Well hi there everybody. To start with I cant really thank everybody enough for all those that have been involved and thank you for all your messages as well. I’ve got to be honest I was incredibly shocked that the tent was broken in the way that it was. Essentially the main tent pole snapped during the storm, in order to replace it we loosened the guy rope and release it and once it wasn’t under tension any more it was just like a match stick and snapped all over the place and unfortunately the sharp ends of the pole tore into the tent.
It was a terrible night, a real survival night. It was very serious, there was a moment where we weren’t sure that we could get enough shelter up for the night. When we finally did we were huddled together in a space not that much bigger than Katie and I huddled together. We touched the tent walls pretty much inside our sleeping bags but we did sleep.
Come today the weather has been better, although better is comparative with other days its still been horrific. Very poor visibility all day right up until the very end of the day when we finally got a glimpse of the glacier that we’re heading down. Its been quiet a cold day the visibility has been between 10 and 100 meters throughout the day. The visibility has been a disaster for travelling along a glacier. I think between us Katie and I have fallen down about 4 or 5 crevasses today. One of them was quite an epic episode, quite a deep one, it opened right underneath me and I was kinda wedged quite a bit down. It really is a terrifying experience trying to walk in zero visibility through these crevasse fields. You really are on tender hooks the whole way, your prodding with your poles and its really slow progress.
We’re half way down our exit glacier at the moment we couldn’t make it all the way off today so we’ve had to build a shelter again. We had a bit more luck because the wind wasn’t so strong today so our shelters a bit more impressive but still a shelter non the less. We’re huddled up inside our sleeping bags for another night hope fully getting a little more sleep. Then fingers crossed that tomorrow we’ll be able to exit this glacier, because as I understand it no body has ever exited this glacier before so it is fingers crossed that we can get off at the bottom. I mean our maps indicate that we can but that’s not an absolute given that today our maps didn’t indicate enormous cliffs that we almost walked off!
Apart from that we’re in much better spirits despite being absolutely exhausted. Katie has a touch of snow blindness, her goggles broke today and she had to walk with out so she’s got a touch of blindness and I have a touch of frost nip on my nose. But apart from that we’re very well really we’ll be even happier once we’ve made it off the glacier. We’ll check in again tomorrow to let you know how it all goes. Bye
