13 May

Another not so restful "night". Even though I slept most of the night I'm sure it was not as recuperative as normal sleep. Maybe I was not getting as much REM sleep as normal or something?

Breakfast was the same as the day before, a good continental spread. This time the cook was not hanging around to make sure we had everything we needed. I think by now she thought we had got the ropes. After spending two days there we were no longer considered as visitors to be looked after but more like guests. Benny made an appearance and said, "Bad news, no flight today, maybe tomorrow". Again he did not know what was going on, the big picture. At 10am Scott went of to phone Issy. Issy did not say much, just that people were waiting to be picked up from the South of Greenland. Also another emergency had occurred. A group of two Norwegians had been dropped off a couple of days ago to do an Ice Cap crossing, East to West. Now one of them was sick and needed picking up and taking to hospital.

Since we were going to be there another day, all but Scott decided to go out that day. Petter, John, Glen and Paul decided to go up a peak they had seen the day before. It looked like it needed a little technical gear, rope etc, so they had not done it the day before.

I went out with Alan and Gordon. We decided to go up a narrow side valley to see where it led. This was the first time I'd been out on skis with the others and I was interested to see how I compared to them. On the flat I had no problem but going up a slope into the mouth of the valley I struggled. My skis were not gripping as well as the others and kept slipping back. Now was a good time to learn a bit more about waxes from the vastly more experienced Alan. We had all started out with the same wax. The different waxes are referred to by colours, even though they are all the same colour. Softer waxes grip warmer snow better. It's all to do with the size of the snow crystals. We had started with Super Blue. This has a temperate range of something like -7 to -1. You put the wax on the middle of the ski where there is what's known as a wax pocket. Nordic skis are not flat like alpine downhill skis. The middle rises up a little. When you stand on one foot you flatten that ski and the wax pocket in the middle touches the snow and grips it. My skis are more intended for downhill skiing with the some cross country. The skis are much more bendy than Nordic touring skis and the wax pocket is smaller. As a result I get less grip. Alan suggested putting on some Super Red. This has a temperate range of -2 to +2. I had some of this with me so spent five minutes taking my ski's off, waxing them and then putting them back on. It turned out to be worth the effort as I got much more grip going up the valley.

We went about 5km up the valley and then stopped for lunch. I'd been doing OK compared with the others. Alan was much more proficient and faster than either Gordon or I. I was a little faster than Gordon but decided to stay behind him so as not to leave him behind. Sat at lunch I was reasonable happy I was now not going to make a complete fool of myself with the lack of skiing ability. It had taken us 3 hours to get to our lunch spot. We could have gone on further but it had gotten cloudy and the cloud base was not much above us. Also the light was very flat. The snow had become a uniform white making it hard to pick out features. It was even harder to tell if the snow sloped up or down. The tram lines we had left behind helped so we decided to head down. The slope was steep enough to give a nice glide, but in most places not too steep to require any sort of braking technique.

We had just set off when I had my first and only fall of the day. I was gliding down and heard something behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see Alan quickly approaching and promptly lost my balance and fell over sideways with Alan laughing at me. For the rest of the descent whatever was going on behind me did not matter, I was only going to look forward so as not to repeat the episode. It only took an hour to get back. Gordon had two falls compared to my one so I was pleased with the days skiing and considered my elementary ability sufficient for the task. Also my ankle did not give me any problems afterwards. For skiing it's OK, it's the falling over that gives it problems. With this sort of skiing, cross country, falls tend to be slow speed and you don't end up with your ski tips around your ears.

Returning to the Airbase after the days ski. Alan is on the left, Gordon on the right and the Liverpool mountains behind.

Rather than spend money eating real food we decided it was time to start eating the expedition food for the main meal and lunch. There was at least 3 days of extra food just in case and we were now two days into the time we should have been eating the expedition food, so we got out two ration boxes. The food was packed in day packs. Each pack contains the food for one tent for one day. There is some sort of cereal for breakfast, high energy food like choccie bars, biscuits and squeezy cheese or cans of fish for lunch and then a main meal of soup, rice, pasta or potato powder with dried curry, sweet and sour sauce, tomato sauce etc. and a dessert of cake and custard or chocolate sauce. In addition there were bags of dried fruit, nuts, 1kg of jam, tea, coffee, hot chocolate powder, lemon tea, milk powder and orange powder, sugar & salt and some mixed herbs. I think the least liked food were the tins of dressed crab! With time I came to dislike the dehydrated food. It never tasted too good and was too easy to burn onto the bottom of the pan. I found it much better to improvise with what ever else there was. The dehydrated food had little calorific value anyway. Most of the energy was in the pasta or potatoes, and the cake and custard. There was also a lot of trading of foodstuffs going on, swapping things you didn't like for something you did like but that someone else didn't.

Well Glen had another 'last shower' and we all went to bed hoping that tomorrow would be the day we would be off.