Polar Explorer Eric Larsen
Day 18: Chips
Eric Larsen
29 May 2018 | Greenland
One of the popular conversation topics at break times has been the amount of Pringles that each of us has left.

Diogo and Dean are down to a tube and a half. Kat has two and I have three tubes left.

A little back story. To ski across the Greenland ice cap, we are pulling everything in lightweight sleds - 26 days of food, fuel and gear. Obviously, we want things to be as light as possible- especially our food. But we also need enough calories to sustain our daily efforts (for this trip around 5000). Freeze dried meals, super charged oatmeal, Skratch energy bars, chocolate, salami, cheese, soup... we eat basically the same thing every day (and enjoy it).

But the highlight has to be the salty snack of Pringles when we get in the tent each night. On polar expeditions, I choose Pringles because they stay fairly intact in the sled (surprisingly and somehow) and you can find them all over the world. Not a lot of nutritional value of course, but for crunch power and tasty satisfaction, they're worth it.

All of our food is portioned or cut up. Mostly so that we can have the proper amount of calories each day but also so that we can eat it easily and / or when it's frozen. The only exception to this is Pringles. Therefore, it takes a bit of self control to not chow through an entire tube each night. They're so good and we are generally fairly hungry.

Diogo joked he was going to start a Pringles Anonymous group.

'Hi my name is Diogo,' he said at one break. 'And I've been addicted to Pringles for 18 days.' We all laughed hysterically.

It has snowed for the past two nights - not a lot - but enough to cover all the wind pack with four or five inches of soft sled grabbing snow and we crawled along for the entire day feeling the strain of our harnesses with every step. There was no wind so we stripped down to base layers and baseball caps despite the single digit temperatures.

We have also reached the highest point of the ice cap, roughly 8,150 feet, and are now skiing down hill although the soft snow and no amount of Pringles makes it feel otherwise.
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