Finally into the Last Degree…
Published on 18.12.2008 - Expedition Earth
Just a few more days out on the ice and Todd Carmichael will have reached the end of his journey and achieved his dream...
The past few days have seen Todd embark on a real race against the clock. In his daily updates, he has been busy making calculations, weighing up the situation, analysing the days ahead and making predictions. All in all, he is doing everything in his power to beat the speed record that currently stands at 38 days.
By 9th December, he was still 12 nautical miles behind the record pace; the following day, having gone as fast as he could for over eleven hours, he was just 9 kilometres away! Then finally, by the 14th, he had made up all of his lost time and was calculating that to stay on course for the record, and better still, to go even faster and arrive at his goal by 20th December, he needed to cover 18 nautical miles (33.3 kilometres) a day for the next five days. Otherwise he wouldn't make it in time.
Clearly Todd has got the bit between his teeth now and the polar stopwatch is ticking. But for the past two days, hampered by deep, soft snow, he has only managed 16 to 17 nautical miles a day. Let's not forget that the American is travelling on foot and not on skis any more.
