Day 38 - 86 degrees completed

Today we skied the last quarter of the 86th degree. The terrain was a little slower than before - the journey progressed step by step so that there was always 3-5 km of sastrugi field and, finally, a climb to the next sastrugi field. Fortunately, sastrugi were usually no more than knee-high. The final opponent was a big valley that had to be skied down for 20 minutes and up the other side for 2 hours. During the night, we ended up at 87 degrees, and in the following days, we will start chewing it up bit by bit. This degree has a bit of a bad reputation for being difficult to navigate, but let's see how it goes.

The dominant feature of the day was the coldness: this was the first day in which the cold air was so piercing that it caused us to make constant changes to our gears. The vest and skirt were on and off several times. This is normal as we are approaching the South Pole, and the altitude we gained today rose rapidly: we are now at almost 2200 meters.

Photo of the day: happy skiers at lunch.