Day 28
S85 17' 15.00", W80 43' 40.08"
///backyard.rueful.sorbet
Mission aborted. The team make the difficult decision to stop.
“Hi good evening everyone, it’s Lou, providing the update now on day 28 of the expedition.
As you’re all already aware, obviously Martin’s been having some major issues with Achilles tendonitis on his left tendon. Where he’s putting so much load through it, and he’s skiing with one arm, the situation’s been getting progressively worse over the last few days, to the point where – you’re aware – we had to stop and take pretty much a full rest day. We spent a lot of time chatting to the doctor, and taking some very good medical consultation. We got Martin onto a regime of painkillers and anti-inflammatories. We also placed some quite significant heel blocks – we had him almost up on high heels today – raised his heel and trying to take the load of it. We’d exhausted every option possible.
We were very sensible this morning. After a full rest day, we kept the tent up, and Martin went out and just had a go just on his skis, without the pulk, for about 15 minutes, just to see how it felt. Initially it felt quite good. He then attached his pulk, and skied around with that. The pain was minimal. He just had a dull ache. So we decided to try and make some more progress today. At that point, we packed up the camp, and we set off again. And all was going well for several hours. He just had a bit of a dull ache in there, but none of the aggressive pain or spasming from the previous days. Then around two o’clock this afternoon, it just went again. It started to spasm, and he was unable to place his heel down, the pain was so intense. And that’s despite being on some pretty significant painkillers as well. We had to stop. We’d actually travelled nine nautical miles; we were doing quite well. But it just went, and we had no option other than to stop, put the tent back up. Again, we were back chatting to the doctors and the ALE support team, and just looking at our options. With just under 300 miles still to go, and some very difficult terrain ahead of us; there’s some areas of very intense sastrugi, actually options for us being able to get picked up are very limited as well. The aircraft being able to land in those kind of areas.
We’ve taken the sensible decision, at this point, to stop the expedition, to avoid any further damage to his Achilles tendon, and causing any permanent issues.
So, we’re going to turn around. We’re only about 14 nautical miles from Thiels airfield. So, over the next two or three days, we’re going to steadily pick our way back to Thiels airfield and hopefully we’ll get picked up by the ski plane and recover back to UG [Union Glacier, the logistics base]. Then Martin can be properly medically assessed, have a look at it, take a period of rest, and then look at our options from there. There’s a possibility we can come back out, fully rested, and do the last degree to the South Pole, and still then climb Mount Vinson as well. So that’s what we’re looking at potentially as our options.
So, the plan is, tomorrow morning, turn around and slowly make our way the 13 nautical miles to Thiel airfield for recovery back the UG and proper medical assessment.
I’m about to run out of time, that’s my four minutes on the blog up [four minutes is maximum time the message allows].
We’ll obviously continue with the blogs.”
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