The Blog

by Brian Newham. Regular followers may remember the blog many months ago about our food. We started our journey with enough food for a year. It is organised in bags and each bag contains what we need for a day. There are a few exceptions to that as there are some items which cannot freeze and they are stored in the caboose whilst the bags are stored outside in aluminium Zarges boxes. Each box…

by Hugh Bowring. We did it! At 17:38 on Tuesday afternoon expedition HQ’s Tris Kaye set foot on French sand to complete the Channel Arm Bandits’ relay swim in 15hrs and 28mins. From my own perspective it was unquestionably the most physically demanding thing I have ever done. I hated most of it, but loved the rest, averaging out as pretty awesome. 40-hour stretch with no sleeping and starting my…

Here are a few pics of the aurora taken by Ian Prickett on Tuesday. We hope you enjoy them.

Blizzards are a frequently occurring Antarctic phenomenon. During a typical blizzard very little if any snow actually falls but rather snow is picked up and blown along the surface by strong winds. In many instances this can result in a complete whiteout. During a whiteout the horizon can disappear altogether giving no fixed reference point, thus navigation under these conditions can b…

We recently shared the news that Hugh Bowring & Tris Kaye from the expedition’s Operations HQ are part of a four-man relay hoping to swim across the English Channel in aid of The Coldest Journey’s chosen charity Seeing is Believing. The team, known as the Channel Arm Bandits, will hopefully be setting off from Dover in just over 6 hours from now if the weather permits, at 0230hrs Tuesday…

It’s been a lovely day with clear blue skies but the temperature has remained stubbornly in the low minus 40s and the wind above 30 knots. Several of us have been out for local walks but you need to keep your jumper on. This picture shows the sun dipping behind a haze of drifting snow. By Brian…

We are now waiting for a period of stable weather before we can make plans to move north. Having been out of action for three months, the two Caterpillar D6Ns are going to need a lot of thawing out and preparation before they are ready to start, which is likely to take two days or more. Then there is the challenge of digging out all of the fuel scoots which have become quite submerged over t…

by Brian Newham. It’s now seven months since the ship left us at the coast, and as we started our journey and worked our way up onto the polar plateau in the advancing winter it was very obvious how isolated we were. Our nearest neighbours are 470km away at the Russian base of Novolazarevskaya with the Indian base of Maitri very close to them, but the reality is that it would be extremely…

At 16,066 feet (4,897 meters) Vinson Massif is the highest mountain in Antarctica and the 8th most prominent mountain in the world. It is located about 750 miles west of the South Pole. Vinson was the last discovered, last named, and last climbed of the ‘Seven Summits’ (the highest mountains on the seven continents). It’s also the most remote and coldest of the Seven Summits to climb.

Q: How did you all feel when Ran had to pull out? (by Simon Davies) A: It was a big surprise and something that none of us had considered. Despite that, the decision to continue with the attempt was straightforward and unanimous. Within the remaining team we had all the skills that we needed although we had to drop the original skiing element because we were a man short. Importantly, we also had…