Basque trio is forced to reduce speed…

Published on 13.12.2011 - TransAntartika 2011

The terrain is too bumpy to go fast

The terrain is too bumpy to go fast

© Expedition website

The Basque trio is starting to fly over the ice (133 km on 11 December). But due to dangerous sastrugis fields, they are obliged to reduce their speed.

On 11 December, the day 25 of their expedition, Alberto Iñurrategi, Juan Vallego Llanos and Mikel Zabalza had reached the position 78° 24' S / 13° 10 E.

Three days before, they had almost flew over the ice adding 133 km on their counter at the end of the day. On Friday, they had done another great distance -124 km- and on 10 December (Saturday), 86 km. Quite a good progression.

But according what they have writtent on their website, they could have gone much faster. During their kiteskiing, they encountered endless seas of sastrugis as they described it. Ice walls of more than one meter high sometimes, mazes of ice waves, gigantic ice ruts, through which their were obliged to ski. Instead of searching the speed together with distances before all, they decided to take the things with extreme caution, and hence slow don the pace.

According to their calculations, they have another 1.270 km to go to reach South Pole.

 

 

Contact us

Please feel free to drop us a mail with your comments and suggestions.


Focus on

Expedition website

The Coldest Journey (Sir Ranulph Fiennes & Team)

Antarctic 2012-2013 - ongoing

25.10.2012 -

Sir Ranulph Fiennes is back in the Antarctic for a world first. He will lead a team of explorers to conquer…



Support the IPF

Support us

All donations to the IPF are tax deductible.

Donations can be made by various means, depending if they are made by a company or by individuals.

Support Us


Polar Explorers

3 Random Polar Explorers from our directory. More inside!

Browse all explorers


Keep in Touch

RSS Feeds

Subscribe to our RSS feeds to be warned in real time when the website is updated.