March 14, 2014
No Flight, and Ryan Gets Thrown in Jail.
We had an early morning wake up and flight call with Kenn Borek about the potential for flying to Cape Discovery but I wasn't optimistic about our chances. Actually, I knew weren't flying.
It wasn't a premonition or other superstition, it was just factual information from a reliable source. The most reliable source: my good friend and meteorologist Marc De Keyser. Marc spends several months in Antarctica every year running weather obs for Adventure Network International. He also works for the BeIgian national weather service, and if that weren't enough, runs weather4expeditions - a business that does exactly what the name describes - providing weather forecasts for expeditions. In 2010 from his Belgian office, Marc predicted a very narrow weather window for my fall Everest summit. 'You will have a drop in winds from October 12th through the 15th and on the 15th there will be snow at all levels.'
Leaving from the South Col (Camp 4) a little after midnight, it was clear skies and calm winds until we reached the South Summit nearly 8 hours later. Visibility dropped just about the same time we ran out of rope. But somehow, we still managed to eke our way to up the Hillary Step and to the Summit in the only blue patch for miles. We descended in a white out and the next day waded through knee deep snow all the way down to base camp. Later Marc confessed his worry for our attempt via email, 'It was a very narrow window of good weather.'
This is a long way of saying when Marc sent the Cape Discovery forecast for this morning stating conditions would be overcast and visibility would be poor, I pretty much took it as fact. Still, I went through the motions of waking up and calling the pilot.
Needless to say, we're still in Resolute.
To kill time today, we wandered around taking photos and video of town. I wanted to test out the time lapse function on our Sony Action cams so we set up the tripod at a high point over looking town. It just so happens that this spot was also right next to the local RCMP office. I went inside to ask the one of the officers if he minded that we were 'shooting' outside.
A few minutes later we were getting a tour of the RCMP office and Ryan was even testing out the 'holding' cells. Travel to enough places and pretty soon you'll realize, that the real adventure begins when you simply ask questions.
Later we watched a nearly full moon rise above the nearby hills and I was once again reminded of the delicate balance of all things. Just a few months earlier Ryan and I were at Base Camp on Pico de Orizaba in Mexico, watching a full moon rising and felt the same way. Like a fulcrum. There is something about these big open spaces that keep calling me back.
Image: One of the two officers in Resolute.
It wasn't a premonition or other superstition, it was just factual information from a reliable source. The most reliable source: my good friend and meteorologist Marc De Keyser. Marc spends several months in Antarctica every year running weather obs for Adventure Network International. He also works for the BeIgian national weather service, and if that weren't enough, runs weather4expeditions - a business that does exactly what the name describes - providing weather forecasts for expeditions. In 2010 from his Belgian office, Marc predicted a very narrow weather window for my fall Everest summit. 'You will have a drop in winds from October 12th through the 15th and on the 15th there will be snow at all levels.'
Leaving from the South Col (Camp 4) a little after midnight, it was clear skies and calm winds until we reached the South Summit nearly 8 hours later. Visibility dropped just about the same time we ran out of rope. But somehow, we still managed to eke our way to up the Hillary Step and to the Summit in the only blue patch for miles. We descended in a white out and the next day waded through knee deep snow all the way down to base camp. Later Marc confessed his worry for our attempt via email, 'It was a very narrow window of good weather.'
This is a long way of saying when Marc sent the Cape Discovery forecast for this morning stating conditions would be overcast and visibility would be poor, I pretty much took it as fact. Still, I went through the motions of waking up and calling the pilot.
Needless to say, we're still in Resolute.
To kill time today, we wandered around taking photos and video of town. I wanted to test out the time lapse function on our Sony Action cams so we set up the tripod at a high point over looking town. It just so happens that this spot was also right next to the local RCMP office. I went inside to ask the one of the officers if he minded that we were 'shooting' outside.
A few minutes later we were getting a tour of the RCMP office and Ryan was even testing out the 'holding' cells. Travel to enough places and pretty soon you'll realize, that the real adventure begins when you simply ask questions.
Later we watched a nearly full moon rise above the nearby hills and I was once again reminded of the delicate balance of all things. Just a few months earlier Ryan and I were at Base Camp on Pico de Orizaba in Mexico, watching a full moon rising and felt the same way. Like a fulcrum. There is something about these big open spaces that keep calling me back.
Image: One of the two officers in Resolute.