The most incredible flight took us from
Chile to Patriot Hills on Antarctica a distance of 3000km. From the ‘bomb’ sighting windows on the underbelly of the plane, the Antarctic peninsula looked like we were flying on a different planet. Our Russian pilots were very professional and put us down safely on the 3km blue ice runway in conditions most would consider unsafe.
We sorted our gear yet again, then made camp. During the night we had some of the worst katabatic winds Patriot Hills has ever seen. Gusts of over 60knts destroyed Joel’s tent, a member of the South African team (ours have performed brilliantly). The winds continued through all of the day and so all flights to our start point, Hercules Inlet were postponed. This gave us a day to sleep, relaxation, practice our camp craft and mingle with the other teams. Temperature here is about -15c don’t want to think what the windchill is.
Woke up this morning to blue sky, moderate winds, Mike Sharp said our flight to the start point would be at 11:00am, we were the 1st expedition to the inlet. The flight in the small ski equipped Twin Otter was exhilarating and after 5 attempts at landing we were safely down. The snow is very wind blown here and so the amazing Canadian pilots would just barely touch down and if the snow was too rough, they would throttle up and find somewhere else to land. A quick goodbye and the plane was gone and suddenly we had started our long walk to the pole, we had arrived at Hercules Inlet on the edge of the continent, 1100km to go.
