On land the team will sledge-haul their kayaks. Image of Cristian’s 2008-09 expedition courtesy of kayakantarctica.com (click to enlarge)
The route: Departure from Ushuaia (1) across the Drake Passage to Portal Point (2) (click to enlarge)
Marked destinations: Portal Point (2,) Foster Plateau (3), Victory Glacier (4), Pitt Point (4), Detroit Plateau (5), Foster Plateau (6), Argentine station San Martin (7) and Peterman Island (8). All maps courtesy of transantartica.blogspot.com (click to enlarge)
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Heads up: Cristian and Mario for Antarctic Peninsula kayak, ski and climb expedition
Posted: Jul 30, 2009 07:29 am EST
(TheOceans.net/ThePoles.com) During November 2009 til January 2010, two Chilean kayakers and climbers, Cristian Donoso and Mario Sepúlveda, will attempt a self-sufficient kayak voyage and sledge-hauling and climbing expedition at the Antarctic Peninsula.
1600 km on sea and snow
In November, Cristian and Mario will cross the Drake Passage on board the ship ‘Antarctic Dream’ to get to the Antarctic Peninsula from where they will start their expedition.
They explained their mission on their website: “These two explorers will seek to complete an itinerary of 1600 kilometers, following a maritime and terrestrial route never tried before that will take them for the coast and the highest summits of the Mountain chain of the Antarctic Andes.”
The two men will use their kayaks as sleds when they travel on land and on the mountains.
The main goal
“The main goal of this expedition will be to alert the public about the effects of global warming on the Antarctic coast,” they stated.
“In order to achieve it we will make a photographic and audiovisual register of landscapes and wildlife of this Antarctic region, from the deep and non-disturbing perspective of a kayak expedition.”
The photographic material will eventually be put together in a documentary film, a book, articles and a website that will show the consequences of global warming on the wildlife and sceneries of the Antarctic Peninsula the team added.
During the 2009-10 Antarctic season Cristian Donoso and Mario Sepúlveda will be kayaking, skiing and climbing around and on the Antarctic Peninsula. The approximate distances will be, in kayak, 850 km, on land/snow 750 km; total, 1600 km. Estimated time 80 – 110 days.
“Cristian Donoso and Mario Sepúlveda already had tackled both other challenges of great logistic complexity, in the north and south of Chile,” stated their website.
“In the frame of an expedition of 2000 kilometres in kayak realized in 2007, they achieved the first access, navigation and voyage of the Lake Greve and his river of outlet, acceding to the zone by the Plateau of the Patagonian Southern Ice Field and by a mountainous cord totally free of any previous human incursion.”
“Cristian Donoso led the more extensive voyage in kayak made in Antarctic, and the first self-sufficient expedition in kayak that climbed a mountain in this continent. He has tackled near 50 expeditions in Patagonia during the last 16 years, acceding to sectors never before explored.”
“Also he has done several expeditions along the Mountain chain of the Andes, Mata Atlántica and Polynesia. In 2006 he earned the Rolex Awards for Enterprise in the category Exploration and Discovery.”
In 2008-09 Cristian Donoso and Claudio Scarletta (from Argentina) explored the Antarctic Peninsula by kayak.
The 2009-10 route courtesy of the website:
Crossing Drake's sea and passing among the Islands Shetland of the South, the ‘Antarctic Dream’ will leave the explorers in Portal Point, located on the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, where they will establish the first Base Camp. From there they will climb the Antarctic Andes up to the Foster Plateau, where they will leave a deposit with food.
On return at the sea, they will initiate a voyage in kayak that will take them to the north end of the continent. Passing though Antarctic Channel and Erebus and Terror Gulf, they will get to Pitt Point, close to the base of the Victory Glacier, where they will establish the second Base Camp.
From that top they will cross the glacier and it's field of cracks, raising the kayaks and other equipments up to the Detroit Plateau, where they will give beginning to a terrestrial voyage of 700 km.
Following the line of the levels and the highest summits of the Antarctic Andes, and getting supplies at the deposit left in the Foster Plateau, the explorers will advance with skis and crampons up to Bay Daisy, dragging the kayaks like pulkas.
In Margarita Bay they will return to the sea, and paddling through the edge of the same mountains, which summits before explored, will advance towards the north up to reaching the Petermann Island, where they will be gathered by the Antarctic Dream.
Along the whole voyage the expeditionaries will be documenting on video and photographs the effects of the Climatic Change on the Antarctic sceneries and ecosystems, complementing this way the records obtained by the Antarctic Kayak Expedition 2008-2009.
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