Archive for the ‘Antarctica 2011 Legacy Crossing’ Category

November 15, 2011

S71°39.281 E010°44.375

Elevation 5890 ft

My head is down as I walk, looking up only periodically to set a path amidst the mounds and mini canyons that make up the broken up surface of the ice. The sky is covered in white clouds and the wind is hissing. Only when I look down do the hood and fur ruff of my jacket spare me the onslaught of cold head winds. It is cold, and the grip on my poles stiffens. The harness cuts at my shoulders and waist from the heavy sledge behind me. Moving uphill, the cargo feels twice its weight. One hundred feet ahead, I can make out, one more time, the clear fault line of a crevasse. The snow bridge depression that covers it fading to the blowing snow. We are in the middle of a crevasse field. I am cold. But stopping means it will be colder still. I look towards Eric. In the drifting snow, his legs and sledge all but disappear, as if erased from the landscape, his silhouette dwarfed by the looming hill we are ascending. Underfoot, I hear the snow crack from my weight. I feel the floor below me shift, and before I realize what happened, it drops, first a few feet at an angle thrusting me forward, and then collapses in fragments swallowing me down. Below, the crack plunges thirty or fifty feet into what looks like a dark abyss. I can barely make out the green iridescence of the frozen walls on each side of me as the trace of my pulk slams me into one of them. The free fall has stopped but my ski twists and comes off my boot, falling into the darkness below. Above, my pulk is jammed; I am suspended in mid air. And I then wake up.

A wind storm lashed at the tent all night long. The snow drift was hissing at the fabric like an angry cat stalking its prey’s desperate shelter. By mid morning, the forty knot gusts had come down by half. The sky was partly cloudy, and the temperature noticeably cooler. Today would have been a nice rest day, but given the two forced on us this week, we can not afford it. And ahead laid that hill.

We are trying to find a way up between mountain paths an crevasse field, an the best we could come up with is a nasty grade of a hill. With today’s head winds and frigid weather, this proved every bit as hellish as we anticipated. “Hell of a hill,” is all I muttered on our various breaks. “Yep,” is what invariably came back, “this sucks”. My ribs make difficult the use of my right arm to lean on the pole. The imbalance makes the left arm work twice as hard but half as efficient. Halfway through our short day, Eric took on the two extra sledges I am towing. With the wind and extra elevation, we feel for the first time the Antarctica bite at around 35C below. The sweat of my hands turns cold, and I have trouble regaining feeling in my fingers. The more we ascend, the more we run into slippery patches of blue ice. After only four and a half hours, we are spent. It is five thirty PM and we have merely covered 3.9 kilometers but gained 400 feet in elevation. Inside the tent it takes me an hour to regain warmth in my hands. Outside the wind is still at it. Too many crevasses to be kiting. Perhaps tomorrow….

November 14, 2011

S71°37.497′ E010°39.330′

Elevation 5488 ft

Today started well enough considering it is shower day! Every five days, I get to use an anti bacterial wipe for a top to bottom scrub down. From inside the nylon area eight feet by four where we spend more than 60% of our time, this is in fact luxurious. The climate is very dry in Antarctica–contrary to the Arctic sea ice–which means that when the sun is high in the sky, the greenhouse effect raises the temperature inside enough to be shirtless. Not so in the evening when it plummets to more or less what is outside; around 25C below these days. The sun sets for less than three hours where we are, at this time of year. This means it dips below the horizon but the sky never goes dark; we are effectively in twenty four hour daylight. But the angle of the sun determines its warmth. Without cloud cover, the cold sets in around 5 PM; the tent begins to heat around 6AM. The night is spent in full face mask and eye cover.

Whatever I come back as if there is another life, please let it not be a mule! These animals do not get the credit they deserve, spending a life hauling things. By the time the game is up for them I can imagine how relieved they must be–probably coming back as a a coconut tree on a beach somewhere. Because hauling is the pits. Today saw much of it as we are still gaining elevation. And I’ll admit, I did ask myself a few times: “Wait, I’m paying for this?!” The views, however, are extraordinary. Nowhere have I seen vertical sheer rock faces in such abundance. Cut against the sky in the afternoon haze, they look like Japanese water colors.

My ribs are clicking–two of them. Which is a bit of a psychological headfuck. Mostly I try to ignore them, while administering myself an anti inflammatory every four hours while on the trail. Nothing inside the tent or I’ll run out. I am reminded of the great climber Voytek Kurtyka’s quote:”Mountain climbing is the art of suffering”. The same can be said about polar traveling. Luckily, I feel an angel over my shoulder, always with me.

We kited for a slow hour gaining four kilometers until the wind died, and spent the rest of the day swearing like a mule. We made 10.84 kilometers.

