Day 50 - Fifty days is a long time

Fifty days is a long time to be completely alone and isolated. Tomorrow morning marks the completion of these fifty days. During this time, we have had two events that can be characterized as human contact:

• On days 16-17, we both saw Hedvig a few kilometers away
• On day 30, Caroline Cote, who set the speed record, caught us, and we chatted for a few minutes. Everyone was fully masked, so we couldn't even see each other's faces or eyes.

As it looks now, our isolation here will end the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow we will ski all day, and for the final part, we’ll ski the day after tomorrow. We could have rushed the last few days and shortened this by a day, but we won't fall for it and keep our freight train-like pace until the end.

Today was an absolutely fantastic skiing day: sunny, windless frosty weather and an almost perfectly flat glacier. We got the first sighting from the Amundsen-Scott research station at the South Pole, 58 km away. It is such a large facility that, in good weather, it can be seen as a tiny dot from really far away. At the same time, it's motivating and demotivating to see it: It's motivating to see the finish line, but it's demotivating to know that you still have to ski 14 hours from the current camp to get there.

In today's picture, in honor of Tero's last kitchen shift, amuse-bouche: salami and pretzel grilled on the gas stove.