(from Richard)

People have asked what our days look like.

Essential what we do is break every day into the same structure, we have 6 marches a day. Each march is about 1 hour and fifteen minutes long - followed by a dense fifteen minute break for food (granola bar, water, cheese, chocolate, etc.). Depending on how chatty the group is, it can go a bit longer.

The first three marches of the day are fairly easy, we are feeling fresh and spritely from the high calorie food we are eating and the start of the day.

The last few of the day are hard. The last one especially is really hard. The back aches. Your feet are wincing, if your feet could wince. You are feeling every pinch point in your feet. And at this point, it is magnified.

The last one of the day really matters. It is like the last rep of the day in the gym, the final exam in course, or the final deliverable for a client. It is the one that allows you to keep piling the miles on and get to your goal quicker! We are increasing our mileage each day; we know it isn’t sustainable. But, we want to take it as far as we can.

During the day, it has been pretty boring. We have luckily had reasonably warm weather - by arctic standards. Nice blue skies. Not really much to see - it looks a lot like the surface of the moon.

All we have to entertain us is our music or spoken word MP3s. I so far got through Alan Partridge’s and Stephen Fry’s autobiography (thanks Sx).

You have the strange shape of the Zastruga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zastruga) to look at…

Or the strange quirks of the back of the bloke ahead.

Or if you are leading, you have the job of navigating - which at least gives you something to think about.

One of the highlights of the day are the occasional flat drops, which sure wake us all up. They are rare, but they are when the whole continent feels to fall a bit. The surface is, snow packed on ice, packed on snow. As these different density layers shift, occasionally the whole surface will drop a couple of inches. It is a weird feeling. They sound like big thunder claps, and you feel the earth move a bit, which is slightly disconcerting. But again, it wakes you up and gives you something to think about as you trudge to camp…and some excitement about getting to the end of the day.

That is about the full amount of the day - we will add more about our mornings and evenings later. We are moving well, and I think everyone is happy. Cheers!

From Alan…

Myself and fellow Haas MBA 11 Andrew Jensen have linked up in Chile with our Polar Vision teammate, Tuck MBA Rich Smith, before flying into Antarctica to commence the expedition.

As we take our first step (or rather ski), there are a lot of thoughts in our head. Excitement, nerves….and as Andrew says the one phrase at the front of our minds is “damn its cold!” I guess this is where Rich has an advantage having had 2 years of winters in Hanover…

Anyway, as most of you know, we are part of a bigger picture. We are doing this to raise awareness of sight issues and support sight related charities (Guide Dogs in the US, and Uk based Sightsavers International), given that I am visually impaired myself this is a cause close to my heart, and if successful we would set a record for the first visually impaired person to ski coast to Pole.

But we have not got here alone. Andrew, Richard and I, along with our Guide Hannah Mckeand, are the thin and visible end of quite a thick wedge. We have had great support from the Haas Community, both in terms of donations, PR support and practical help managing our web output whilst we are away. The plane departs in a few hours and time is short so I can’t thank everyone here, but the support we’ve received is a great testament to the Haas community and the spirit of the school.

Well, my fingers are getting chilly so we’ll leave it for now.

(From Andrew)

Today, Polar Vision departed their basecamp and travelled slightly over 15 miles - which was on track, we met our travel schedule for our first full day on the ice.

First impressions of the actual route, number one - it is much warmer than what we prepared and trained for. This requires a little bit of adjustment on our clothes and packing. It is also very sunny here and not an ounce of wind yet - which was very surprising. I thought we would get a fair amount of wind as we moved forward.

What it looks like here? I thought there were going to be a lot more mountains, but it is actually very featureless. We are still on the ice shelf, so we aren’t actually standing on Antarctica yet. If you imagine a frozen ocean with no waves, that is where we are right now. It is almost as desolate as Nebraska.

We are all sitting here together at the end of the day - all in the tent together and cooked a nice meal. Everyone is experiencing a little bit of aches and pains — there are just some muscles that you can’t work out by pulling a tire, just things you can’t recreate. I think those things are popping up on people, and we will be feeling it even more after a cold night in the tent.

In spite of that, we are all looking forward to tomorrow. We are really excited that we met our mileage goal for the day, and I think we can go even further tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone back home and have a great day!

We have received a call from the team, after a flight late last night and breakfast under their belts the boys have confirmed that they are setting off for the south pole….

Recent Update

Good News! it looks as if the team have managed to secure seats on the plane to get to the start point tonight. The flight is scheduled for around midnight, but with 24 hours sunlight, there should be no issue in it being too late at night!