The Goliath Expedition

30th March 2006
Well…. what a difference a day makes! There is good news and good news. It would appear that the batteries are OK and there was a fault with the satphone. However, it was fixed last night and consequently we now have coms again.�

Shortly after setting off yesterday (Wednesday) they reached an area of relatively flat ice pans. With the newly lightened sled they took full advantage of this and made an excellent 11.5 miles. Almost twice what had been considered a good day up to this point. Needless to say their morale took a much-needed boost. The weather is cloudy at times with some snow, but just at the moment there is no wind and no ice drift.�

The satellite photographs show there’s still a good amount of ice in their area and no major open water. It is in fact breaking up in the areas they have come through and they said that last night the moving ice sounded like a freight train. There is, however, a thin ‘pencil line’ of probable open water between the floating ice and the old, solid ice stuck to the Russian shore. It’s possible that this could be hundreds of metres wide but seems to be intermittent and is hard to decipher from the high altitude photographs. This is to their south-west (directly to their front) but it seems more solid to their west. In this case I think we will have to rely on the dynamic duo assessing the situation on the spot.�

The saga continues….