Arctic Trucks

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

I‘m now driving ahead alone, we took the trailer of my car and some of the weight and this way I can drive about 20 km/h, Kenny is waiting behind, he is going to give the track one or two hours to get harder and then he is going to try to follow, pulling both trailer in the track.  As we were moving very slowly with me making the track and pulling the trailer we tried using the skies but that did not work, we tried putting my trailer behind Kenny‘s trailer and I would make the track and he follow pulling both trailers but that did not work either even though I had the elestic rope in him as I constantly had to pull.  It took us 6 hours to get 2 km.  We are still only 550km from Novo.  We are sinking fairly deap in the snow, the front tires can most of the time drive on top but when all the weight follows everything sinks in.   We have now taken two more barrels of, one of the spare tires and one of the winches.    Without the trailer I‘m doing fine so now I‘m going ahead making a track but Kenny is waiting behind giving the track some time to get frozen before following me.  I hope this will work. 

Gísli Jónsson 

We drove until 7 this morning, we are now trying to get going again but my car does not want to start.  I‘ve been working on this for half hour now having some problem refitting the hose pipes as it does not want to seal once you‘ve taken it off, due to the cold....  The airlockers have the same problem, they don‘t work the first hour after the car has cooled down.

Gísli Jónsson

 We send our Christmas Greetings to everyone, we are now 500 km from Novo and the snow conditions are very difficult, the grip in the snow is next to none. The cars are way too heavy, they look like Christmas tree, bags and boxes all over both on the cars and trailers. If it was not for the push bar we would most likely not be moving. We are still in 3.380 meters and we have been driving for 28 hours strait. Dr. Ian is feeling some mountain sickness but others are fine but tired. We are going to sleep now for a few hours and then continue, we need to find a way to reduce the weight, I have 1200 liters extra on my car and Kenny 1400 liters, we are planning to let of 400 liters soon but I don‘t dare to take more off for now. The cars Hjalti and Tony are driving are even more loaded but this time we could really feel the different when we drove our tracks from earlier so it should be less difficult for them.

Gísli Jónsson

 The airplane came again two days ago with all the competitors, 16 people, and the film crew both the one we are working with and also two Norwegians that are filming for NFK and lots of other people as well. We have been very busy since, running around trying to fit all the things into the cars. Finally around 18 yesterday me and Tony took of. Dr. Deirdre is with us along with the BBC film crew. We will follow the skiers during the next days. Earlier yesterday, Gisli and Kenny took the sledges for the competitors towards ETL to save them some time. After some distance a tire felt into a crevasse in a place where we have been driving over a number of times, this reminds us to be careful. They left the sledges and drove back to Novo to get all the all the oil (jet fuel) and package their stuff. They have now already past us and are off to the start line. They will try to go a bit slower up to the high plateau to avoid mountain sickness. The cars are extremely loaded and heavy, the racks for the hard disks the film crew is using have limited all the space in the rear very much and people have brought all sorts of boxes and bags that have had to squeeze here and there on the cars or the trailers.

Hjalti V. Hjaltason