November 13, 2011

71.3235S, 10.4474E

Yesterday was spent resting and sowing. With each move a painful struggle, my ribs have given me plenty to contemplate. It is difficult to consider 75 more days of traveling–virtually the entire trip. I spent the night examining every scenario ahead, visiting the dark, disappointing place of defeat, only to swing back up the stubborn spine of determination. The night was cold, but cuccooned deep in my sleeping bag, I could not help but wallow in the irony of being out here, after all the months of minute planning, preparation and training, and having the experience jeopardized by the more uninspired type of discomfort: the ribs!

I visualized the squeezing action of the harness, the bumpy roughness of the terrain, and wondered how I would endure. Moments later, my thoughts would jolt back to the unique privilege of being out here, laying eyes on a world that so few would know. And my mind was made up. A day at a time. A foot. A mile. And as I watched the steam explode out of my nose, I prepared for the kind of experience I knew would define the trip. Pain, too, as with all things, shall come to pass…

On behalf of Sebastian, I would like to extend a very special thank you to the following supporters. It’s because of their generous pledges to our Kickstarter campaign we were able to not only meet our goal, but to exceed it by more than $1,500!!

TO:
Simone Walther
Isaiah Martin
Regan Mahoney
Paige Zangrillo
Cynthia Reed
Ana Hooker
Brian Culwell
Alex May
Amir Gheissari
Alexandra Shaw
Shawn Gold
Ariel Barkai
Lauren Burnhill
Kevin W. McNeely
Charlotte Paulson
Veronique Pittman
Katrin Hannan-Bobe
David Heisler
Julie Schaffner
Matt Petersen
Martino Scabbia Guerrini
Leila Amirsadeghi
Jeff Altman
Hugh Garry
Alice Ericsson
Cecile Bazelon

It’s tremendously inspiring to know that there are generous supporters interested in this epic, and historical expedition. Your pledges will be going directly to the costs associated with the filming aspect of the yet to be titled, Antarctica 2011/2012 Legacy Crossing film project. Thank you!

As Sebastian would say;
See ya on the other side!

Jessica Ceballos
(on behalf of Sebastian Copeland)

November 12, 2011
S71°32.357 E010°44.749

Elevation 5166 ft

Hard to believe we set off a week ago, already. With barely 74 kilometers covered since, we have not made a dent into the 4000 planned. No surprise here, as I had projected for two weeks to get up on the plateau. We are within the margins.

The day started still as a corpse. Not so bad to perform the daily morning ritual outside of the tent. And a better view for it would be hard to ask for! Over breakfast, the familiar flapping of the tent’s fabric suggested, timidly at first, that today might not be all hauling after all. It may as well have been. We rigged our 13 meter Frenzy’s but no sooner had we began ascending the next hill that the wind turned to a whimper, and the surface drew flashbacks of the first days. A messed up terrain of mounds and sastrugi tightly weaved together giving the sledges every opportunity to jam and stall the progress. We were inching along, diving the kites into figure eight’s to gain a foot or two. We switched to the big Yakuza’s and their 75 meters of line. Getting them up was a one shot deal, as the lines were begging to get stuck into the jagged icy chard’s. In the end, the Yak’s were too powerful for this surface and we switched again to the 13’s, forcing on us the tedious task of winding those endless lines.

The wind was light and fluky, and we were sweating bullets to gain ground. And that is when it happened. There is an irrational, yet universal tendency, when sustaining an injury, to wish you could simply be brought back to the moment preceding it in order to avert the event. In this case, however, I am not entirely sure what and when it happened. But with each pull of the kite, countered by the sledges bucking me backwards, my right side suddenly felt as though a dagger were jammed between the rib cage. The harness gets pulled in both direction simultaneously every time I dive the kite. The result is a squeeze which is fair game under normal play, but when the ribs are bruised is like getting kicked repetitively in the sour spot. I could hardly breath. With that, we set up camp to appraise the damage. Hard to say other than whatever it is is no fun. We had covered 12.5 kilometers of tough terrain.

Today, Sunday, we opted to take the day off and give my ribs a chance to rest. I spent the afternoon sowing straps onto my waist harness in an attempt to turn it into a seat harness… Tomorrow I will try the pain killers off the first aid kit, making sure not to over do it: we have over 70 days left and I doubt this new surprise will leave me anytime soon. Eric will take the secondary sledges for now, and on we go.

