I have three 24 hour flasks. Means that I dont have to cook in the evening ... i get in, eat my ramin and pour water over my freeze dried food. I have to say The freezed dried dinners are stunning and I even (from about 7pm) start dreaming of them. They are that tasty!

my kitchen

Setting a new trend aka morning look. Welcome to my kitchen. Just boiling some water for the day.

Starting to get messages through - thank you everyone for sticking with this and its great to know that folks are interested.
If I start with your message Sue - you want to hear about the mundane? I have to say, it is all very very mundane and that is half the challenge - to get up every morning and ski a distance no matter what the weather and how tired you feel. Taking the day off because the blisters are playing up, you're tired, the wind is howling and adding to the effort of dragging a pulk (and yourself) across the strugi is not an option (although i did swap my routine a couple of days ago because i hadnt slept during the night - but it them made for a very very long ski!
The strugi is super crazy, and although I have already climbed over 4000ft, stepping up, over and down these strugi .... the elevation climbed must be x10000 more!
But what does my day look like? Lets start with the am.
My alarm goes off at 6am and its up (sit up in the sleeping bag and moan that it really cant be that time again) and slip into the ski wear. There is definitely an art to it... changing in a sleeping bag, half asleep and making sure everything is the right side out. Depending on what i hear (wind howling/ blowing snow/silence/feel the sun on the tent) - will depend on what layers i will put on.
When dressed and boots are on, i start with breakfast and heating up the days water. I will take some photos .....

Its amazing what a few minutes does. After pitching the tent for the daily check in with base, a great cup of coffee (instant 3 in 1), a quick flit with meditation.... my world became very clear.
Blind bambi on skies was no more .... and it was back to the norm (less blue skies).

16nm later ..... it turned out to be a great session.

The last couple of days have been mentally quite tough .... drum roll the sarcasm....
To date, I have had winds that have blown me over, antarctica cold temperatures, ice and even frostbite but that is all expected and ok... and I have to say, it has been great to test out my equipment in the cold night temps as it will mean that it should stand the test of south pole temps (ok bar the fuel containers that clearly didn't!!).

This year is very different to last year when I was out here. We had tonnes and tonnes of snow, white outs and our sleds/pulks were buried a few times. This meant soft snow undersled and in short, the snow would fill in many of the sustrugi holes, pits and sharp icy edges. This meant (as i have now come to realise), although there were plenty of whiteouts- the skies could feel the ups and downs of the soft, rounded sustrugi and respond appropriately.

Enter..... this year. Hard icy, no snow filling the gaps razor sharp sustrugi that rise up and away sharply that have many lines/channels that often finds the left ski in one channel, the right ski in another and the sled choosing its own channel that drops away steeply, thus allowing the sled to slide sideways and overturn at the bottom of the stustrugi channel... now that would be fine if the sled was acting out its own stunts in its own adventure movie!! Instead what the above means in reality is that I find myself reinacting Bambi on skies!! Add a whiteout .... yep .... suddenly i do a great impression of blind Bambi on skies!!!! Very messy and very slow!!