Basque trio is forced to reduce speed…
Published on 13.12.2011 - TransAntartika 2011
The terrain is too bumpy to go fast
© Expedition website
The Basque trio is starting to fly over the ice (133 km on 11 December). But due to dangerous sastrugis fields, they are obliged to reduce their speed.
On 11 December, the day 25 of their expedition, Alberto Iñurrategi, Juan Vallego Llanos and Mikel Zabalza had reached the position 78° 24' S / 13° 10 E.
Three days before, they had almost flew over the ice adding 133 km on their counter at the end of the day. On Friday, they had done another great distance -124 km- and on 10 December (Saturday), 86 km. Quite a good progression.
But according what they have writtent on their website, they could have gone much faster. During their kiteskiing, they encountered endless seas of sastrugis as they described it. Ice walls of more than one meter high sometimes, mazes of ice waves, gigantic ice ruts, through which their were obliged to ski. Instead of searching the speed together with distances before all, they decided to take the things with extreme caution, and hence slow don the pace.
According to their calculations, they have another 1.270 km to go to reach South Pole.
