Day 17 - Roller coaster

Legs 1-2: Um, this is the same goo as yesterday, maybe a little more slippery. Okay then, let's grind the whole day.

Legs 3-4: Oh, there are areas where the wind has cleaned away the sticky snow. We'll get back to better speeds soon.

Legs 5-6: Damn these huddles! The worst sastrugi we have seen so far. At worst, sharp formations a couple of meters high, at an angle of 45 degrees to our direction of travel. The sledge takes fast tearing movements in every possible direction and thrusts hard into the middle body. Speed back down, energy consumption up.

Legs 7-8: Phew… this is starting to get easier little by little. However, we got hit so badly in the previous one that we can't really find the pace. Melancholy is so bad that Tero has to put on the "Sweaty EDM Workout" playlist. Mikko listens to the voices in his own head. Or at least one of them.

We arrived at the camp tired but in quite a good mood. The progress of the day was better than what could have been expected during skiing.

The bright spot of the day was observing a competing civilization: a couple of kilometers to the east of us, a solo skier was skiing. The skier disappeared into the horizon when we set up the camp. We assume the skier is the Hedvig Hjertaker we met at Union Glacier; his goal is to ski in less than forty days.

In today's photo, a little sastrugi field. It's hard to get a sense of the scale, but imagine those shapes from the size of a palm to the size of a small car, and you'll get it right.