The Basque team : Not much wind gives poor progression
Published on 19.12.2011 - TransAntartika 2011
Still 800 km to reach the South Pole
© Expedition website
Despite the poor wind conditions, the Basque trio has still a lot to do : 800 km to reach SP (latest news on 17 December) and 1.200 to reach Union Glacier ALE base camp.
If we take into account the straight facts of the progression, the result doesn't seem to be so bad : 344 km done between 14 and 17 December (day 32 of the expedition), which gives an average of 86 km a day. The trio has still 800 km to go to reach the South Pole and another 1.200 km to reach Union Glacier ALE base camp.
But the Basque trio is not happy wirth these figures. on 14 December, Juna Vallejo gives his overall impression : "... It would be a lie to say that everything in our expedition is going exactly as it was planned for several months back at home, although I suppose that most of these expeditions ends up in a way quite different from that initially thought. The truth is that we had had been faced to a range of difficulties that have changed significantly the course of our expedition. The most serious one (and about chich we had been warned many times) is these sastrugis field that had prevented us to go at the speed we hoped for. First because of the heavy weight of our sledges (170 kg when we left Novolazarevskaya) and also because -when negociating these horrid sastrugis fields- we were constantly afraid to damage our sledges or to break a leg. And this slowed us a lot especially in the early stages of the journey. ..."
That said -coming back to the figures- they have done already 1.356 km since they left Novolazarevskaya on 16 November. That gives an average of 43.7 km per day.
