Today we made 18 km and reached the plateau. Pace is increasing.

Very warm day, so we woke up at 03:00 and settled into camp around 15:00 to avoid skiing in the slush.

Everything around us is white to the horizon – flat, endless, with only a very modest incline toward DYE-2. The scale here is difficult to explain. There are almost no reference points, just snow, sky, and distance.

The CRAIG experiment logged perfectly today with no issues.

Charging is still not ideal. Even on a very sunny day, using the setup I described in my last post, I managed to gain only about 20% charge on the Jackery Explorer 100 – roughly 20Wh of energy. That means I’ll need to limit daily consumption to around that level to stay power balanced. This means I will need to limit my posting to every second day.

Tomorrow I’ll try replacing one of the charging cables and see if efficiency improves.

While skiing, every once in a while we could see the trails of transatlantic airliners crossing above the horizon. It was a reminder that civilization still exists somewhere out there beyond the ice.

It also reminded me that since I was a little boy, I used to sit on those same transatlantic flights, staring at the moving map on the screen as we passed over Greenland, wondering what was down there beneath the ice.

It is an amazing feeling to now stand on the other side of that question.

Interestingly, the CRAIG experiment may one day help exactly those aircraft currently flying above us. Understanding the particles that penetrate the magnetosphere and reach ground level is critical for forecasting space weather – and severe space weather creates real challenges for Arctic aviation, communications, and navigation systems.