Took my camera on race, got a lot of pictures. Here is an example of the whiteout, Adriano was in front of me, he was the only thing I could see. Trail was virtually invisible.
Me and Adriano (from Brazil) approaching finish line. I was pretty spent at this point.
Left to right - Irish Mark, Bernando, James, Mike and me. We were up all night again supporting the 100k runners, they were in bad shape at this point.
Took a self timed picture when we reached the top of hill (mini mountain). The amount of snow here cannot be put into words. The vast amounts of snow do drift, but against mountains. It is really odd to see snowdrifts as high as mountainss. Here we are standing on a drift, turned to ice, and is over a thousand feet deep. Took several hours to climb this (I am on right). Brutally cold and windy up there. There were huge blue ice fields we had to cross. They were incredible, they would have huge waves of ice hundreds of feet high and thousands of feet deep. Was like a frozen ocean.
Self photo. Looking grizzly now. The camp can be seen way off in the distance (dots on the field of white. The air is so clear you can see further than I have ever experienced. You can also see parts of the ice runway that was being cleared. The plane cannot use brakes on the ice so it has to be long, and free of drifts, 36-72 hours are required to clear it depending on wind etc.
You can also see some of the undulating waves of ice. These are created be the high winds sweeping off the mountains. The ice adds layers every year. It is difficult to put these to scale, but take my word for it, they are intimidating to see, really makes me realize just how puny we are.
Really wish I had skis or a sled when I was up here, could have taken a ride down and saved an hour of walking.
Sat on top for a while and pondered life.... result, life is good.
