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22 Mar, 2008
We are going on sea ice in Wellington Channel after wefve got over the mountains in Corn Wallis Island.
Rough ice area that reminds me of Arctic Ocean leads between 5 and 6 kilometers off island. This sea ices have come from the north. The coast has prevented the sea ices from moving. As if wandering in a labyrinth, we zigzag searching for the easy route for pulling our sleds.
I sometimes meet with messy places of sea ices where seems impossible to go through. In that case, we first remove harness from our sleds, put ski next to the harness and then climb the highest sea ice, and look around. Doing route hunting from the highest place enables us to easily find easy flat route to walk. This is the best way in sea ice are. I go leaving a trail and Nagatani follows me. It is the first and hard time that he walks on sea ice, but he is stepping steadily.
We now make it a rule to start at 11 a.m., have lunch about 2 p.m., have a tea break, and walk until about 6 p.m. We can walk at most between 5 and 6 kilometers a day in rough ice area.
There gflatterh sea ices are coming up one after another. We finally manage to get through the rough ice area in the early evening.
Ifm sure we can walk much farther from tomorrow.
Mitsuro Ohba
