Few people on the ice this year
Published on 04.11.2010 - General Info
The special vehicle of the Moon-Regan TransAntarctic Expedition
© Moon Regan Expedition's website
So far two major expeditions go to Antarctica this winter. One (the Fuchs Foundation) with teachers who want to develop their own sense of teaching, the other (The Moon Regan TransAntarctic Expedition) with special vehicles that are going to cross the entire 6th Continent on wheels.
Is it the heavy cost of these adventures combined with the global economic situation? Is there now a certain disinterest among the polar gentry for that so remote and so mysterious continent? Is it quite simply a natural downward curve as there always is in adventures of this kind? It’s hard to say. But the fact is that, this year, the explorers, candidate explorers or even pseudo-explorers seem to have somewhat forsaken the southern continent’s icy sirens.
Until now, we can indeed count – apart from the commercial groups that will undoubtedly be pointing their noses on their arrival at Patriot Hills - only two major expeditions. The pros of the Fuchs Foundation who are having their third polar experience (not the same individuals obviously as for the two previous editions) and who are visiting another neck of the Ellsworth Mountains for exercising their talents and conducting their research experiments. And the motorised expedition of the Andrew Regan/Andrew Moon team, who will be attempting to cross the 6th Continent (Patriot Hills - > MacMurdo), trying to break a speed record on wheels and to bring to polar science another means of travelling on the ice, lighter and less energy-consuming than the traditional DC3 and the Twin Otters.
Waiting for the high season of 2011-2012
As a preamble to this Antarctic season, it should be noted that, although the expeditions are few and far between this year, this is also perhaps in preparation for a 2011-2012 season which, owing to the fact that it will be duly celebrating the centenary of the conquest of the South Pole (the extraordinary epic of the race to the Pole between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott), will be packed with events of every hue.
Let us lastly announce to our faithful visitors that, next spring, we will be taking an interest once again in the expeditions that will have chosen Greenland as their adventure playground; among them in particular, we will be following the original course of a French sloop 'Avannaq' (Vent du Nord) which will be setting out from Granville (Normandy) for the Northwest of Greenland (Uummannaq). Two sailors on board: a Frenchman (Pierre Auzias, see his interview in the link on The Avannaq) and an Inuit (Pavia Nielsen). To some extent a cultural dialogue and another way of approaching a large island that is slowly moving towards its independence.
