Photo. Rune
Gjeldnes is dancing on the
ice to celebrate the good progress.
© SEAL
Adventure ANS & Rune Gjeldnes:
Extreme Planet - Seal .
It was dramatic on day 79 (20.01.2006 ). One ski was left and Rune was in
trouble! He lost one of the skies during kiting (source: from report on
his website: Extreme Planet -
Seal).
Rune has brought two pair of skies, one pair for kiting and one pair
for walking. When he is kiting the walking skies is strapped on the sled.
During kiting on all the sastrugi, one of the skies fell off the sledge.
The walking skies are extremely important in the descent of the glacier.
Glaciers are full of crevasses, often hidden under thin snow bridges. Using the
skies is vital to prevent falling trough the snow bridges.
Rune has a backup route down to the coast, but that
involves climbing over a mountain, and that will be much harder and much more
time consuming. Rune will make the route decision after he reaches the top of
the glacier.
Stein Morten Lund, 22 January
2005
Additional information
Ousland skied 2845 kilometres
across Antarctica alone and unsupported in 1996 - 97. At the time, the longest
ski expedition in distance was covered.
Before
Rune broke the record on his current expedition The Longest March, the previous record was held by Eirik
Sønneland and Rolf Bae, who skied 3800 kilometres across Antarctica in 2000 -
2001.
On his expedition, the Longest March, Rune reached the
Geographical South Pole the 20th December 2005 at 12.46 GMT. At
this time Rune covered 2200 kilometres alone and without re supplies during
his 45 days in Antarctica. This is his first expedition to the South
Pole.
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