Arctic Trucks

The guys are all back in Iceland, safe and sound! They are as we speak writing the story of the expedition, but we have already a lot of new photos in the Photo Gallery and also a great new video from the drive  back from the Pole in the Video Gallery. Take a look!

A team of four Toyota Hiluxs have completed a trip of over 5000km from Novo, a Russian Scientific Station in Antarctica to the Geographic South Pole and back again, making them the first 4x4s to reach the South Pole. The return journey of 2500km from the South Pole to Novo Station was completed in a record 8 days and 17 hours.

 

The expedition is a joint venture between the UK based Amundsen Omega South Pole Race and Icelandic company Arctic Trucks. Company directors Tony Martin and Emil Grimmson started on the venture after the enormous success of their joint expedition with Top Gear in 2007, which sent the first 4x4s to the Magnetic North Pole - driven by Jeremy Clarkson and James May, and filmed for the Top Gear Polar Special. ! Following the success of this ground breaking trip, the pair decided to start out on an even more daring trip to Antarctica - into unknown territory in one of the world's most hostile environments - the coldest and driest place on Earth.

 

After learning from the 2007 Top Gear North Pole trip, Arctic Trucks modified the same vehicles - Toyota Hiluxs, for use on the Antarctic Plateau, including over 300 hours of work per car. The  expedition provided safety , medical and media support for the Amundsen Omega South Pole Race, including film crew access to UK based production company Two Four, filming the race for the BBC series 'On Thin Ice' featuring James Cracknell and Ben Fogle, and a Norwegian film crew filming a documentary for NRK.

 

The 4x4s departed from Novo Station on on 21st December 2008, and arrived at the South Pole on 21st January 2009. After remaining with all of the race competitors at the South Pole until their flight home arrived, the vehicles set off on the return journey at 02:00am on 30th January 2008, arriving at 1700 on 7th February 2009. The team were greeted at Novo station with cheers, flares and champagne to celebrate the success of the expedition. Tony Martin commented "It is an incredible achievement, we are breaking boundaries here, no one has ever completed a trip like this before, we are making history".

 

The arduous route to the Pole included extremely hostile terrain, travelling through crevasse fields and mountains, and following an unusually high amount of snowfall, the 4x4s encountered deep snow on the plateau, where temperatures plummeted below -40C still air, and -60C with wind chill. In just two months, Novo received the same amount of snow fall they would normally receive in five years. Arctic Truck's Driver-mechanics Gísli Jónsson and Hjalti Vigfús Hjaltason were on hand to provide constant modifications during the trip, including fixing break downs of five transfer cases, six wheel axles and six shock absorbers.

 

The team are now safely at Novo station, waiting for a flight to Cape Town before returning to the UK and Iceland. They hope this trip will open a brand new method of travel in Antarctica, encouraging people to use 4x4s as an alternative to current methods of transport as they are cleaner, and 5 times more fuel efficient than other vehicles presently used. In the future they hope to join with scientific research expeditions.

The group has reached the final destination! They arrived in Novo at 18.30 tonight and were welcomed as heroes. The people from the stations around were waiting with champagne, vodka, and fireworks. Those who know this environment realize how big accomplishment this expedition is.

“The group is now playing poker to decide on the order we get to take a shower”, Hjalti said. “The problem is that there is only shower here and there is only 100 liters of warm water in the heating container. Those who loose won't be able to take a shower until they get to Cape Town on Tuesday or Wednesday”, Hjalti added laughing. There is real good spirit in the group and they are all extremely happy that have reached their goal safe and sound. Hjalti sent warm wishes from the group, especially to their co-workers at Arctic Trucks, without their support they never could have done this.

The plan is to fly from Novo to Capetown on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on the weather. They are expected back to Iceland on February 16th or 17th.

The Arctic Trucks staff congratulates the group on this fantastic achievement. We are all extremely proud of our people! 

We have been travelling since yesterday without camping or sleeping. Everything has been going very well but we have driven slowly, taken a lot of pictures and enjoyed the beuty of the nature. Last night we saw a sunset for the first time since we got to Antarctica! We are now travelling north and the temprature is rising. Last time we camped we slept in 35 degrees below but now it is 8 degrees below. We almost feel we can go out in our t-shirts!

 

We now have less than 100 kilometers to go before we get to Novo, hopefully we will be there in 2-3 hours. We have already drivien through the most dangorous crack area and everything went well. We tied all the cars together and drove very slowly. We found a way through, built on experience since driving to the Pole and by examining the area carefully. I have to admit we were a little reliefed when we were through.

 

We needed to pick up a lot of things on the way, things that both we and the competitors had left behind on the way to the Pole. We now have found all those things and will not leave anything behind. We drove to this very beautiful mountain area, called Valley Berg, where we did a lot of photograping and fooled around, sliding down the slopes on our behinds! We thought about camping there but even though the weater is very good at the moment, the forcast for the next two days is not that good so we decided to continue all the way to Novo. The spirit in the group is very good and we are all looking forward to getting to our final destination. Hjalti claims that the cars are  getting homesick and that they are getting faster, he is now playing with leting the car jump – with not so good response from all the passangers!

 

The repair of the transfer box has holden perfectly. This is the first time in history that 4X4 vehicles drive to the South Pole and their performance is great. They have driven close to 6000 kilometers in the most difficult circumstances and they have really shown what they are capable of! If was strange to experience how the functionality of the cars changes when the temprature got down to 35-40 degrees below. Everything got very stiff, for example the shock absorbers froze just when we stopped for refueling. The tires did not work, even though they were deflated, they just became hard as a rock.

 

The altitude is now almost 1.600 meters over sea level and I am finally feeling good! This is totally different from beeing in 3000 meters altitude, and I have to admit that I was feeling pretty bad.

