Day 30
S85 5' 13.56", W80 46' 34.68"
///ameliorated.uneconomic.burgeoned
The team return to Thiels to await pick-up by ski-plane.
“Hi good evening everyone, it’s Lou reporting in from day 30 of the expedition.
Today, the plan was, we’re going to finish off the final five nautical miles we need to do to get back to Thiels airfield. And we achieved that today. We took it nice and steady – the priority was that we didn’t inflict any further damage on Martin’s Achilles tendon. We just took our time throughout the day, and worked our way steadily back to Thiels airfield, and we arrived here early afternoon, set up the tent and camped. We’re awaiting pick-up.
At the moment it looks like there’s an aircraft going to be coming into here sometime tomorrow, which is coming back from the South Pole. It’s a Basler, which is the larger of the ski planes they’ve got out here. I think it’s returning with a team that have just done a last degree. It’s going to drop into Thiels and scoop us up, and we should recover back to Union Glacier at some time tomorrow.
The plan from there is to hopefully spend at least a week in Union Glacier, where the doctor, Paddy, can properly assess Martin’s injuries. And really focus on kind of treatment we can do, and rest and recovery. If all that goes well, our aspiration is that, we’re hoping that we can get back out on the ground in seven to ten days’ time, get dropped 60 nuatical miles from the South Pole – so the last degree – 89 degrees South. And just take it real steady, and spend 6 or 7 days covering that distance to the South Pole, to complete the last degree. We’ll do that, and then hopefully back into Union Glacier another period of a bit of recovery time from that, before we then attempt the 10-day expedition to climb the highest mountain in Antarctica, Mount Vinson.
That’s what we’d like to do. Obviously, all that is subject to Martin’s recovery, and hopefully that recovery process has started now, we’re going to be resting from this point onwards. Fingers crossed that all goes well, and we can still achieve quite a lot out here in Antarctica. So really looking forward to that.
The plan now for this evening is that we’re going to chill, watch a movie in the tent, and catch up on some much-needed sleep. And then recover back to Union Glacier.
Just to finish off, I want to do a quick shout-out and a thank you to Rhodri, from Nordic Life; he’s probably the UK’s only supplier of specialist polar expedition equipment. Massive thanks to you Rhodri for sorting us out with a lot of gear – skis and various other bits of equipment; sleeping bags etc, at quite short notice before we deployed on this expedition.
If anyone in the UK is looking for any specialist polar gear, then Nordic Life is definitely the place to go.
That’s all from us, camped here securely at Thiels airfield in the middle of Antarctica. Hopefully we’ll be updating you from Union Glacier tomorrow evening.
That’s all for now.
Onwards.”
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