Antarctica 2004: Voice dispatch from the ice!
Nov 3, 2004 19: 10 EST
Published on November 1, 2004
We just recieved a voice mail from the Ice! It's from Australian Damien Gildea, and the Omega High Antarctic GPS Expedition 2004.
Listen to the voice mail here:
Click for Audio dispatch
Below is Damien's report from the past weekend including 3 pics, one of which of the "Ice maidens" (more on them later today).
"Hi All,
We´ve been here since last week, plugging away getting all our gear ready, repairing and improving things, buying and sorting food, sorting paperwork and the usual stuff.
Polar tinkering
We had to work on our solar recharging system that we use to recharge our Trimble 5700 GPS, as it had been damaged on the return from Livingston Island last year. That is now all working well, thanks to our whiz kid
Camilo, who is pretty good with all the tech gear. He even brought his own soldering iron!
Sat images
We are also getting brand new satellite imagery of the Sentinel Range which will help us while we are on the ground there. One of the first things we did was test the AUSPOS GPS data processing system that we use to get our results from the work we do on the summits.
Food
We also have a lot of food to buy and sort - 60 days worth - but that is all done now and we have packed our sleds, our packs, plus extra barrels full of food. Today (Saturday) we are adding a few things to our first-aid kit,
finalising the food packing, tidying up and doing some last-minute chores.
Tomorrow (Sunday) is the local mayoral election here in Punta and things will be busy, but the shops will be closed - even Lomits ! Then Monday is a public holiday.
ALE well-organised
ALE are well-organised and all the expeds have been kept up to date regularly with what is going on, and here IS a lot going on in terms of Pole trips. Most of the expeds in town have met each other at some point or
another.
Ice Maiden Kayaks
The Ice Maidens (image of Noelene and Sandra) arrived late Wed night and have had trouble with all the gear in their kayaks (yes, kayaks !) delayed in transit (plane got hit by a bird over the Pacific).
Guides Denise and Devin are back for more punishment and all their clients are in town, getting ready. Matty has her kids with her, who are more experienced in polar travel than most people twice their age who come here
for this stuff.
Chilean Army guys
I even met one of the Chilean army guys who is travelling in the tractor on their South Pole traverse. They will go there fairly fast then take their time on the way back to do ice-coring and other scientific work. I gave them the Expedition Log from my Pole trip in 2000-01 as they are planning to travel along 81W as we did.
Vinson
Looks like being a busy year on Vinson, but we will have the mountain to ourselves for at least three weeks first. We don´t expect to see anyone else until Nov 28th or so.
The Ilyushin-76 was due in today via Valdivia and other places since Russia. All is still on schedule for a Monday departure.
Images: Top: Damien, Middle 1: Ice Maidens, Middle 2: Antarctic crub, Bottom: Camilo testing the GPS at the teams HQ outside of town, Straits of Magellan in the background.
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