An American's Grand Slam by Ryan Waters

Author:Ryan Waters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Falcon Guides
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

‌‌Journal Entry

82 08.619 N

50 45.008 E

11/26/09

Day 14

Skied 16 Miles

Thanksgiving Day. The Dufek Massif is getting closer. Today was calm, with absolutely zero wind all day. We started out in normal ski clothes and our normal outerwear layers, but by the end of the day, we were down to just wool tops, a headband, and wearing no gloves. It was literally hot. We climbed a good bit, and I believe we are camping tonight on the coast of the mainland of the Antarctica continent buried down below the surface of thousands of years of snow and ice. We are finally off the ocean ice! Yahhhooo! Cecilie has nicknamed this place “Costa del Sol,” the sun coast. It is incredibly beautiful with infinite white all around, only broken by the lonesome Pensacola Mountains out our tent door. Silent out now, only sun on the tent walls. It’s Thanksgiving Day, and I am so far away from home. Our feet are in pain. Cecilie has a terrible blister on her toe but remains cheerful and simply describes it like this: I just have chubby and social feet. All my toes want to be together. This is the simple smiles and the comfort of the tent.

Thanksgiving was a notable turning point. The Dufek Massif looked close enough to touch, just 3.8 nautical miles away from our lovely little campsite. The tent was warm and happy, and we were next to mountains that only a handful of people had ever seen, let alone experienced, touched, and admired. We slept that night perched close to the Davis Valley. This specially protected area holds Floridas Pond, the Western Hemisphere’s most southerly freshwater pond. We both were primed mentally and physically to dive deep into the crossing.

We left camp on the morning of November 28, eager to ascend to the polar ice cap at the top of the Pensacola Mountains and finally be on the Antarctic Plateau, where the main part of our journey would take place. The morning was incredibly beautiful and crisp. Our goal was to move our camp and sleds up a massive rise to stage the next part of the journey. We skied for a couple of hours and, just before the base of the hill, reached a fantastic blue ice patchwork that extended for several hundred meters in all directions. We could not ski across it, so we switched to the crampons we had in our sleds specifically for climbing the hill that lay ahead. The experience of pulling my heavy sled across that luminous ice was exhilarating, as it began to glide with much less effort.

When we reached the base of the 500-foot vertical rise that lay directly above us, it was difficult to imagine pulling our sleds up such a steep slope. It had been difficult enough skiing on flat terrain with them. We decided to go forward using the technique of two people pulling one sled. Clipping both our pulling lines on one sled, we set off with spirit to attack the hill.

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