Arctic Trucks

The first pictures from this tour to Antarctica are now on the web. More to come soon!

Also  new diary transactions from Mike and Gísli

 

Click here to go to Photo Gallery.

Gísli, Freyr, Mike and Andrey arrived from there expedition late night yesterday day to Novo. The team was tired after long tour and little sleep for the last days. The guys are save now in Novo. They will take the day off to rest. Tomorrow they will change the radiator in one of the cars. Otherwise the Toyota seems to be in pretty good condition after the expedition and when the radiator has been replaced the cars are ready for their next tasks in the Antarctica.

After the day tomorrow they will perform some small expedition around the Novo area, planning save driving routs for the future and some more tasks. The guys are scheduled on flight from Antarctica on 2nd of December. They will arrive to Cape Town on the evening of the same day. In Cape Town they will have a day off before returning  home.
This expedition started on the 4th of November when Gísli Karel, Gísli Jónsson, Freyr and Andrey landed in the Novo Airbase. Their task was to repair the four modified Toyota Hilux cars that were used in the South Pole Race last year and prepare the cars for this season in Antarctica. On the 11th of November Mike Herbert arrived to Novo in order to join the team and participate in the upcoming expedition.

When the first two of the cars was ready to go the team set out for expedition. It started on 14th of November. The expedition members were Mike Herbert, Gísli Jónsson, Andrey and Freyr. All of them have experience from travelling and surviving in hostile environment. There task was to find and prepare a suitable place for fuel drop. The fuel was dropped from an airplane and stored in the ice for this season. The fuel is to be used by airplanes and expeditions this season.
Meanwhile the expedition took place Gísli Karel one of Arctic Trucks most skilled engineering stayed in Novo in order to finish repairing the second two cars. Gísli Karel completed his tasks long before it was planned and arrived to his home in Iceland today.
The driving route from Novo to the fuel drop was 1500 km. In total the team drove over 3000 km in one of the most hostile environment in the world. They drove from sea level up to 3.500 m altitude. The temperature varies from -20 C to -50 C.

The modified Toyota has improved them self as a solid equipment in the Antarctica environment as well being efficient regarding fuel consumption and operation cost compared to other vehicles.
Arctic Trucks congratulate the team, Gisli Karel, Gisli Jónsson, Freyr, Andrey and Mike Herbert for excellent performance. They have completed difficult tasks and once again approve the advantage of the Arctic Trucks concept.
It will be exciting to hear from the guys and get their travel story.

The repair of the water cooler still holds. They have been driving straight until last night when they camped and slept through the night. Now they are down from the high plate and only have 100 kilometers to go to Novo. They are driving the new tracks they made on the way up to the high plate which is a much safer route than the one they drove last year. The spirit in the group was very good since they had crossed the most dangerous crevasse area.

Yesterday morning the group decided to walk up to the top of a mountain. The top is 2560 meters high, which actually was not too difficult since their altitude was already 2300 meters. They are pretty sure that this is the first time ever this top has been climbed.   The mountain has no name that they know of but maybe they will find one for it!

Gísli Karel has arrived safely in Cape Town and is flying out of there tomorrow evening.

They guys driving back had some trouble yesterday when they lost all the liquid from the radiator in one of the cars. The temperature was very low and the defrosting liquid got icy.  They had to take the radiator out of the car and find the leak. They were lucky enough to bring some epoxy glue with them which they could use to fix the leak. This took 12 hours of work before they would get going again.
They still have to drive 850 kilometres before they get to Novo and are planning to drive without a stop until they get to the plane wrack.

Hopefully the flight from Novo to Cape Town will leave on schedule to night and Gísli Karel will then be in Cape Town tomorrow morning.  It will be quite a difference temperature wise, since it is minus 20 in Novo but plus 30 in Cape Town!  The maintenance of the cars in Novo was easier than everyone had expected and the last few days he has been transporting people around the area.

The drive back from the fuel stop is going well so far. They took off this morning and have already driven 400 kilometres and are planning to drive well into the night. They still have 1100 kilometres to go before they get to Novo.  The tracks are fine and they have managed to keep the speed at 40 kilometres pr. hour.  Mike and Gísli are travelling together in one car Andrey, Freyr and the Russian guy who jumped from the plane are travelling in the other one.  The weather is good, temperature is minus 30.
The area ahead is more dangerous, there are lots of crevasses there but they have the equipment that search for crevasses on the front of the car which makes this journey much safer.

Gísli, Freyr, Mike and Andrey have received the fuel that was dropped out of the plane and are working on burying the barrels into the snow. One Russian jumped out of the plane in a parachute, very successfully. They will now make sure the fuel area is ready for use for future expeditions.

They are planning to start driving back to Novo tomorrow. The track should be in good condition and the route they found is fairly secure. Nothing is guaranteed though and it is a well know fact that in expedition it is more likely that accidents happen on the way back.  The weather has been very cold, up to minus 50 at night and the thermometers in the cars almost never go below minus 40, which is the lowest they show. The temperature will go up when they get down to lower altitude but as you can imagine this are not the most convenient working conditions!

Hopefully the drive back will go well – we send them our best wishes!

 

Gísli Karel was supposed to fly out of Nova on November 20th. Because of bad weather the flight was delayed. Gísli Karel has been working hard for the last few days, with very limited help from the Russians. Both the cars are ready and for the last two days he has been doing some transportation for the Russians. After this hard work he allowed him the luxury of taking a sauna. The Russians told him that it would do him good to hit himself with branches. A strange experience, he said!
If weather permits Gísli Karel will fly from Novo to Cape Town on November 23rd.