticky snow and equipment breakdown affecting morale

After yesterday's snowy rest day, we woke up to a sunny white landscape. Well, there is always white here, but now it was brighter, white and even.

New snow is rarely good for sledging. So, with mixed feelings of fear, we put on the harness and set off for the first leg: Tero pulled as slowly as he could, and Mikko shouted from behind that he should go even slower as he was sweating.

So our fear turned out to be true: the snow was really sticky. Our pace was 0.5 km/h slower than normal, although, at the same time, our heart rates were 20 beats higher than normal. We progressed as much as we could without straining too much, and during the lunch break, it was unanimously decided to keep the day shorter by an hour. Now we just hope that the sun and the wind will harden the snow into half-ice so we can proceed properly again.

In the evening, we faced a small tragedy in the tent: the moonshine bottle had cracked at the bottom and released half of its contents.

In today's photo, that innocent-looking white substance. As you can see from the picture, the snow is not deep, but even that amount was enough to complicate the day significantly.