AdventureMAD
New member
great thread mouth watering!
unURBAN Adventures - Alaska to Argentina to AFRICA!
- Thread starter unURBAN
- Start date
shauncondit
New member
Great to have you back!
Camp life in Antarctica
Sorry for a slight delay in the blogging. We hoped to be able to post some blogs from the frozen continent, but we had some technical challenges, and it turned out to be a bit harder than we had thought. Anyway, we'll try to post us up to date again, and we hope our pictures from Union Glacier and some other places in Antarctica can be of interest. This first post was written in mid December. More soon!
.
.
Hi Everybody!
.
It has been a while since we posted on our blog and forum threads. Amazing how fast time goes by. Five weeks ago I was in Punta Arenas waiting for better weather in Antarctica, and now we are almost half way through the season here at Union Glacier. Malin is cooking and I'm cleaning, washing, and helping where it is needed. Both of us have been able to get out of camp on a few occasions, and Malin is in time of writing at the South Pole where she is the base chef for the 100 years anniversary for Amundsen's arrival at the pole as the first in history.
.
.
Several this years' expeditions have timed their arrival at the South Pole to this anniversary date (14th December), so it will be lively in camp here when everybody has a stop over here on their way out from Antarctica.
.
I also got a few trips out of camp this season, and the first was a flight up to Berkner Island to dig out a fuel depot. It was five of us plus two pilots, and we dug up more than 50 200 liters fuel drums. This was my first flight out of camp, and the Antarctic landscape is simply stunning!
.
.
My muscles were pretty sore the next morning, but at breakfast I found out that there was another digging mission on the agenda, and I signed up. This time it was a weather station (instruments on a mast) that had to be dug out at Thiels Mountains, about half way between Union Glacier and the South Pole.
.
.
Tractor train leaving camp at Union Glacier.
.
This is also a fuel depot that ALE uses for its Twin Otters when they fly to the pole. When we landed, a team from ALE had just arrived in a tractor-train (piste machines (same type as those used in ski resorts)) loaded with fuel drums. As a Twin Otter has to refuel on its way to the pole, they used to fly the fuel depot up by plane and then the fuel gets really expensive. Some years ago they tried to drive out a “train” with fuel loaded on sledges, and it turned out to be way more fuel efficient than flying it. And when we started digging out the weather station, it soon became obvious that the piste machine would come in handy also for the digging. The base of the weather station was more than 3 meters (10 ft) down in hard, wind packed snow. Using the piste machine we could make a big hole next to the mast and then dig in to the instruments from the side. The flight to and from Thiels was spectacular, and to take in the vastness of the Antarctic landscape you actually need some time. The glaciers here are endless.
.
In camp, however, you almost forget where you are. Life is quite simple with most facilities we are used to from home. Most of everyday life happens in one of our big “Weather Haven” tents.
.
.
The kitchen and dining room tent is warm around the clock, and this season we have also got a kind of “running water”. Snow is shoveled into a big tank outside the tent and a Webasto water heater (same kind as you can mount in a vehicle) melts the snow and warms up the water. It runs on jet fuel. A similar unit is mounted in a smaller tent and connected to two showers. Luxury! For preparing food we use propane, and at night the big tents are warmed up by diesel stoves also running on jet fuel. Electric power is basically from solar panels and batteries connected to an inverter. This is backed up by a generator for cloudy days. Our workshop/garage is also in a Weather Haven tent, and they probably use their generators a bit more than in the dining tent to run tools and other electric equipment.
.
.
Our personal “house” is not as spacious as the roof top tent, but a Mountain Hardware mountain tent has enough room for the two of us and some clothes and equipment. And the weird thing is that the temperature inside the tent is kind of like a normal room temperature. This far south we have sun 24 hours a day, and the tents heat up surprisingly well. Slightly colder during the night, but the big down sleeping bag that we used high up in the Andes Mountains is way too warm for these temperatures. Next time I'll bring the summer sleeping bag.
.
E&M
Sorry for a slight delay in the blogging. We hoped to be able to post some blogs from the frozen continent, but we had some technical challenges, and it turned out to be a bit harder than we had thought. Anyway, we'll try to post us up to date again, and we hope our pictures from Union Glacier and some other places in Antarctica can be of interest. This first post was written in mid December. More soon!
.
.
Hi Everybody!
.
It has been a while since we posted on our blog and forum threads. Amazing how fast time goes by. Five weeks ago I was in Punta Arenas waiting for better weather in Antarctica, and now we are almost half way through the season here at Union Glacier. Malin is cooking and I'm cleaning, washing, and helping where it is needed. Both of us have been able to get out of camp on a few occasions, and Malin is in time of writing at the South Pole where she is the base chef for the 100 years anniversary for Amundsen's arrival at the pole as the first in history.
