A medical team has evacuated Norwegian mother and daughter Kathinka and Emma Gyllenhammar from Antarctica following an accident just a couple of hours from their finish point. Kathinka Gylenhammer fell while kite-skiing through sastrugi, fracturing her pelvis and ribs.
Slow going from the Pole
The pair had set off from Union Glacier in November, on an interesting dual-discipline Antarctic expedition. For the first 55 days and 1,265km, they skied, arriving at the South Pole on January 9. Then, from the Pole, they started kite-skiing the return leg. This return trip proved slow going, with little wind and often poor visibility.
“We’ve been averaging only 1–3 m/s [4 to 11kph] of wind each day, and that’s been the case ever since we started,” they wrote on January 16. “That means progress is painfully slow, and it also takes a lot more effort to generate any speed at all.”
Despite this, by day 65 on the ice, they had almost finished. After kiting all day, they were just 40km from their pickup point and were skiing down a long slope. About halfway down, when Emma turned to adjust her equipment, she realized something was wrong; her mother was no longer behind her.
Because of the poor visibility, she couldn’t immediately locate Kathinka, and so Emma began trudging back up the slope. As she climbed, she spotted a flash of light; Kathinka was using her compass to signal her location. Running now, Emma found her mother in the snow, legs curled awkwardly beneath her, unable to move. At first, Emma thought Kathinka might be paralyzed.
Evacuated to Chile
Emma set up the tent to shield her mother from the wind and then triggered their SOS device. It took a few hours for help to arrive, but eventually a plane landed beside them. Medical professionals evacuated the duo, first to Union Glacier and then to a hospital in Chile.
Thankfully, Kathinka’s injuries don’t appear as severe as Emma feared, though three pelvis fractures and one fractured rib are bad enough. Kathinka’s sled had caught between sastrugi, which stopped it dead, while the kite pulled her forward.
“She was kind of pulled in two directions at the same time,” Emma told the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
