15 May

Breakfast was becoming repetitive, but still good for where we were. Benny made his usual visit and usual comment. Scott made another phone call to Izzy and we found out little more. The groups in the South still needed picking up. The weather was still bad down there so there had not been any progress. Here the wind was much stronger and it was overcast. This fitted the weather forecast we had seen a couple of days ago. We were now resigned to being stuck here for at least two more days and probably three or four.

After the physical inactivity of the day before, Paul, Gordon and myself decided to go out for a ski along the side of the fjord and then around a hill at the end of the fjord. The day before you could see the hill we wanted to go around from the base. Today the visibility had dropped considerably. There was also a lot of wind-blown snow around making it generally unpleasant out. We still went. We had a rough bearing to go on, but nothing accurate. We didn't have a map of the area so were we going more on what we could remember from the days before. We also had a bearing which Petter gave us from when he had been that way a couple of days earlier. The outward leg was into the wind and snow. It was hoods pulled tight, heads down and skiing into it. Paul was at the lead setting the direction. In conditions like this it's easy to get off route. Most of the time we could see the hills to our left which we wanted to use as a handrail, but that meant looking up and getting snow in our faces. To me it seemed like Paul was always drifting right. I would keep saying this and he would correct himself for a while and then drift off again. Gordon was not too happy as well. I could see the hill to the left most of the time so was not too concerned, but I think Gordons eye sight was not as good so to him it was all featureless. Gordon said he was happy so long as we were, he had confidence in that we knew what we were doing. After about a total of an hours skiing the wind had risen more and visibility dropped so that I lost sight of the hills. All we could see was snow and mist. It was not pleasant and I doubted we could get to where we wanted to go given the navigational aids we had. So I suggested to Paul we turn back. He agreed.

This is one time I'm grateful we had a GPS with us. Normally I don't like them. I prefer a map and compass. No batteries to go flat, more accurate and you are not dependent on some bit of high tech kit which could go wrong. In this case we didn't have a map so we were effectively lost in a snow storm with little visibility. Both Gordon and I had one so we both turned them on and used them to get a bearing back to the base. Within a minute we had two bearings differing by 2 degrees. We set our compasses and then set off. Given how we had drifted on the way out we said every ten minutes we would stop and use the GPS to give us a new bearing to correct any drift. Since we where skiing with the wind it was much easier and Paul was able to ski with one pole and hold the compass out with the other so drifting wasn't much of a problem. After the ten minutes the new bearings from the GPS were only a couple of degrees from the first. At the second stop I could make out the rotating light on top of one of the hangers, flashing at one second intervals. The GPS said we were 500m from the base. We just skied at our own pace back to the base, which was very easy since the wind was virtually pushing us along. We spread our arms out and sailed home.

We reckoned the wind was blowing at 30 miles per hour. To us it seemed very unlikely that any plane would be landing in that weather. The wind-blown snow was building up around the accommodation block. It was slowly getting darker inside as the back windows became covered with snow.