Mornings are especially difficult for me. Its not just here, they've always been hard. For some reason, it takes about three hours of skiing before I feel like I can actually make it through the day.

Luckily Ryan takes the first shift.

Still, struggling to put one foot in front of the other today, tucked behind my goggles and fur ruff, I was left to contemplate the 'why's' of my life. Most specially, why I was here. Surely, I've seen more than enough of the Arctic Ocean in my two expeditions here.

The explanation is much longer than I want to get into right here and now and, I'm not going to lie to you, I am seriously questioning my decision making process; however, this place and this type of adventure is one of the most unique in the world. I feel it is important to tell the story of this place before it forever changes.

The morning progressed normally and we had a nice Stanley soup break behind a huge blue chunk of ice with white snow on top - it looked like a layer cake.

Then a lead, too thin to cross. Huge spanning east and west as far as we could see. We veered west hoping to get around but massive blocks of ice, rubble, slabs extended as far as we could see.

What do you do when life gives you two bad choices? Put on our MSR snowshoes and muscle our way through. Eventually, we made our way to the edge of the lead where it still looked thin. So we made the decision to put on the dry suits and bear crawl across. Near the far shore the ice got thinner and we swam a 10 foot wide gap.

We then traveled (and are camped in the middle of) a maze of leads and small pans. Hardly the mile-making end of the day we were hoping for.

Distance traveled: 9.218 nautical miles

Image: Ryan swimming a small lead.