Organisers of Prince Harry's race to the South Pole have said their decision to suspend the event and turn it into a group challenge was the right choice.
The competitive element of the Walking With The Wounded expedition was stopped due to safety reasons over the weekend after some of the adventurers, who include injured servicemen and women, became very tired after encountering difficult terrain.
Harry had started off on the gruelling charity trek with a team of wounded UK troops, including Scots Sergeant Duncan Slater, competing against groups from the US and the Commonwealth in an expedition organised by the charity Walking With The Wounded.
But now the three teams have banded together and organisers hope everyone can reach their goal by the end of the week.
The adventurers returned to the ice yesterday and expedition manager Victoria Nicholson said the change from competition to joint effort had boosted morale.
She said: "The morale in camp is totally different. People have the energy to look after themselves in the evenings, now that all the teams are camping together.
"It's totally changed the atmosphere of the whole expedition. We have definitely made the right decision and we are delighted that we took the decision when we did."
She added: "People were pushing themselves just too hard. It was always a healthy sense of competition between the teams. The pressure on the expedition and the medical teams and the individuals themselves was just getting too strong."
In total, 12 injured service personnel who have overcome life-changing injuries are taking part. They have tackled challenging training programmes to prepare themselves for the conditions in Antarctica.
Trekking nine to 12 miles a day, the teams will have to endure temperatures as low as minus 45C and 50mph winds as they pull their 70kg sleds, towards the southernmost point on the globe.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article