Cayman’s polar explorer hits the ice again

Ice Cool in action in Antarctica

Ice Challenger team at the South Pole with US Base
representatives

Andrew Moon flies the Cayman flag at the South Pole
for the second time in two years

Friday,  January 6, 2006

As a resident of the rather balmy South Sound the fact that Andrew Moon is a polar explorer is even more surprising.

Mr Moore has once again completed an exciting challenge in the icy wilds of the Antarctic as part of an international expedition named Ice Challenger which successfully drove a wheeled vehicle from the Antarctic coast near Patriot Hills to the South Pole in record time. And although the weather was unseasonably warm for the South Pole – 10 degrees is a little cooler than the Cayman Islands.

The Ice Challenger expedition was officially recognised by the Guinness World Records as an attempt on the existing record of a vehicular land crossing of Antarctica of 24 days set in 1992.

Only a handful of expeditions have successfully travelled from the coast to the South Pole, the first expedition being led by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1958 using tractors with tracks and taking 82 days. 

The Ice Challenger team successfully smashed the record taking 2 days and 21 hours to cover the distance of 1138 kms, using a customised Ford Econoline truck. The truck was converted in Iceland to a 6 wheel drive vehicle with high air suspension, a modified 7.3 litre turbo charged diesel engine which could also run on aviation fuel, extra fuel tanks and with added state of the art satellite tracking, navigation and communications equipment.

The truck weighs 4.7 tons and uses extra wide 44” tires which can run at air pressures as low as 2lbs. The vehicle proved to be up to the task. From Iceland, the truck was delivered to the UK for loading with the team members’ polar kit, food rations and emergency gear, and then shipped to Buenos Aires from where three of the team members Andrew Moon, Jason de Carteret and Gunner Ehilsson drove it 3400 kms to Punta Arenas in the south of Chile. 

In mid December, the entire team, truck and equipment were airlifted from Punta Arenas by Ilyushin 76 aircraft to Patriot Hills near the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the starting point of their record breaking attempt. The team took advantage of the first few days in Antarctica to test the vehicle, the route and their equipment and systems.

This included an 800km drive in 24 hours to establish a forward fuel cache for the record breaking attempt. 

Ice Challenger set off from the coast line with 1.5 tons of fuel in internal tanks and barrels. A lot of research had been done on the route for the trip including using charts, aerial photographs and coordinates provided by the Chilean military.

With his sailing navigational experience, Andrew Moon plotted a route using GPS coordinates and waypoints to establish the safest land crossing to the South Pole, bearing in mind all the natural hazards including crevasses and the challenging terrain of mountain ranges, ice fields and escarpments. 

On 11 December all was set and the team departed Patriot Hills at midday local time, heading initially to the east to avoid large crevasse fields near the Patriot Hills and Independence Range mountains, before turning south, keeping approximately 40 miles clear of the mountain ranges they were to pass. 

This was necessary because of the crevasse fields that are to be found along the base of the mountain range. The team experienced long hours of bone jarring rough surface conditions with deep soft snow as well as fields of rugged ice formations up to 10 feet high along the track which had to be negotiated. As they reached the polar plateau at around 9000 ft they had to skirt the western end of a large crevasse field on the Pecora Escarpment and this included a period of walking ahead of the vehicle to test the ground.

Only one snow bridge across a relatively small crevasse caved in under the weight if the truck but it was crossed safely having raised team members adrenalin. 

The unseasonably warm temperatures of around -10 degrees on the Plateau meant that driving was slower than originally expected as the snow was softer but the team drove constantly, catnapping in the back when not driving or navigating. 

The vehicle and team members were pushed to the limit ploughing through soft snow at over 10,000 feet. An engine breakdown of a seized bearing was soon fixed, as was a tire which came off a rim due to the low pressure used to counter the soft conditions. 

The Ice Challenger team arrived at the South Pole in 69 hours, smashing the previous record, and were warmly greeted by the inhabitants of the US South Pole station who could not believe their eyes when a group of men in a van drove up!

The Americans have been working on their own overland route to the Pole and their expedition has just arrived after taking 4 years and many millions of dollars of funding for their route from the other side of the Continent.

The expedition was able to establish a new route to the South Pole, gaining first hand knowledge of surface conditions and the route will be used in the future to restock fuel depots for aircraft flown in Antarctica which up to now have had to be restocked by air at enormous cost.

The idea for the expedition was 8 months in planning and came about after 3 of the team members were in Antarctica 12 months ago and saw a failed attempt of a similar expedition using Land Rovers. 

Andrew Moon (who has now flown the Cayman flag twice at the South Pole) was one of those team members who skied to the South Pole in December 2004 and harboured a strong desire to return. His fellow team mates Jason de Carteret and Andrew Reagan had a similar desire and the record attempt was developed from their first hand knowledge of local conditions. 

These three were joined by Richard Griffiths, Andrew Miles (videographer) and Gunner Ehilsson (mechanic). The team is producing a video documentary of their attempt and will use their expedition to increase public knowledge of the Antarctic continent and the importance of its protection.

Antarctica is larger than North America and is the coldest, and windiest place on earth with 90 percent of the world’s fresh water in the polar ice cap which is up to 15000 feet thick in places. More information is available at www.icechallenger.co.uk or from Andrew Moon andrew@moon.ky.

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