Making good progress, despite the wind!
Published on 25.11.2007 - General Info
Now that they have left Hercules Inlet, Adrian Hayes and his companions (including Evelyn Binsack from Switzerland and Max Chaya from Lebanon) are now on their 13th day out on the Antarctic icecap. So far, so good...
After arriving at Patriot Hills on Saturday 10th November, the ANI South Pole Quest 2007/08 team flew on to Hercules Inlet two days later, taking advantage of a windless day. From there, they quickly got underway, each pulling a sledge weighing approximately 115 kg. Their original plan had been to take fuel and food to last 60 days, with a scheduled journey time of 55 days. The distance between Hercules Inlet and the American Amundsen-Scott base is 1130 km.
But after listening to the advice of the old supply hands at Patriot Hills (ALE, Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions), they cut back on this estimate to 52 days of fuel and a total journey time of 50 days. This had the effect of lightening the sledges significantly, but meant they could only take 5 days to cover one degree of latitude (111 km).
For the time being, 12 days into their trek, they are keeping to schedule. In fact, they have just crossed latitude 82 (Friday 23rd November) and have already covered 124 nautical miles or 229.6 km.
They achieved this even though they have been walking into the teeth of the wind, which was against them for the first 11 days. On this topic Adrian wrote: "While altitude is difficulty number one when attempting Everest, the main obstacle in the Arctic is the freezing cold, with the wind taking the skin off the palm of your hand! The wind has blown mercilessly, roaring across the ice like a plane landing on a runway... There's never a let-up in this blizzard. No rest, either (at least not in recent days) and especially nowhere to shelter. The wind hits you from the moment you put a foot outside your tent in the morning until you crawl back into your tent ten hours later, battered by the endless gusts. And I can tell you that minus 20°C in these conditions gets very cold indeed! The wind is dangerous in another way, too: drop a glove, wind-break, hat "anything" even for a second, and it flies off at top speed to Argentina...!!! All you can do when that happens is try and close every possible opening in your clothes and hunker down in your little world of fur until the end of the day. Even when we take a break, it's absolutely impossible for you to hear what the person next to you is trying to say, no matter how close he or she gets to your ear..."
