The conditions have been really good here in Chamonix lately, no huge dumps, but nice refills every 2-3 days. It looks like this coming week is going to be much the same, sun for a few day’s in between storms. And the best thing; there are no people here at the moment. You have to love January when it is like now! Here is a little movie from the other day in Vallorcine:

After Jabed Peak, we decided to keep moving as south as we were planning on going, and then work our way back north for the next three weeks. On the way south we cruised through the Lemaire channel, that can be best described like sailing up the Chamonix valley at an altitude of 2000m! Amazing! Huge peaks on both sides, but not much ski potential as most of the stuff was way too steep or guarded by huge serac’s. We sailed past Mt. Scott which was on our list for our way back, and saw a very interesting Colouire than we marked in the memory bank, but our objective was a very nice peak called Mt. Demaria. A perfect ramp, not super steep  but a classic ski-touring line.

Mt.Debreea

We decided to give it a try right away as the weather was perfect, and geared up and got in the Zodiac’s , but as soon as we got on snow, it was apparent that we were to late in the day, the snow was rotten and even with skis on we were sinking down to our knees. We decided to come back the next morning and climb it when it was still frozen.

The view south from the summit!

The next morning we were back on it early, and scored perfect refrozen snow for the ascent. Boot packing felt easy at the low altitude, and we had a blast climbing. It felt liberating to get off the boat and move around on a familiar element. Even though we started climbing at 8am in the morning, already by 10 o’clock the sun was high on the sky, and it was warm enough to wear a T-shirt if it hadn’t been for the non existing ozone layer down there.

Five Star Corn!

We were already so fried from the first day, that we were all covering every little bit of skin from the sun. Sunscreen was not enough, so we were all wearing bandanas in front of our red faces. A slight breeze on the summit ridge felt great, and cooled us down while we looked further south for new potential objectives.Not much to say about the ski down: 750 vertical meters of “Five Star Corn” straight into the Zodiac!

Chris and Andrea waiting for the Zodiac.

Our first day in Antarctica we cruised from the Merrcuire islands and down to a place called Port Lockeroy, a small bay with hundreds of Penguins. The weather was pretty grey, but we decided to get on land and stretch the legs after 5 days on the boat. As with pretty much anything in Antarctica the area was heavily glaciated so we brought all the gear, meaning other than normal ski touring equipment; ropes harnesses, ice axes and crampons.

Chris and Andrea getting the crampons on.

After about an hour of skinning up a pretty mellow glacier we saw a nice little couloir with dark rock walls. We were all feeling good, and this looked like an easy little outing to get warmed up for bigger objects later. We put crampons on and started boot-packing up the couloir . As we got higher it also got progressively steeper, our estimates before we started climbing, was that it might be around 45˚, but half way up it was at least 50˚, and it still looked like it was getting steeper higher up. 30 meters from the top it must have been 60˚ and the last meters looked like they were close to vertical.

Andrea and me getting into some steep terrain near the top of the couloir.

We decided to put a rope on, and I started leading up what was more frozen rime than snow, because we only had one ice axe each I borrowed someone’s tool, so I had two for the climb, the picks didn’t give any hold in the rime, so I had to bury the shafts in as deep as possible and trench my way up.

Traversing the summit ridge, Mt. Francais 2760m in the background.

. From the summit ridge, we spotted a nice looking line down, a little to the side from were we came up. We decided that this would be a better option on the way down, than the 80 frozen rime variation. The snow was pretty decent wind packed powder still probably 50 steep, but very edge-able. A little walk had turned into a decent day, and a great warm up for the rest of the trip. We also had our first, but not last, lesson in ; “everything in Antarctica is steeper than it looks”.

Andrea on the Summit.

It seems like magazine editors loves Alex Klun’s shoots this year. The same picture have been on two covers, first Skiing US and now Brant (a really cool Swedish mag.) You have to give it to Alex; he is the flash master! For this shoot Alex had two flashes set up, one behind and one from below on a side angle.

Due to technical problems with our satellite internet set up on the boat, I was not able to update my blog while we were down in Antarctica, so I will do a detailed recap of the trip here over the next couple of weeks, with pictures and hopefully some small movie clips if my hard drive with all the footage starts working again. I will put in some of the coordinates from places we went to on the Peninsula in the blog, so if anyone is interested, you can copy/paste these into Google earth to se exactly were we went.

Going to Antarctica is pretty exciting; doing it in a sailboat crossing the Drake Passage is even more exciting! The Drake Passage is the body of water between Cape Horn on the tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula and the shortest crossing to Antarctica. Still its 1000km of the roughest waters on the planet. Because there is no land anywhere around the world at the latitude of the Drake, the Antarctic circumpolar current spin’s around carrying huge amounts of water, waves and wind.

We had all heard stories of the Drake’s winds and waves, and as we left Ushuaia I’m sure everyone was feeling a bit of  “butterfly’s” in the stomach. There was a lot of discussions among our group about who had taken what seasick medicines and how much. Andrea and myself shared one of the patches. I have been seasick twice in my life, and it’s the worst feeling ever! But both times was due to the fact that I was stuck inside a boat and couldn’t see the horizon line. If I’m able to be somewhere were I can see what the boat is doing, and if I go down stairs go straight to bed. I’m normally fine, and gradually I can start eating and do other things.

As soon as we came out of the protected waters off the Beagle Channel, the waves got really sharp and fairly big, and the boat rocked pretty hard, the movement was more due to the sharpness of the waves, than the size. There is a shelf around south America, so when the waves from the Drake hits the shallower waters the waves get jacked up, the Drake passage is more than 4000m deep and around Cape Horn the waters are about 200m deep. Almost instantly 7 or 8 of our team of 10 got sick. At one point it was only the Captain and myself that were mobile, Chris and Andrea got over it pretty fast but for a few of the others it lasted almost all the way to Antarctica. Not good! As we left the Cape Horn behind us the waves went from short sharp ones to giant long valleys. The boat moved much better in these kinds of waves, and it made it possible to get some food in us and also get rid of some old food. We shared watches, but since more than half of our crew was more or less immobilized with seasickness, we shard the watches between Ben “the Captain” Skye ( Bens Girlfriend) Chris, Andrea and myself.

There isn’t much to look at out in the Drake other than water and waves, but every now and then we would have a Albatross  or a Giant Petrel fly around the boat. These amazing birds have a wingspan of up to 2,5m, and would fly so close to the waves, we couldn’t believe they didn’t miss calculate and crash land sometimes.

At about 62° south we started seeing the first icebergs, and gradually they became more frequent as we got closer to land. We reached the Peninsula between Brabant and Anverse Island and moored in a nice protected spot on the Melchior islands (64°19’25.52”S  62°56’02.29W)