Arctic Trucks

We have reached the South Pole! We arrived at the South Pole station this morning. The last kilometers were very rough and we had some trouble with one of the cars. But we managed to get them all here and now we are waiting for the spare parts to arrive with the airplane. Gísli and Kenny will not stay here for long, tomorrow they will turn back, as soon as we have fixed their cars with parts from our cars. They will drive back 800 kilometers and start digging up fuel for the airplane. Tony and I will stay here for a week or until the plane has left with the competitors and we have fixed our cars.
We had a very interesting sightseeing tour around the station today. It really is a strange feeling being here!

Best wishes from the South Pole!
Hjalti

We are now 10,5 km from the South Pole station, we can see it but as we are early we will wait here until tomorrow morning their time.  The South Pole station is on New Zealand time and they need this 36 hour notice before arrival.  It will be very exciting to drive in tomorrow.  

Best to all, Gísli

January 20th, at 15:00

All the four cars are now at the first corner, Tony and I came here yesterday but Gísli and Kenny arrived this morning.   Tony and I are leaving in few minutes, driving to the second corner where we will wait for the competitors to arrive and do some more filming.   Gísli and Kenny will follow us later today and the plan is that all the 4 cars will be at the South Pole in approx 36 hours.  As my car and Tonys car are fitted with all sorts of equipment for the BBC film crew, we will switch axles with Gísli and Kenny so they can drive their cars 900 km back to the fuel depot and begin digging up fuel barrels for the airplane that is coming from Novo and going to the South Pole early next week to pick up the competitors.   The rest of us are going to stay at the South Pole and film the competitors as they arrive at the End line.

January 19th, at 16:50.

Hjalti.

We are about 50 km from the corner (88:40 South and 20 West) we need to go to, to go around the protected zone.   From there we can follow the line 20W until we reach 89:41S.   Then we will need to drive along the 89:41 until we reach 156W approaching the South Pole from the other side.    We have now left the skiers but they don‘t have to go as much around this area as the cars do.   We will go around and wait for them to arrive at the 89:41 S / 20 W.   The support crew, Gisli, Kenny, Dr. Ian, Sarah, the two Norwegian film guys and two of the competitors are further behind us.  They broke the forth rear axle yesterday the second one in Kenny’s car.  They clearly overextended the capacity of these axle during the time they had to move the start line, bring all the fuel for the two airplanes that came with the competitors to this new location along with moving all the fuel they needed themselves for the trip to the South Pole and back with only one trailer and two cars.   Gisli tells me that when he heard I and Tony had to turn around he and Kenny figured they would need to do all the logistics that 4 cars and 4 trailers where supposed to do with only two cars and one trailer.  On top of this they had to move the start line.   My car and Tonys car are fine we have huge load on them but never close to what the others had to bear for a few days.  Besides the axle problem their cars are in good shape as well. 

There is a new issue now, the two airplanes coming from Novo to the South Pole to pick up the competitors will need assistance back at the fuel drop to help with the refueling.  It looks like it now that the cars are the only option to pick up the barrels which are many scattered around and buried deep in the snow.  With the crane the cars can pull these barrels out and bring them to the airplanes.   I expect once we get to the South Pole, Gisli and Kenny will quickly drive our cars 800-900km back there and begin preparing the fuel for the airplanes.  When airplanes arrive at the South Pole we will get new axles and we should be fine for the trip back to Novo.

I heard there have been some comments and messages for some of us on our blog, it great to hear, all the best to everybody. 

Sunday January 18th, at 16:30.

Hjalti.      

We are currently on our way to pick up one of the ski team that has fallen behind.   Hjalti and Tony are with the BBC crew more than 100 km away filming the race leaders.   We had a problem yesterday when the other rear axle broke on my car, we did not have any more spare axles so I welded some of the spare parts I had for the front wheels to the rear axel so we could continue driving but now I only have 3 wheel drive.  It took me 6-8 hours to fix this and we worry that the other rear axle Kenny has will go soon.   We will have replacement axle when we reach the South Pole so we are crossing our fingers that this will hold.   The snow conditions are really good, easy to drive but we are just cruising slowly to reduce the risk of the other axle braking.   We still have 350km to the South Pole but we expect to do 100km extra going around the protected zone and potentially some more servicing of the skiers.  There is a big area between us and the South Pole which is protected so we will need to go around this and follow a certain approach to the South Pole.

January 16th, at 11:30
Gísli

We just received some new photos from Antarctica. Those pictures are not brand new and in very low resolution. But they give us some idea of the challenges the people are facing on this expedition.

Hopefully we will get more photos soon!

Things are going very well for us, we are now filming the competitors with the BBC crew.  Later today we will go back to the others at  the Check Point for the night.  We will then move on and continue filming but Gisli and Kenny will wait for the last competitors to go through before taking down the Check Point camp.

January 14th 2009, at 10:40 am.

Hjalti