Thursday, 8 May 2008
Since sastrugi entered my conciousness nearly three weeks ago I have been living in fear! Most of what we are doing is somewhat in our control. We can train for fitness, practice putting up the tent fast, dress for the environment and test our gear. But the sastrugi is a complete unknown. And it is the unknown that is the source of the fear…
Sastrugi will be part of the routine in the South Pole and I have no idea what it is like. Ice waves, frozen snow carved into ridges by the wind – these are just words on a page. Even getting detailed descriptions of sastrugi from experienced adventurers such as Doug Stoup of www.iceaxe.tv cannot really tell me what it is going to be like. I just have to get onto skis and start moving over this sastrugi stuff.
But as summer approaches in the northern hemi-sphere it has been a bit of a challenge to find the correct terrain before the snow melts. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been in search of someone who knows what Antarctica sastrugi is like and where we can find it. That person is Norwegian, Inge Solheim. So, I am travelling to Norway next week with Micheal O’Connell to meet Inge and get training on the snow. Our plan is to get a couple of days of cross-country skiing on 14th and 15th May before heading into the mountains from 16th to 18th May.
The big reason for this fixation with sastrugi is that the South Pole race rules dictate that all competitors carry exactly the same kit and food. Each of the teams will only have enough food for 44 days. Some of those days we’ll be acclimatising, some we’ll be stuck in our tents in blizards and some we’ll be waiting to fly out of the South Pole at the end of a successful race hopefully! Therefore, I must be able to move at a pace that allows us to move at around 30 kms to 45 kms per day or 2 kms per hour. This sounds incredibly slow but considering the punishing sastrugi, altitude, freezing temperatures, body weight depletion and extended timeframe I suspect it won’t feel that slow. In addition, I have moved slower than 2 kms per hour in mountains where other people can jump and hop over boulders.
Its the unknown that’s the big worry at the moment and that’s why we’re going to Norway…
