Day 25

A message from Steve.

Upper Pia Glacier:

"We haven't been moving like cheetah's through this mountain range... the more I think about it the more that doesn't make any sense. So far we've come 25km as the crow flies with another 65km to go, we're not breaking any land speed records.

We're at Camp 9...b, I say 9b because we moved a whole 3m since our last camp after being buried too deeply to excavate ourselves efficiently (2 hours to dig out, 1 hour to blow back in).

We've had 8 hours of sun over the past 25 days, none of this has been direct - no blue skies to cheer us on. It's rained or snowed every day, almost constantly. The wind picks you up and moves you; as Dean says "It's like the finger of God flicking you off his shoulder". Our longest travel day so far has been 10km, the longest stormbound time has been 6 days, although we're at day five and counting... This week we managed to travel 5km, last week 3km. During the last crevasse fall benzene spilled over everything I have including my clothes and food.

But there are good things to report too. Our packs and sleds are much lighter now (we only have a dozen or so days of food left), we've become experts at Yahtzee after playing so much, and we've absolved ourselves of all expectations of making it to Yendegaia. If we get some clear days at all we'll at least be able to make some headway, who knows how far, if at least to the nearest boat. Despite all of this we won't give up until the last crumb is eaten, which is probably somewhere in Kari's beard (are they considering cannibalizing Kari?).

You wonder what Darwin would think of this scenario, especially of three skiers praying for a miracle, even just a small one."

Sounds like they're looking for an escape route now. If anyone talks to them before Jasmin or I do, pass on that there was some information offered with regards to a previously used route down to the ocean. Either me or Jasmin has the details on this.