Expedition Description

The South Polar region offers the serious adventurer an incomparable experience. Unlike skiing the pack ice that surrounds the North Pole, your journey to the South Pole is on firm ground so-to-speak (it's actually 2 mile thick ice), with no pressure ridges or open water leads to block your path. Yet Antarctica has challenges of her own, namely relentless prevailing winds that tend to blow against you as you ski towards the South Pole. Still, this journey across the Polar plateau is worth every drop of sweat.

Our journey begins in Punta Arenas, Chile where we'll meet and board a series of charter flights that take us to 88 or 89 degrees south (depending on which expedition you choose). From here we'll strap on our skis and sleds and make our way south to the Geographic South Pole.

For the next 100-200 kilometers (60-120 miles) you'll ski 6-10 hours a day over the smooth ice of the polar plateau. If you've already traveled to the North Pole, you'll notice an incredible difference. For those who are on their inagural Polar expedition, prepare to get hooked! Like all NWP expeditions, you'll be involved in almost every aspect of your expedition, from setting up camp, to cooking meals, to practicing your hand at Polar navigation (if you choose). Sleds will range in weight from 30-50 kilo (60-100 pounds) depending on if you are on the 1 or 2 degree expedition. Upon reaching the South Pole we'll have a grand celebration complete with champagne, a photo session to document your accomplishment, and the long-awaited call home. To end out journey we'll be shuttled back to Patriot Hills where we'll await our return flight to Punta Arenas and points north.

As with all of our other expeditions this is a "hands-on" experience. You'll be participating in all aspects of the expedition, including setting up camp, cooking, tracking our progress, etc. Give us a call and let us tell you more about what skills you should have prior to the expedition, and what skills we will be teaching you prior to our departure. Our shakedown trip is an ideal way to learn all the skills that are necessary for an expedition of this magnitude!

To ensure that you have the best possible experience, we'll help you with all aspects of your pre-expedition preparations, from choosing the right clothing to learning how to pack your sled.

Back to top

Expedition Itinerary

Depending on flight schedules, weather and other factors that are out of our control we may spend extra days in Patriot Hills before our return to Punta Arenas.

This itinerary is highly dependent on weather and group abilities and is subject to change. Contact us for a more detailed itinerary!
Back to top

Dates & Prices
View a "quick glance" of all our expeditions

(click here for a currency converter)

What's Included:

• Welcome reception in Punta Arenas
• All charter flights from Punta Arenas and return
• Guides
• Accommodations and meals in Antarctica for duration of expedition (as detailed - by the itinerary)
• Expedition patch
• South Pole celebration
• Framed certificate
• One "call home" (battery permitting)
• Baggage allowance up to 50lbs (22.5 kg)
  

What's Not Included:

• Round-trip transportation to Punta Arenas, Chile
• Meals and accommodations in Punta Arenas
• Personal clothing and accessories
• Trip cancellation and baggage insurance (mandatory)
• Medical/ evacuation insurance (mandatory)
• Excess baggage costs
• Additional phone calls from Antarctica
• Extended stay fees associated with weather delays.
  Back to top
  

Equipment

Upon registration, you will receive a comprehensive gear guide that explains the importance of each item as well as gear recommendations from our past participants.

• 1 personal pulk or sled (supplied by NWP)
• 1 pair skis and ski poles (supplied by NWP)
• 1 pair skins covering the full length of your skis (supplied by NWP)
• 1 pair snow pack ski boots (bring your own or rent from NWP)
• 1 pair extra boot liners (bring your own or rent from NWP)
• Sleeping bag (rated to at least -35° Celsius)*
• Bivy sack*
• 2 sleeping pads (thermarest or ridgerest style)*
• 1 wind jacket with hood (supplied by NWP)
• 1 wind pants (breathable!)
• 1 insulated parka with hood
• 1 warm fleece jacket and pants
• 2 sets synthetic underwear, medium weight top and bottom- 2nd set optional
• 3 sets mitts: 1 regular, 1 overmitts, 1 spare regular mitts or gloves
• 2 pair liner gloves
• 2 hats: 1 lightweight balaclava, 1 ski type
• 2 neck gaiters
• 3 pair socks and sock liners
• 1 face mask
• Sun glasses and/ or mountain ski glasses
• 2 pr. anti-fog goggles
• 1 sturdy small backpack with waist belt and sternum strap
• 2 Thermos bottles or insulated water bottles
• 1 set eating utensils with bowl
• Pocket knife / multi-tool
• Personal toiletries
• 1 pee bottle (small plastic bottle)
• Face cream, lip protection-
• 4 carabiners & 5 meters of 6 mm rope

