Arctic Trucks

Dear everyone, I just had a talk to Gísli, please see below.
 
Talk with Gisli, 17.11.09 at 22:00 GMT
 
Some of the nights have been extremely cold so we have rested in the cars.  We have are now camped for the third time and have reached 78:26 S and 13:12 E.   We still have about 600 km to go to the fuel drop at 83:26 S.
 
In general the trip has been going very well, when driving we have been averaging 20-25km/h and the fuel consumption has been close to 70 liters per 100km.   But now as we have less fuel the speed is increasing and the fuel consumption is falling, I have now left my trailer behind with fuel which we will use on the way back.  Besides what is in the fuel tanks we have about 1600 liters in 8 barrels still with us which should give us very good margin to reach the fuel drop.   We expect to be on the drop location in 2,5 days which will give us good time to mark a drop zone before the IL76 arrives the 21st.   Once we have gathered and organized the fuel barrels and made it ready for the scientist arriving in December we will head back to Novo.  The way back should be considerable easier and faster as they can use their own tracks and the fuel consumption should also fall considerable. 
 
Gisli review a bit back on the days behind, he said that using the ice radar had given them a new route through the mountains free of crevasses.  This will make crossing this area much safer in the future.  The route we used last year had us cross many crevasses so we got lucky last year.
 
Once we got through the mountain range we drove to the site where the Basler airplane had crashed last year and camped there.  It was very super cold and we could all feel the altitude.  We estimate that the temperature this night was close to minus 50C, the temperature meters in the cars showed maximum low (-40) and the weather station Andrei has also bottoms in -40.   I took two Vodka bottles out of the cars and I could watch it freeze.  We examined the plane and the area and sent a report back to Novo and then waited for a Twinotter to bring specialists from Canada to try to fix up the plane enough so they can hopefully fly it back to Novo but in Antarctica nothing can be left behind, the plane has to be removed one way or another.
 
Soon after the Twinotter arrived we continued, during the days with the sun high in the sky the temperature reached minus 20C but at nights it got so cold that everything got a bit difficult, we had i.e. problems with starting the cookers, we first need to pre-heat them and the fuel before we could get it to work.   As we are coming further south the sun is staying higher in the sky and it does not get as cold.   Tonight we had a steak, it was great.  Otherwise we have not been eating very healthy food mostly some snack and too few meals.   The cars are doing great, there have been no problems but we try to keep the tires more inflated when it gets really cold to reduce the risk of them cracking like we saw with two-three tires last year. 
 
It is really good to have Mike with me, so can take turn driving and he is doing very well.  He could really feel the cold and the altitude when we stopped at the airplane but he recovered as we got to a lower altitude.
 
As this is only the third time we camp the team is still learning the procedure to set up the camp, it is still taking us a long time but this will get better.