.
.
Several this years' expeditions have timed their arrival at the South Pole to this anniversary date (14th December), so it will be lively in camp here when everybody has a stop over here on their way out from Antarctica.
.
I also got a few trips out of camp this season, and the first was a flight up to Berkner Island to dig out a fuel depot. It was five of us plus two pilots, and we dug up more than 50 200 liters fuel drums. This was my first flight out of camp, and the Antarctic landscape is simply stunning!
.
.
My muscles were pretty sore the next morning, but at breakfast I found out that there was another digging mission on the agenda, and I signed up. This time it was a weather station (instruments on a mast) that had to be dug out at Thiels Mountains, about half way between Union Glacier and the South Pole.
.
.
Tractor train leaving camp at Union Glacier.
.
This is also a fuel depot that ALE uses for its Twin Otters when they fly to the pole. When we landed, a team from ALE had just arrived in a tractor-train (piste machines (same type as those used in ski resorts)) loaded with fuel drums. As a Twin Otter has to refuel on its way to the pole, they used to fly the fuel depot up by plane and then the fuel gets really expensive. Some years ago they tried to drive out a “train” with fuel loaded on sledges, and it turned out to be way more fuel efficient than flying it. And when we started digging out the weather station, it soon became obvious that the piste machine would come in handy also for the digging. The base of the weather station was more than 3 meters (10 ft) down in hard, wind packed snow. Using the piste machine we could make a big hole next to the mast and then dig in to the instruments from the side. The flight to and from Thiels was spectacular, and to take in the vastness of the Antarctic landscape you actually need some time. The glaciers here are endless.
.
In camp, however, you almost forget where you are. Life is quite simple with most facilities we are used to from home. Most of everyday life happens in one of our big “Weather Haven” tents.
.
.
The kitchen and dining room tent is warm around the clock, and this season we have also got a kind of “running water”. Snow is shoveled into a big tank outside the tent and a Webasto water heater (same kind as you can mount in a vehicle) melts the snow and warms up the water. It runs on jet fuel. A similar unit is mounted in a smaller tent and connected to two showers. Luxury! For preparing food we use propane, and at night the big tents are warmed up by diesel stoves also running on jet fuel. Electric power is basically from solar panels and batteries connected to an inverter. This is backed up by a generator for cloudy days. Our workshop/garage is also in a Weather Haven tent, and they probably use their generators a bit more than in the dining tent to run tools and other electric equipment.
.
.
Our personal “house” is not as spacious as the roof top tent, but a Mountain Hardware mountain tent has enough room for the two of us and some clothes and equipment. And the weird thing is that the temperature inside the tent is kind of like a normal room temperature. This far south we have sun 24 hours a day, and the tents heat up surprisingly well. Slightly colder during the night, but the big down sleeping bag that we used high up in the Andes Mountains is way too warm for these temperatures. Next time I'll bring the summer sleeping bag.
.
E&M
Ruined Adventures
Brenton Cooper
Amazing. You're so fortunate to have been able to see a corner of the world that few of us ever will. Let me know if they need an EMT and a trauma nurse to work at the arctic camp, 14 or so months from now. We can shovel snow like it's nobody's business :coffeedrink:
Dgurley2000
Adventurer
Looking forward to reading about your next adventures! Its going to be hard for you guys to go back to a normal life one day 
VanIsle_Greg
I think I need a bigger truck!
Amazing pictures...looks like a pretty awesome place to be in the warmer months. Love the DH Twin Otters, best planes in the world in my opinion. The "Nissan Patrol of Airplanes"!
southfarms
New member
Many Thanks!
Malin and Espen,
Thank you for sharing your wonderful adventures with us! I cannot imagine the time that it took to keep up this thread. For a farmboy from Arkansas, the pictures and places that you visited, discovered, and photographed seemed almost imaginary. Your descriptions and captions made these places and people come alive. Thanks again for sharing, and I can't wait until the trip continues in Africa!
Stephen
Malin and Espen,
Thank you for sharing your wonderful adventures with us! I cannot imagine the time that it took to keep up this thread. For a farmboy from Arkansas, the pictures and places that you visited, discovered, and photographed seemed almost imaginary. Your descriptions and captions made these places and people come alive. Thanks again for sharing, and I can't wait until the trip continues in Africa!
Stephen
Shipping
Hi Everybody!!
Thanks for comments! Will reply shortly.