*items available for rent
Back to top

Qualifications

This expedition is for people who are in good shape, and who are eager to push themselves physically and mentally. Though the skiing is quite demanding, it does not require significant skill (it is very much like walking with skis on).You will need to have very good cardiovascular endurance and the ability to pull a heavy sled (between 30-40 kilos) for several hours at a time. Towards the end of the day when we stop skiing, it is critical that you have the energy reserves to set up camp, melt snow for hot tea or cocoa, and make dinner. Most importantly you need to be able to regulate your body temperature so that you do not get too cold, or too hot while you are on the move. This expedition will encounter extremely cold conditions, and living in such cold conditions 24 hours a day can be very challenging. You do not have to be a world class athlete to participate in and enjoy this expedition, but every ounce of training and preparation will help to make the expedition more enjoyable and safer. Please contact us with further questions! Back to top

Palisadian Post

Palisadian-Post April 17, 2003

Veterinarian skis through cold & wind to South Pole

With just two days left on his journey to the South Pole, Scott Anderson got frostbite.

The temperature was minus 40 degrees, and the wind was coming directly at his face at 30 miles per hour, creating a wind-chill approaching minus 100 degrees. Just as in the previous 5 days of pulling a 100-pound sled towards the South Pole, Anderson had spent most of the day slogging on cross-country skis toward his destination with a guide and another traveler.

However, today the little bit of explosed flesh around his mouth had not been able to fight off the cold. His lower lip and left cheek froze. Fortunately, face frostbite is generally more benign than frostbite on toes and fingers.The frozen area soon formed a scab and within 10 days had healed completely. In addition, while his face was mending, he got to take a look at the place he had worked so hard to reach.

"After a week of hard physical labor, to see the South Pole and flags, it was an indescribable feeling - a sensation not to be repeated," said Anderson, a veterinarian and 8-year Palisadian. "It was a combination of amazement that I was really actually there, pleasure at having done it...and relief that we were finally there and had a day to relax."

Actually, beacuse of bad weather, Anderson's group had four and a half days to hang out at the South Pole before their plane ride home. Anderson spent much of that time walking around the pole and reading, but he also placed the Norwegian flag at the historic spot. The South Pole generally shifts about to feet each year, he said, so he calculated the location where the pole would have been when Norwegian Roald Amundsen became the first person to reach it on December 14, 1911.

Like Amundsen, Anderson's wife, Lisa, is Norwegian and also a "big admirer" of the late explorer. She gave her adventuring husband a large Norwegian flag to leave at the pole. Planting the flag caused him to think about how much harder the original expedition had been than his trip. To be the first to reach the South Pole, Amundsen lived for about one and a half years in Antarctica and traveled about 700 miles by dogsled to get there.

In addition, "he and his group had no possible way to get out of there other than by their own strength and skill," Anderson said. "It was a moving feeling to think about that."

This January, Anderson flew most of the way to the pole and skied the final 69 miles. While he was waiting for the plane ride home, another group arrived. This crew was part of a diabetes fundraising expedition, which traversed 730 miles in 61 days, following the path of Robert F. Scott, the ill-fated British explorer who arrived at the pole one month after Amundsen and then perished on the trip home. In the modern journey, Will Cross became the first person with diabetes to travel to the South Pole.

