Will Farmer be in the Antarctic in time ?
Published on 12.12.2011 - Pole to Pole Run
The news coming from South America are not around much these last days. A question remains : will Farmer be in time to continue his amazing adventure until the SP ?
Although the latest Twitter-news received dates back to 8 December, we can be sure that Pat Farmer is today still on a 90 km per day pace. Extraordinary feat and probably unique performance of course.
But this ultramarathon runner still has a lot do to. Between Santiago (Chile) he has probably reached by now or even gone past and Ushuaia (he supposed to reach) according to the initial project), there are 2.379 km -and there are 2.189 km until Punta Arenas.
Normally, his program foresees that he should reach Ushuaia first, before flying back to Punta Arenas, where he has to take an Illyoushine flight to Union Glacier ALE base camp in Antarctica.
The first element to take into account is the fact he still has to run let's say 2.189 km ; he needs 24 days at least to cover that distance, at the pace he is now on (90 km per day). So he won't reach Punta airport before 5 January. If ever he does not have to wait for a favorable weather window, he could start his journey through Antarctica at Hercules Inlet on 7 January.
The second element is that this year ALE has announced that the last flight out of Union Glacier base camp would be on 26 January. Farmer should then arrive at the SP on 25 January.
Result : this leaves 18 days to Pat Farmer to cover the 1.130 km from Hercules Inlet until the SP.
And yet, the world record Hercules Inlet > SP is held by Norwegian Christian Eide (he travelled solo, unassisted and unsupported) in 24 days 41 hours and 13 minutes, beating the last record set by Todd Carmichael by more than 15 days! This record has been set on 13 January 2011. He had started his trek at Hercules Inlet on 20 December.
Will Farmer do the same as Nilson (see our last coverage) and cut his South America itinerary to fly sooner to the Antarctic ? The answer in a few days, for sure.
