Arctic Trucks

We are back with the competitors at the ETL.  The weather has been really bad and it has not been possible for the airplane to fly and pick up the competitors and move them to the start line.  We now have a food for a very long wait and we will stay with them until a flight is confirmed.   We are now looking at 2nd or 3rd January for the flights.  As this delays the start by 3 days I‘ve also decided to move the start line closer to the South Pole to keep the scheduled flights with the competitors back from the South Pole.   I‘ve asked Gisli and Kenny to find a good landing spot for the airplane about 70 – 75 km further south of the old start line / the fuel drop.  They will now have to do our job until we can catch up with them.

Wednesday 31. Des 2008, at 12:00

Tony (the race organizer)

We are returning to the ETL, the weather has now delayed the arrival of the airplane 2 or 3 days meaning the competitors waiting there will have to start using the reserve food.  In case of any additional delay we need to stock them up with more food.   The past two, three days have been a total white out and our progress has been limited anyway so we will save our energy and head back towards the start line as soon as the weather improves.   It is only minus 10 now.

Hjalti V. Hjaltason

We are at: 78:29:631S and 13:14:290E, we are still above 3000 meters, the GPS shows 3065 meters.   The snow conditions are fairly good, we are sinking about 15 cm in and the surface is even.   It is fairly easy to drive but we are really trying to keep the fuel consumption down so we limit our speed to 15 km/h.    We have been driving 100km since 2am this morning and we intend to continue driving for the next 30 hours aiming at being at the start line when the airplane brings in the competitors. We now have about 450 km to go.  I‘m taking a rest, Dr. Ian is driving now and we will take turns.  The temperature is -21 and some wind, the visibility is a bit heavy but still I could see the last fuel drop  4-5 km away.  I heard from Hjalti yesterday and they were moving 15-20 km/h but they still have not reached the 400 km mark.   I could not install the Garmin software on the notebook computer we have got so there is no easy way to send the track back to Hjalti but I will call him and give him they way points.   But if the visibility is not good he is not going to be able to find our track anyway, even Kenny could not see or follow my track even though I had a rope to his car, the wind fills the track in a few seconds. 

Gísli Jónsson

We are doing fine, we are still following the competitors towards ETL.  Later tonight we will go to ETL and camp.  All the competitors are doing fine, we celibrate Christmas differently, the British do it the 25th but we the 24th but the Christmas dinner was the same, fried salami and onion.   Tomorrow we will leave this group and head towards the start line following the other cars, the film crew will take the plane so it is good news that we can get rid of some of the extra weight, we need to take on some more fuel though.  I talked to Gisli yesterday and I heard he was very, very  tired.  I asked Tony to tell Kenny to give them a break so they could sleep.   Tony still needs much more driving experience.  Best to everyone- Hjalti

We are about 688 km from the start line, Kenny is waiting for the track to get hard about 60km back, this strategy seems to work, he can fairly easily follow.  Now I only have  about 8-900kg on my car, including people so I can keep 15-17km/h but the car is sincking fairly deep.   We are seeing a pattern,  now late in the day it is only minus 19 and the sun has been strong all day, I can feel  the snow conditions getting worse late in the day and into the night.   Later in the night when it gets colder the conditions improve and that‘s when we should be driving.   We have sleped about 20 hours since December 18th.  Our altitude is 3.250 meters and I estimate the engine power to be 50%.

Gísli Jónsson