PUNTA ARENAS, Chile — Globe and Mail Update Published on Saturday, Nov. 29, 2008 12:05AM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 9:19PM EDT
It's a bit frantic at the moment. South Pole Quest team members Ray Zahab, Richard Weber and myself are on round-the-clock notice. When the call comes, we'll have only 45 minutes to get ready before we must depart.
All of our equipment has been handed over to Antarctic Logistics, which is taking us the 3,200 kilometres across the Drake Passage to its base camp at Patriot Hills in the Ellesmere Mountains. Now, we sit here with only the clothes on our backs and the kit we'll need when we land in the cold. In the past two years, only one scheduled flight from Punta Arenas to the blue-ice runway at Patriot Hills has left on time. We've been told we may have to wait two weeks.
The reality of Antarctic air travel is one of opportunity: You fly when you can. The weather on the continent is unpredictable in the extreme with high winds and frigid temperatures being the norm. Landing an aircraft under such conditions can be tricky at the best of times, but having to do so on the ice of a remote, windswept glacier is another thing altogether.
The technical nature of the landing requires using a special wide-bodied aircraft called an Ilyushin 76 – a mammoth Soviet-era air freighter capable of landing on short, unprepared airstrips in atrocious weather. Our journey will take almost five hours, which we will spend huddled in the cargo hold. Although it lacks comfort, the flight is one of the more expensive ones on Earth.
Once we arrive, the team will undertake a four-day training expedition to get used to hauling 80-kilogram sleds for long hours in cold weather. It's essential that we test our equipment and work out the kinks because, once we set out for the pole, we will be completely self-reliant. When the time comes, a Twin Otter aircraft stationed at Patriot Hills will fly us down to Hercules Inlet and the start of the expedition.
Other expeditions are already on the ice, and their dispatches make it hard to be patient. But if all goes as planned, we'll be embarking on our 1,130-kilometre unsupported trek on Monday. Meanwhile, we sit and wait.
Follow the team's progress at southpolequest.com
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