The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves. (Roald Dahl)

During almost every expedition, there comes a time when the very concept of time simply blurs into a distant memory. Dixie and Seb have begun to navigate in that vague space that eludes conventional sleep-wake-work-repeat cycles.

Yesterday, they progressed 14 kilometres without any significant kiting. It was a trudge fest!

Dixie wrote:

The only way to progress was to man-haul, but it does not serve the purpose of this snow-kite expedition whereby the distance is too long to cover in 33 days. But for the love of skiing in impressive surroundings, that is what we did.

Our determined duo wearily established camp yesterday evening at an altitude of 2.100 metres:

N 62° 27 23

W 47° 00 36

After only a few hours of rest, they awakened at 22:00 to the distinct sound of wind blowing outside of their relatively cozy tent in -24°C temperatures. Too good to resist, they dragged themselves into the frigid air and began to work the night shift amidst the uncertainty, as Dixie wrote, of not knowing if the luminosity of the setting sun would give us enough visibility throughout the night.

They were rewarded with the pure magic of a bright moon and a dramatic final sunset around midnight, which Dixie was able to capture for us in the above image, followed by a northern lights spectacle that eluded Dixie's camera due to a deep risk of frostbite on his fingers. No dark beasts or scary beings invaded their nocturnal paradise.

The result of their effort amounted to the quantitative measurement of one scant kilometre in distance gained, but the quality of nature's nighttime pageant was reward enough. They were granted visual memories to last a lifetime.

Today Seb and Dixie were heading back out again, full of motivation and genuinely happy to be there.

As always, you may follow their continued progress at Expeditions Unlimited with its LiveTracker feature.