#17: Skiing through the blizzard

It was a little windier than expected this morning, but never the less we got out, packed up camp and skied into the blizzard! Due to the conditions we structured our day a little differently. Instead of the normal one hour sessions, we skied two blocks of one and a half hours with a short break in between, then put up the tents for a rest and some refuge from the wind. This allowed us to still cover 23km in blizzard conditions, without feeling too worn out. The snow conditions were a little tricky today, the surface was hard and slick, but there were a lot of small sastrugi to ski over, which is quite hard when visibility is low. There was a fair bit of slipping and sliding, and using poles for balance. The weirdest thing happened today. I was skiing along with my goggles and face mask on, my fur ruff up around my face, just covering the sides of my goggles. I kept catching a glimpse of something moving in my periphery, but there couldn’t be anything there because it was just the inside of my hood, my fur ruff. It took me about twenty minutes of trying to figure it out before I realised that it was a super close up reflection of my own eyeball on the inside of the goggles! The movement was my eyes looking around and blinking! I spent the next half an hour looking at my eyeball and almost tripping over my skis. We are hunkering down for the storm, we built snow walls in front of each tent, placed sleds at the back, and triple checked all our anchors. A rest day is in store tomorrow with snow and 100kph wind forecast! Mardi