Now just a quick question as we're about to book a container for South Africa: Do you know if there are other overlanders in the area of Buenos Aires/Montevideo that are planning to ship to Africa in near future???? Sharing a 40 ft container is significantly cheaper than shipping solo in a 20ft. We are VERY interested if anyone has come across a blog from travellers in South America even mentioning Africa....
Tnx!
E&M
Hi Everybody!!
Thanks for comments! Will reply shortly.
Now just a quick question as we're about to book a container for South Africa: Do you know if there are other overlanders in the area of Buenos Aires/Montevideo that are planning to ship to Africa in near future???? Sharing a 40 ft container is significantly cheaper than shipping solo in a 20ft. We are VERY interested if anyone has come across a blog from travellers in South America even mentioning Africa....
Tnx!
E&M
iRagedoYou
Member
Amazing trip report and pictures! Thanks for sharing.. I can not wait to read about Africa. Good luck.
More Antarctic Activities...
Hi Everybody!
We'll try not to bore you with details, but there are some pics we just have to upload. Antarctica is a fascinating place, and even if we're now back on the “mainland”, it is sometimes hard to let go of the frozen continent and the people we teamed up with for Antarctic summer. It was long and sometimes hard hours, but when we had some time off, it was always worth the effort. The Union Glacier Camp is on a glacier in the Herritage Mountain Range, and the views in all directions are stunning. We had a few excursions out from camp to different “sightseeing” in the area.
.
.
Here we are driving along the ice runway where the Illushin-76 lands with all the people and cargo going in to or through Union Glaicer. Great place for a photo session. The vehicles we use in and around camp (on groomed roads) are a couple of Ford E-350s, one on 39,5 inch wheels, and one running a set of Mattracks.
.
.
Parked at Elephant Hill for a stroll in the area. This is a very stable part of the glacier, and there are no crevasses in this area.
.
.
And as we mentioned the blue ice runway, a nice thing to do is to go down to watch the Illushin land, or help unloading cargo. We had 31 Illushin flights this season, the biggest season for ALE so far.
.
.
Outside the dinner tent for afterhours activity is also a slack-line. And yes, it is afterhours even if the sun is up. 24 hours, remember..? 
.
.
During this season we had one full day off just before Christmas, and we went for a climb of Mount Rossmond.
.
.
This is the mountain we see every day as it is towering over camp. We had a fantastic day, and we could see all the way over to the Vinson Massif with Antarctica's highest mountain, Mount Vinson. Maybe one day. To the east we could see out over the platau and the white horizon of ice, ice, and more ice….
.
.
Next post is about a nice bonus for a dishwasher, and it had 6WD!
.
E&M
Hi Everybody!
We'll try not to bore you with details, but there are some pics we just have to upload. Antarctica is a fascinating place, and even if we're now back on the “mainland”, it is sometimes hard to let go of the frozen continent and the people we teamed up with for Antarctic summer. It was long and sometimes hard hours, but when we had some time off, it was always worth the effort. The Union Glacier Camp is on a glacier in the Herritage Mountain Range, and the views in all directions are stunning. We had a few excursions out from camp to different “sightseeing” in the area.
.
.
Here we are driving along the ice runway where the Illushin-76 lands with all the people and cargo going in to or through Union Glaicer. Great place for a photo session. The vehicles we use in and around camp (on groomed roads) are a couple of Ford E-350s, one on 39,5 inch wheels, and one running a set of Mattracks.
.
.
Parked at Elephant Hill for a stroll in the area. This is a very stable part of the glacier, and there are no crevasses in this area.
.
.
And as we mentioned the blue ice runway, a nice thing to do is to go down to watch the Illushin land, or help unloading cargo. We had 31 Illushin flights this season, the biggest season for ALE so far.
.
.
Outside the dinner tent for afterhours activity is also a slack-line. And yes, it is afterhours even if the sun is up. 24 hours, remember..? 
.
.
During this season we had one full day off just before Christmas, and we went for a climb of Mount Rossmond.
.
.
This is the mountain we see every day as it is towering over camp. We had a fantastic day, and we could see all the way over to the Vinson Massif with Antarctica's highest mountain, Mount Vinson. Maybe one day. To the east we could see out over the platau and the white horizon of ice, ice, and more ice….
.
.
Next post is about a nice bonus for a dishwasher, and it had 6WD!
.
E&M
Johnny Christensen
Adventurer
Hi Espen & Malin.
Your travels are adventure in the finest form, keep the post comming.
Med venlig hilsen
Johnny
Your travels are adventure in the finest form, keep the post comming.
Med venlig hilsen
Johnny
