Two Weeks From Help: Antarctic Ice Kings' Fears

The Age

Thursday January 4, 2007

By PENELOPE DEBELLE

FOUR Australians who climbed to the highest peak of Antarctica were at least two weeks from help if anything went wrong.

For three weeks the team, led by Adelaide adventurer Duncan Chessell, ski-trekked inland across ice-fields from the Weddell Sea coast through the rugged Ellsworth range before beginning the 10-day climb to Mount Vinson's summit. During that time they saw one other person, a hut warden at the Mount Vinson base camp who manages an air charter operation.

"The remoteness is almost like an objective danger that you take on board," Chessell said. "It is a good feeling of being self-reliant and working together as a team to overcome the pretty enormous task of climbing the peak."

During the expedition they were medically dependent on team doctor Robert North from Melbourne, an experienced trekker and climber who had been to the Antarctic before.

Speaking by satellite phone yesterday after arriving at Mount Vinson base camp, Chessell said although none had suffered even frostbite, they took on the venture knowing they would be two to three weeks from help if they were injured.

"No one else is on the mountain at the moment so basically it was just us if there were any problems," said Chessell, whose latest climb qualified him for the Seven Summits club of less than 100 international climbers who have conquered the highest peaks of the seven continents.

"If you twist your ankle or do anything minor it is very serious, so you are constantly trying to keep it all on track - not getting frostbite, not getting exhausted."

At the end of each day, with nowhere to hide from the elements, the four had to make camp, which took another two hours of hacking out a snow wall and pitching tents.

Decisions balancing risk and bravado were based on experience, judgement and fitness, he said. "You go in trained up well. Everyone is experienced and has done a lot of climbing before in different parts of the world.

"Before we got to base camp, we were faced with the difficulty of crossing up through an ice floor and climbing through crevasses, so it was better to stop and rest and camp and tackle it the next day. You choose to be pretty careful about what you are doing."

Their greatest enemy was the extreme cold, with temperatures about minus 35 degrees with a windchill factor of minus 50 degrees. No flesh could be exposed to the air and the altitude gave them headaches and shortness of breath. It took 12 hours to cover on the way down what took three days to scale.

On the first day of the climb, they left a camp on the 4987-metre mountain to cover 11 kilometres, to gain 800 metres elevation. Their next move was three kilometres around the mountain to gain another 800 metres in height, then the final seven kilometres to the summit, which took them the last 1200 metres.

After resting for an hour, they descended in one stretch and were yesterday waiting for a ski plane to fly them to the Patriot Hills base. The view on top was amazing, Chessell said. "From the south we could see the Antarctic ice-sheet, which stretches right across to the south pole and the other side of Antarctica, and you just feel dwarfed by the scale and enormity of the wilderness area here," he said.

© 2007 The Age

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