November 11, 2011

S71°25.974′ E010°51.487′

Elevation 4713 ft

After yesterday’s tense and stationary anti-climax, the early morning was marked by the gentle but persistent flapping of the tent. We filled up on a thick, plaster tasting bowl of oat meal. I spent some time fixing wires one of the solar panels, and soon the wind grew noticeably stronger: 16 knots from the east; good direction for us. We packed the camp and set our 9 meter kites. The sun was bright, without a cloud in the sky. The air was crisp and the surface much friendlier than the last weeks. We quickly moved up a few hundred feet in elevation. It is hard to describe the feeling of joy that each foot of ground covered with the force of the wind brings, in contrast to the back breaking effort of pulling upwards. Like someone said: even convicts don’t work that hard! Moving up revealed more jagged peaks of the mountain chain separating us from the plateau. The view was magnificent. In the distance, breaking from the ice sheet, sheer faces projecting vertically to the heavens, and a climber’s frozen paradise. The wind was pulling back and flying became a lot of work. We switched to the 13’s and still the wind was weakening. Speed dropped progressively to a crawl, while the direction turn to downwind. A lot of effort went into moving the kite in figure eight’s to haul the heavy cargo. But–you guessed it–it still beat pulling! Eventually, and without warning, the wind just shut off. The kite slowly drifted down, and delicately landed before crumpling like a limp jimmy hat! That was it for the day. It was 5 PM and we had covered 43.03 kilometers and beginning to cover some ground. Our camp site is framed by those mountains on both sides, and an infinite sea of ice on the others. The sun was still high, the air still, and the epic views are about as good as we’ll get them.

Today is our friend Kyle’s One Day On Earth 11.11.11 celebration. In honor of his effort, I took today’s image (unfortunately I can only display the one taken with the crappy upload camera). You’ll have to wait for the good one at the end of this trip!

Happy one day on Earth, everybody!

November 10, 2011

Same position as yesterday

After attempting to repair the ski, I do not feel confident that the fix job can sustain another 4000 kilometers of hard ice and sastrugi at speed. With barely 30 kilometers separating us from the station, the only option is to go get it there. One of us will leave with a light pack and come back tomorrow. After some hesitation, due to their schedule, Andrei at the base, is kind enough to drive the ski about eight kilometers from where we are. I cannot say enough to thank him and his team for their support. Eric offers to ski that distance which is now negligible. The air is dead still, the sun shinning and the temperature very moderate at around minus 15C. As I sit alone in the tent, at the coastal edge of Antarctica, I contemplate the nature of doubt, failure, and introspective questioning. Failure is the blood relative of all successes. It looms along side the dreams and accomplishment. In this type of mission, it is with you with each challenge met–sometimes with each step–in spite of the forceful reneging of its very existence. Stubbornness is the spirit of expeditions. Failure is not an option, we say; until it is the only option. With so much planning, anticipating and double checking, we have had two major technical failures in our first five days–one of our satellite phones and the ski–each of which would have cost us the expedition had they happened, say, a week from now. I had opted to keep the skis I had used on Greenland since they barely had one season on them–about thirty days of kiting–and the wear was not substantial. I chose the tested ski over risking a surprise with a new one. Admittedly, a plant into sastrugi with 400 pounds in tow nets tremendous stress on the gear. Given the ice surface out here, this is something we will need to be extra careful about.

Breakdowns are commonplace on this type of trip. Part of the appeal is to find solutions with the materials on hand. But both of these could have been crippling. I am troubled by choices that I made, in spite of lessons that I already knew, but was not diligent enough to impose. Praying that this puts an end to our misfortunes, those simple lessons are these:
1. Both team members must be on the same equipment. One spare serves both.
2. Don’t compromise when your gut tells you otherwise
3. Just about everything should be new, save the boots that need be broken in.

Eighty to ninety days in an environment as harsh as this does not afford to cut corners.
Eric returns with the one ski. The air is dead still. It is 5PM and no traveling will be done today. I mount the binding on the new ski as the temperature drops inside the tent. Failure will not be with us tomorrow.

November 9, 2011
S71°03.916′ E011°13.219′

Elevation 3763ft

From inside the tent, the flapping of the fabric in strong wind has the sound of banging corrugated iron sheets. That is what most of last night was like. By morning, while the wind had reversed direction from yesterday–it now blew from the east–it still had good enough an angle to pull out the kites. We flew the nine meter frenzy’s for about an hour, but the wind was weakening which made it painfully slow and a lot of work. We were sweating bullets trying to move the sledges over the rough terrain. Eventually, I came to a stand still. The kite was flying but not enough power to haul. We switched to thirteen meters, and even that for a while was slow moving. But then it picked up a bit and soon the hard work lessened to a reasonable pull. The surface is still very rough and twice, my ski stuck into a sastrugi and had me do a face plant–the equivalent of a yard sale! However, we were moving, and the landscape was noticeably changing. As we rose in elevation, a mountain range revealed itself to the south east, superb, rising out of the ice, with sharp, rugged peaks. This is the northern range of Queen Maud Land. In spite of the slow speed, within two hours we had already doubled our daily average. Ahead stood a significant crevasse area. The depressions showed cracks large enough to swallow a house.

