18 06 99

Position: 67° 12' 02" N 49° 44' 01° W

Diane's note: transmission was poor, so there are gaps in Laurie's message.

We did another 25 kms. today and we really are approaching the end. The day started off pretty windy and for one short hour, we had the wind in a good direction and were able to use our sails. The wind was so strong we had our sails reduced to a minimum... the wind was singing through the lines in a high pitched whine..quite impressive, but then we had to change direction and bring our sails down.

We travelled most of the day with the wind in our faces. It wasn't that cold, only about -8° C or so. The winds were gale force, the sort of conditions that most people would not want to venture out in at all. The surface was...the icy pellets were bouncing off our boots and legs. As soon as we stopped, everything began immediately to drift over and become almost invisible. At times the wind was gusting over 50 kms. an hour and we had to be careful not to get frost bite.

Today was quite interesting. We had some rather deep descents...with those you can get a huge icefall effect...surrealistic blowing snow making a strange effect, with the sun shining through it. It turned out to be a very interesting day indeed.

We're aiming for the end tomorrow. We don't know quite what to expect. We're at the most active part of the glacier, which means it has the biggest crevasses and possibly some lakes. We did pass one partially frozen lake in a hollow today.

...shooting for the end tomorrow, but even with that we're just at the end of the ice...not sure how we're going to get from there to the end of the road.

End of transmission

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