Today when people reach the pole, they find a scientific base, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which Anderson could see from about 9 miles away because the terrain is so flat. Otherwise, for the remaining miles he traveled, all he saw was snow-covered flatness, although the land does vary slightly in height. Sastrugi, gentle ridges ranging from 1 to 3 feet high, are a part of the wind blown terrain., and Anderson said that although the short ridges don't "sound like much, when you're pulling a sled and it's the end of the day, the ridges are tiring and can tip your sled over."

A typical day of his journey meant rising at 7 a.m. to boil water for morning oatmeal and hot chocolate as well as for a thermos-full of lunchtime soup. By 9:30 a.m. his group was skiing. throught the day, they would never pause for much more than five minutes, because the weather was too cold for standing still. When they stopped at about 6:15 p.m. each night, they would make a scheduled radio check-in call and begin making camp. The three men would build a snow wall on the windward side of their tent and then cook dinner inside before falling asleep at about 9:30 p.m.

The inside of the tent was warm, and the three generally took off their coats and wore shirt-sleeves inside. Rick Sweitzer, the trip's guide from The Northwest Passage company, had been to the North Pole about 10 times before, but never to the South Pole, while Nikos Magitsis, also a first-timer, became the first Greek to reach the North Pole, so he is a minor celebrity in his country. Anderson plans to make his own North Pole trip in the next few years.

Anderson noted that morning and night looked the same in Antarctica, because in the summer season the sun shines 24 hours a day. The penguins and marine life of the coast are not present on the barren interior of Antarctica, and he saw neither plants nor animals during the entire journey.

The weather was uniformly cold. On cloudy days, the temperature dropped as low as minus 40 degrees, but even on warmer days, the temperature never rose above minus 20 degrees, he said. Anderson kept his fingers warm with three layers of gloves and sometimes up to four hand warmers per hand.

Such care is vital. A guide from another pole-traveling group removed his gloves for less than five minutes to help someone, and suffered frostbite on three fingertips. Unlike Anderson's mild case, the guide was in danger of losing his fingertips when anderson flew home. Such frostbite problems had made Anderson acutely aware of keeping his hands warm, and prior mountain climbing trips to places like Tibet had helped him acquire the right clothing and training for the various strenous aspects of the trip.

Although Antarctica is covered with snow, it rarely snows more than 2 to 3 inches a year there, he said. However, because the weather is so cold, the snow never melts. Thus, the winds can create extreme whiteouts simply by tossing the snow off the ground and into the air.

The wind is one of the reasons air travel can be so difficult there. Anderson spent extra days at the pole and had to forego a second planned journey to climb Mt. Vinson, Antarctica's highest peak, because the windy weather delayed the various legs of his journey. If he had attempted to climb Mt. Vinson, weather delays might have then prevented his timely return to his veterinary work at California Animal Hospital and to his wife and their childern, Paul, 4, and Erik, 1. One previous group was stuck at the Patriot Hills Base in Antarctica for six weeks because of consistent wind whiteouts.

Anderson may never have the opportunity to return to Antarctica and climb Mt. Vinson, but that was the one regrettable note in an otherwise unforgettable journey.

"My first glimpse of the pole marker as we were approaching on our skis will stay with me forever," he said. "It's a place I'm unlikely to be again. Even if by some strange chance, I find myself there again, to see it for the first time, and to have made it there myself on skis, it's a feeling I don't think I will ever duplicate."
Back to top

Site Map
Home - Our History - Our Guides - Trip Reports - Why travel with PolarExplorers - FAQ - Links - North Pole Ski - North Pole Dogsled & Ski -Taste of Pole Dogsledding - Taste of Pole Skiing - North Pole Champagne Flights - South Pole Champagne Flights - South Pole Ski - Vinson Massif - Pole-to-Pole - Spitsbergen dogsledding - North Pole movie - North Pole Album -
South Pole Album - Vinson Album - Newspaper Articles - Magazine articles - TV appearances -
Radio appearances - Request info - Contact us