Posted on 11/21/2018 3:52:26 PM PST by bitt
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile A weather window opened on Halloween morning, the typical stiff winds and polar fog relenting, and the flight to Antarctica was cleared for takeoff.
For nearly a week, Colin OBrady, a 33-year-old American adventure athlete, and British Army Captain Louis Rudd, 49, had been waiting in Punta Arenas, Chile, on the Strait of Magellan, near the shattered end of the South American continent.
In separate buildings blocks away from one another, they had been immersed in similar tasks: weighing and re-bagging their freeze-dried provisions and sorting through polar-grade gear.
Their stashes included sleeping bags good for conditions up to minus 40 Fahrenheit, portable solar panels, cross-country skis, hand-held satellite phones and modems, and a GPS tracker programmed with way points to lead them step by frozen step across the highest, driest and by far the coldest continent on earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Mid 70s and penguins dying of heat exhaustion.
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And even in their failure, they found honor and recognition. And while it was doubtful - they all returned. Amazing stuff.
On another thread it showed their trip “across” Antarctica. It shows them starting at the east(?) end of a bay - hitting the south pole, then making an almost right hand turn due north to hit the end of another bay.
I was envisioning them crossing the entire continent at it’s widest part. But still....
“Summer” on the high Antarctic ice plateau is about like your average day in January in Wisconsin, mind you it never gets dark so you can always see the bad weather that’s coming at you.
Whatever you think of global warming, the ice shelves around Antarctica are actually expanding in recent years and the continent has only shown a bit of marginal warming on the Antarctic Peninsula south of Tierra del Fuego, and that’s nowhere near where these guys are going (good luck to them, make a will).
Makes me wonder...
Well; to be accurate; ANY way you leave the South Pole heads you North!!
Oh, great. How many million can we spend to rescue them?
But I've never heard it described or seen any pictures of the way the Moon's orbit looks like then.
UP TO minus 40? Innumerate putz. NYT, you just keep getting better and better. No wonder no kids cannot read, nobody knows how to write literate sentences, not even those PAID to write.
Sorry; but this NOT correct.
The moon and sun have nearly identical angular diameters. That's how we get Solar eclipses.
But how is that possible? Isn’t the earth supposed to be flat? (I am being sarcastic.)
Probably not. But a crevasse can swallow one or both of them instantly, and they would vanish forever. Those things are fairly common and well known north of the equator.
They’re just stealing my thunder from my upcoming attempt to scuba dive to the North Pole.
These guys could do it.
Polar Special Part 1 - Top Gear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNkvASxfEWQ
#4 I expect them to be killed by snowballs by the Penguin tribe which shuns outsiders.....
#25 Makes me wonder...
WHY?
They are married.....
Yeah - I was trying to figure out a way to say that.
Amazing adventure. And VERY scientific. I’ve been reading up on the American (Colin) and on his Twitter (he posts every day on his trip - day 18 or so now).
He worked with some food company that made some food bars especially for his body. A guy just awhile ago died 900 miles into the 960 mile trip! He radioed for help, but by the time they got there he was dead. Still had plenty of food. An autopsy revealed that he had some immune response due to the food he was eating. It caused a slight iritation in his stomach. Not a big deal under normal conditions, but crossing the pole his body couldn’t handle it.
Somehow they did all sort of tests on Colin and figured out what might irritate his stomach and stayed away from that.
Of course that is just ONE thing that might kill you out there. The bars make up half of his 8,000 calories a day. Oatmeal and freeze-dried food make up the rest.
A couple of guys went across together and had 5,000 calories a day each, but still lost 40 to 50 pounds of weight each. They burned an average of 7,000 calories a day. The pair had some way of testing how many calories they burned.
The Scott party, that made the South Pole, but died as they returned, ate something like 4,500 calories a day.
And there is a balance between how much calories you carry (food), and how many calories you will burn carrying it.
In the future, quit placing 10 day old news in the news forum. Chat works
*GRIN*
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