Explorers Return Home from Antarctic Adventure |
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A six man British Army expedition, sponsored by the FlyB airline, has successfully made the first crossing of the Antarctic Forbidden Plateau and arrived home from their two-month adventure on Wednesday 23rd February, with their leader declaring he was looking forward to a pint of beer.
Major Richard Pattison of the Royal Anglian Regiment, said that the team all had pretty lucky escapes in the course of the 70-mile trek, during which they braved gale force winds and temperatures as low as minus 22C. |
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The Expedition was made with the full support of the Scott Polar Research Institute and included glaciological and survey field studies programmes. The team also managed to achieve two firsts in the field of exploration: As well as crossing the Forbidden Plateau, named by British explorer Sir Wally Herbert in 1957 after an abortive attempt to traverse it, they also became the first to climb Mount Walker, at 8,500ft the highest peak on British Antarctic Territory.
The plateau was the last uncrossed section of the Antarctic Peninsula which was so remote that it has never been properly mapped. The team had first to climb, dragging their sledges and supplies from sea level up the seldom-climbed Reclus Peninsula, through ice falls and unstable ice towers, called seracs, across glaciers and crevasses before reaching the Antarctic Peninsula Plateau. They then had to man-haul the sledges, which weighed up to 200lbs and ski across the Forbidden Plateau.
Having completed the crossing, the team’s support yacht was prevented from making their planned pick up because of unusually dense ice. Instead, the team were forced to pioneer a new descent route from the Antarctic Peninsula. This involved a 3 mile descent of a previously unexplored glacier with steep ice falls and crevasses which proved to be a further challenge.
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Speaking after their plane landed at RAF Brize Norton following a 16-hour flight, Major Pattison said: One of the dangers is crossing crevasses and the week before we arrived, someone was killed in a crevasse fall in one of the areas where we were.
Forging your way across new glaciers did present additional risks, part of that being crevasses, and a couple of us took tumbles into those. But it’s part of the teamwork and the training that means were all here to tell the story.
At one stage, he was dragged towards a precipice when his sledge slipped off an ice bridge and was forced to dig in with his fingernails to stop himself being pulled down. When asked what he was most looking forward to about returning home, Major Pattison said: A good pint of beer will go down quite nicely. He will not be able to relax for long though as he leaves on Saturday for a six-month tour of duty in the Balkans.
Sergeant Steve Ayers, 32, of Darlington, County Durham, said that a basic survival instinct had pulled him through the difficult days. Speaking of the beauty of the landscape, Sergeant Ayers, who serves with the Defence School of Ammunition, added: You realise that six individuals pale into insignificance when you see the magnificence of the place. You just can’t describe it. The best feeling is coming down. We had four or five very, very scary days. Things could have gone seriously wrong and the sense of achievement of actually getting through them was better than anything else |
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His wife Georgina, 27, said she was glad he was home and said that she saw the risk of the adventure as part of his job. He’s been there before and knew what he was letting himself in for, she said. I just let him get on with it. I know he won’t do anything stupid.
The other members of the team were Clive Waghorn, 57, a retired Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander, of Dunfermline, Fife; Captain Mark Wyldbore, 32, of Woking, Surrey, serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps; Marcus Harriott, 41, of Guildford, Surrey, a Corporal with the Territorial Army’s Honourable Artillery Company in London; and Lieutenant Chris Wright, 27, of Bradford, serving with the Northern Ireland Training Regiment.
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