We were struggling to work our way up a hill, and that is when it happened: after taking a fall from looping the kite in an attempt to generate power to move the sledges, I noticed that one of my skis did not look right: the ski was delaminating under foot! With this our first day of kiting, this could have catastrophic consequences to the expedition. Needless to say we had to stop and set up camp to assess our options. In the tent, I drilled holes through the ski, and will screw in the de-lamed surface tomorrow morning after applying epoxy and hope for the best. Right now, it is too cold in the tent to do anything further. I have serious concerns. I had brought a spare ski with me, but in a compromise with Eric, we opted to leave it at the station to cut on weight. That decision could be crippling. We traveled 14 kilometers today for a total of 31.43 km…

November 8, 2011

S70°57.857′ E011°27.003′

Elevation 3338ft

We woke up to absolute stillness, and the sun was again baking the inside of the tent. Upon stepping outside, the day’s temperature and conditions stood in stark contrast to yesterday’s: no a cloud in the sky and this again promised to be T-shirt weather (yesterday was about 35 below with the wind!).

Ahead of us stood the nasty hill that had stopped our day and was now looming. The fresh look of the morning reconnects you with the positive outlook that got you here in the first place. And then reality sets in again! The grade was nasty–around 25%–and the effort intense. Luckily, the sastrugi was more moderate on the hillside. We weaved away from the more obvious crevasses and selected carefully the bridges that we crossed. All these crevasses are hidden by ice cover–bridges–and would barely be noticeable but for the slight depression in the terrain. We managed 200 feet of rise in the first hour; 100 in the second. By then we reached a first plateau. There was a slight breeze coming in from the west. Enough to fly the big kite? Given the brutal workout of the morning, it did not take much arguing! We quickly switched to ski boots, pulled the kites out and proceeded to unwind the 75 meters of lines. Mine had slight tangles and took me about 20 minutes to manage. Luckily, it wasn’t too cold and I could worked mostly without gloves. When done, however, I looked over at Eric who was handling what amounted to a fishing net’s worth of knotted mess! When the kite lifted in a jerk, he had accidentally released a whole section of line from the quick winding tools I had custom made. We spent the next two hours finding a way through that mess. Untangling such a pile of lines is like an endless series of little projects that don’t seem to add up to much except, little by little, we got to the end of it. By then, we both attempted to fly the kites. I managed about 20 feet after running like a convict to get it up in the air and flying. The wind had died. Eric did not even get his skis on. Today was a lot of work, with little to show for. But we did manage that hill… We covered a meager 1.46 miles. We haven’t even gotten started!

November 7,2011

S70°56.597 E011°26.795

Elevation 3002 ft

It is hard to rationalize why individuals feel the need to submit themselves to some wretched feats of torture for the mere objective of reaching a goal. Yet this is a characteristic deeply ingrained in the human psyche, as universal and timeless as existence itself. To prove something; to stand out; those are the more obvious reasons but they don’t tell the whole story. It would be too simple, besides, there are many ways to stand out, and if this were the reason, more people would be doing it. In fact, there is a gene that activates at the sight of a mountain peak and dictates the will to climb it; or a frozen body of water and suggests swimming across it. In this case, something undefined allowed the thought of crossing one of the more inhospitable region on earth germinate in our mind and join the company of other crazies for whom this seemed to be a perfectly sound idea. It isn’t. And today illustrated why. In stark contrast to yesterday, we woke up to howling winds lashing at the tent making a move out of the reasonably comfortable den sound utterly uncivilized. But the inescapable truth about this type of effort is that the miles don’t cover themselves; and waiting only means more work to follow. Getting up to the plateau with 400 pounds in tow is to enter a world of pain. The winds which reached forty miles per hour today ad a frosty touch to the set up. But it was the surface that we encountered in the second half of our six hour venture–about four and a half of which spent walking–that could break your spirit were it not for the hard nose stubbornness required in this type of effort! For once, this plays to one’s advantage…

The sastrugi was so tightly weaved together that for the last two hours of our traveling day, virtually every step was a battle. Each foot of distance won with back breaking effort, motivated simply by the will to put one foot in front of the other. The sledges locked into every single depression, often both at a time. It seemed absurd. Occasionally I would look towards Eric and see him crawling on his knees to get past a one to two foot section. In spite of the absurd nature of our situation, I could not help but be awed by the visual context of the snow drift backlit by the sun’s low angle, cutting a silhouette of his body, amidst the sound and the furry of this wild environment. The battery on my camera had just given up, and I was too cold to dig up for a replacement. Another one that will live only in my memory–sadly. The curse of the image hunter.

We pushed for 30 minutes beyond yesterday’s time, and set up camp as the sun set behind the hill we will have to climb tomorrow. It is 8:00PM, and the sun will rise again in three and a half hours.We have covered 4.2 miles.