We woke up into a freezing cold as usually. Our day starts like this - I sleep as long as I can because I often get cold during the night and don’t get a good sleep. I also often work late on the sending of the message so I get to bed later than Vasek. It’s quite a lot of work to send the daily updates but we’re happy to do it if we know that you’re there reading it every day, waiting for the next story and writing comments. It’s a great feeling to know that we do it for someone else than ourselves and it gives us energy to actually write the story avery evening. I try to take a lot of pictures during the day so we have what to chose from for the exhibitions and lectures which will take place after we’re back in the Czech Republic but to walk as many miles as possible is of course our priority!
It brings me to the great news - we made some 27 km (17 miles) today! We were lucky to have smooth ice for most of the day so we walked really fast. Moreover, there were almost no fields of toroses today - in short, nothing like the mess we walked through yesterday. Even if we got to a field of broken ice, we were able to go around it easily. We therefore didn’t have to walk several extra miles only to avoid the toroses as we did yesterday.
We haven’t seen a living soul today and even the shore looks barren. There are no scattered houses nor settlements. We walk along the western shore and not through the middle of the lake as we planned originally. We were worried at the beginning because of how little miles we walked in one day so we didn’t want to waste time by getting to the middle of the lake. We’re heading right to the north!
We’re slowly getting used to the amounts of food we have to eat every day. As we wrote yesterday, we hadn’t felt good in the past few days - we had to force ourselves to eat something as we felt sick all the time. Mornings were particularly awful as we just couldn’t eat anything. That’s why we decided to skip breakfast for the time being and eat more during the day. Good news is that we both felt much better today and it seems that our bodies are getting into the “expedition mode” :-).
Anyway, back to the daily routine which I was talking about. Vasek gets up first and sets the stove to melt all the water we need for the whole day. I try to stay asleep as I go to bed later than Vasek. When Vasek is done with the water, I force myself to get up and we both get out of the tent. Vasek is dressed already and I put the hard-shell on myself outside as it’s not as cramped there as in the tent. I don’t really feel the cold, we’re actually handling it surprisingly well. Except for the moments when we need to take the gloves off...we try to be extremely careful but still I think I might have my right little finger frostbitten slightly. Even though I might as well have it from years ago when I used to like rock-climbing in cold weather. Well, I should tell something about the daily routine from which I digressed again :-) Once we’re both outside of the tent, everything goes fast - we pack the tent and set off as quickly as possible because if you don’t move, you get cold in no time. The first two hours are the worst as we’re all stiff after the night. On the other hand, the afternoons are great - we feel really strong and walk fast in the afternoon.
Every hour or so we take a break to have a snack - we have to fuel our bodies regularly. We sit for about 20 minutes gorging the snack portions and hot tea. We need to go on soon as even though we have warm down jackets, we start to grow cold in a very short time. That’s why we see to set off soon and take only short breaks during the day.
At about quarter to 6 p.m. we search for a camping spot. It’s easy if we’re on the smooth ice; in the fields of toroses it’s sometimes difficult to find a spot for the tent. Then we set the tent - I take care of the outside and Vasek unloads everything we need from the sleds and puts it inside of the tent. Once we’re in, we set the stove and works on our diners. It’s Vasek’s job as he’s the Stove Keeper :-), I only assist him in this matter. After we eat our generous dinners, we’d love to lay down and rest...instead we try to dry pieces of clothes above the stove and work on the web post. Vasek then goes to bed and I finish the sending of the post.
