Passage I

Antarctic Adventure

In February 2001, polar adventurers Liv Arnesen of Norway, and Ann Bancroft of Minnesota became the first women to climb and ski across the continent of Antarctica. The two former schoolteachers completed their 2,400-mile journey in 96 days.

[1] Months before their expedition, Arnesen and Bancroft began training by learning to ski behind sails—parachute-like devices that can pull a skier loaded with supplies about six miles per hour in steady winds. [2] On November 13, 2000, the pair boarded a small plane in South Africa and took a six-hour flight to Blue One Runway, it is a solid-ice airstrip on the Atlantic coast of Antarctica. [3] They set out soon after landing. [4] Hiking unassisted up the 10,000-foot-high Sygyn Glacier, and each woman pulled a sled that weighed more than 260 pounds. [5] The sleds carried all the women’s supplies, including a tent, a one-burner camp stove, diaries, two sets of skis, a laptop computer, and a snow shovel. (5)

By December 1, the adventurers had skied onto the Polar Plateau, stretching for 1,000 miles a high, frozen desert. The first week, strong winds had blew daily, and the team sailed 210 miles in just five days. For the next five days, accordingly, there was almost no wind, and the pair sailed only 34 miles. No matter how hard the women skied, daily mileage typically depended upon wind direction arid intensity.

On January 16, Arnesen and Bancroft reached the South Pole, where they visited with scientists and replenished their food supply. In order to safely descend the glacier’s sharp ice, the women attached mountaineer spikes to their boots. Two days later, they were again in bitter cold, and while climbing over a 10,200-foot-high glacier named Titan Dome. Fortunately, the wind was with them the final few miles, and during those last miles of the trip, they were able to ski off the continent itself and onto the Ross Ice Shelf. (13)

Although the adventurers had planned to continue across the ice shelf to McMurdo Station, 460 miles away on the Pacific coast, the winds did not cooperate. To avoid becoming stranded when winter arrived, the women called a ski plane prudently to airlift them to McMurdo.