 

When we get to Novo we will prepare the cars for winter, but the cars will not be moved until october. Now winter is coming with extreme cold and darkness, almost all operation in the stations here will close down and most of the people goes away for winter. We will therefor find a good spot for the cars, cover the cars and here they will stand until september/october. Then we will propably send some people here to go over the cars and teach the people here how to use them.

 

Everybody that has been taking part in this expedition has been praising Gísli and Hjalti and they alls say that without them this would never have worked out. We can be very proud of our boys! I belief this is the longest 4X4 tour in the history of Iceland at least. This has been a great adventure and sometimes very difficult. Now we are all getting very exited about getting home, but Hjalti sais that the hardest part is still ahead of us, that is getting rid of the body odor! It is like it will take more than one shower to get that off!

 

Best regards,
Emil

The group did not make it to ETL last night, as they had intended, because the transfer box in Tony‘s car broke. They have still 71 kilometres to go before they get to ETL. They have already built a new box, which is made from parts from three transfer boxes. The altitude and the extreme cold did not help with the repair, which actually would be quite difficult for most people under the best circumstances! They took all the time they need to make the repair and tried to find out why the transfer box keeps failing. They have not been able to pin down any explanation but this time they put in a piece that Emil brought with him, that will lock the gear. Hopefully this will help!

The group hopes to get further than ETL tonight. The goal is to get down from this high altitude and to lower temperature, today it was 32 degrees below. Everything will be much easier when they get down and if everything goes as we hope and nothing will fail, they should be able to get all the way to the mountains. There the nature is much more beautiful and if everything goes as planned they should be able to drive to Novo from there in 4 hours.

The group can of course feel the altitude and the cold, but nobody has been ill. Everybody has been able to rest and they are all well fed. Therefore there should be no obstacle in continuing this journey.

We are now 400 kilometres from Novo, direct distance. Yesterday night we came to the wrack of the DC3 airplane that crashed here in the beginning of January. Victor wanted to evaluate the situation and judge if it was possible to get the plane out of there. Unfortunately it looks that the plane cannot be saved and it will probably be disassembled and dragged out there, but of course it is forbidden to leave anything on the glacier.

The airplane crashed when it was brining in the transmission box for Hjalti's car. The plan was to throw the box out of the plane and therefore the plane came in rather low. When it got near they flew into a fog and the captain decided to turn around. They turned the plane but in the fog they did not realize how low they were and crashed into the glacier, around 7,6 kilometres from Hjalti and his team. Luckily the 4 men crew were not badly injured, but the doctor from the competition went with Hjalti and Tony to nurse them until they were picked up by another plane.

Our fuel consumption the last few days has been well below what we calculated and therefore we were able to leave 1400 litres of fuel by the plane wrack. This will make things easier for those who later come here to remove the plane. The fuel consumption has been close to 40 litres per hundred kilometres for few days now.

When we came to the DC3 airplane we had been driving consecutively for 24 hours. We slept until 12 o‘clock and got off again at 13:00. The last few days have been extremely cold, yesterday morning we started in 33 degrees below and when the thermometer showed 40 degrees it cracked! I believe the frost was at least 45 degrees without any wind when it was the coldest. Because of the cold the shock absorbers froze and the tires became hard as a rock. If we stopped the cars everything got stiff and we needed substantial amount of patience to soften up the cars and get them going again. All tubes and pipes were frozen but in this situation there is a great risk that the pipes will unplug and also the steal can break easily. We use Jet Fuel on the cars and additionally we use two-stroke oil. It got so thick that there was no way of getting it out of the containers. The motor-oil was like syrup and on top of that a fuel pipe in one of the extra fuel tanks froze. We had to start a Honda generator that we have with us to heat up this pipe but the generator needed 50 minutes of heating in one of the cars before we could start it!

As you can probably understand, the thought of camping in this cold was not very tempting. Therefore we drove for 24 hours consecutive, total of 600 kilometres, before we camped by the DC3 wrack. We had some tasks to fulfil on the way, such as picking up all the empty oil barrels we had left on the way to the Pole in order to bring them back. We also did a lot of photographing.
The altitude is now 3.400 meters above sea level, last night we camped at 3.222 meters. Those of us who started this journey at the South Pole can feel the altitude and our breath is a bit shorter than those who have had a longer time to adapt.

Next stop is ETL, the place where the competitors were picked up in the beginning of this journey, but we have close to 200 kilometres to go before we get there. There the altitude will be lower and hopefully the temperature will be higher. Ahead is a pretty difficult route down from the plateau where we cross a difficult crack area. We plan to cross it slowly and securely. The cracks can be big and often difficult to see. We also plan to take our time to do some photographing and enjoy this incredible nature. For the last few weeks the group has not seen much else than a flat snow, but soon the mountains will appear and more colours can be seen in the nature.

 

Best regards,

Emil

The weather was very beautiful today, the temperature was 39 degrees below and there was no wind. The tents were very cold last night, the wind was blowing and it was not a very tempting thought getting out of the sleeping bag this morning! Today we have done a lot of photographing and still been able to drive on. Of course we have had some minor problems, which more or less are all because of the much too heavy load the vehicles have been carrying. Never the less, it seems that we are making a speed record from the South Pole and furthermore we are using much less fuel, compared to former expeditions in this area.
We had some trouble with one of the trailers today. It rolled over in the tracks which are getting very uneven. It can be difficult to keep the car in the tracks and in this occasion the driver was inexperienced.
We still have close to 1100 kilometers to go before we get to Novo. The conditions are very good and will hopefully remain that way for the rest of the journey.
Tony is very pleased with the team. Last night, when the whole team finally met, he said that this was the best team he had ever put together. Everybody is very pleased, especially that all the competitors are home, safe and sound!

 

Best regards,
Emil