8 March, 2005

It’s the 8th of March today and we’ve decided to take a restday at a hunters cabin, N 68°07’52.1 and E 157°40’24.4, after 14 km:s of skiing yesterday. It’s partly cloudy today

with the temperature at -30°F, but a cold northerly wind with a strength of 3 m/s makes it cold enough!

Written by Johan Ivarsson

We’re tired now, very tired!

We started this expedition almost eight month ago, and after putting in a lot of hard work during these months, the strain is now starting to take it’s toll. Understandable, of course, and in fact, that was exactly what Mikael told me at the very beginning of this expedition when I was complaining about how tired I was.

“If you think you are tired now, wait until we’ve been out for eight or nine months, that’s when the hard going starts!”

Of course I didn’t take it to seriously then since I didn’t think that I could be more tired at the time, but now I’m afraid that I have to say that he was right, it could get worse. The tiredness that I feel right now is the worst that I’ve ever experienced. My legs are so stiff and I am so tired in the morning that I ask myself after the first steps whether they will support me or not. And my arms feel like they’re made of lead. This I experience after having struggled to wake up when the alarm goes off.

It’s worst in the morning, but it gets better during the day when the muscles have warmed up a bit, but it’s like a blessing when the evening comes and it’s time to go to sleep again. At least when we’re in a warm and cozy cabin, like now. But it isn’t only the physical part of the body that is tired. We’ve now come so far that I am beginning to feel like we’ve almost made it, that we’re close to the finishing line. Which of course isn’t true, since we still have almost two months of hard travelling to do. But still, the feeling persist.

And my thoughts during the pulling is all about what to do when I get back home. This is dangerous thoughts, since it makes you think more of the loved one’s back home and makes you less aware of what you’re doing. Right now it’s more important than ever not to loose one’s concentration, because there’s still no room for mistakes.

Yes, I’m tired, but I shouldn’t complain! We are moving closer to Kolymskaya by the day and we’ve had a few lovely days when I actually enjoyed skiing, and it feels like it was ages since that happened last. And the northern lights that I saw last night, when I was forced out of bed to have a pee, was the best I’ve ever seen! Lovely colors all over the sky, changing constantly and moving from one part of the otherwise pitchblack night sky to the other. Too bad that it was too cold to stay outside to watch it for some time, or maybe it was the bed that made me go back inside.