Morning. My routine. I wake up at 6 in the morning, and roll over in my sleeping bag to greet the frost on the inside walls of the small mountaineering tent I am in. As I move, the frost falls on my face, the icy crystals melting, dripping down my neck. My morning shower!! It is minus 30 degrees Centigrade outside. Staying inside my bag, I wriggle over, light the stove and begin the process of melting snow into water for our breakfast. This melting will take an hour at least, as I need a whole bucket of snow to make a few cupfuls of water. Every time we melt water we store this most precious of liquids in our Nalgene water bottles.
  We all pile into the tent for breakfast, porridge with big spoonfuls of butter added to give us the fatty calories we need for the day. We then race each other to pack our equipment, stuffing sleeping bags and Thermarests. I jump into my Lowe Alpine wind suit. I am wearing two layers of Lowe underwear, Lowe fleece pants, a Lowe fleece jacket... and now comes the moment when we all jump out of our warm tents, and hurry to pack up, so that we can be warm again, this time by skiing for the next 8 hours.

BREAKING TRAIL
  For several hours I break trail, pulling my sled through the soft snow. I am moving at a mile an hour, working hard and sweating. We then take turns breaking trail as the altitude (9,000 feet) really saps our strength. We stop every hour for a few minutes to drink, pee, and have a snack. We cannot stop for long as we cool off and fingers start to freeze. I check the faces of the rest of the group for frostbite, occasionally a small white spot of frozen skin will appear on a nose or cheek, and if not warmed up will spread. This hard area of frozen skin is immediately warmed with a bare hand until it turns a bright pink. It may blister in a few hours, or it may just be sore like the burn that it is for a few days. I snack on a Christmas dinner of crackers, frozen cheese and small pieces of frozen chocolate that I have to suck on for a minute before the flavor starts to flow.

24 HOURS OF DAYLIGHT
  As we get closer to the Pole, we are getting closer to the center of rotation of the earth, so the sun moves up and down in the sky less and less each day. It now stays above the horizon all 24 hours, circling us, and, when we are finally at the Pole, the sun will stay at exactly the same distance above the horizon all 24 hours. This can make sleeping difficult, and we lose all track of time - the only way for me to tell the time is my watch.

THE END OF THE DAY
  Tired, our faces and clothing frost encrusted, we stop after 8 hours for the day. Immediately the work begins. We have to work fast to keep warm. We build snow walls out of blocks sawn from the hard snow and pile them up to make a wall two feet high on the windward side of the tents to protect them. We rush up the tents, throw our sleeping bags and food inside and jump in so that we can light our stoves. The manufacturers do not recommend cooking with an open flame inside a highly flammable nylon tent, however the option of cooking outside is very unpleasant so we go ahead. Soon the tent warms up, off come layers of clothing, and the melting frost drips off beards, hair and jackets. We will start with a soup and and then a stew of rice, cheese, dehydrated vegetables, followed by dessert of a cookie or two, and a cup of tea.

NAVIGATION
  How do we find the South Pole? There are no stars visible, and the sun does not give us any indication. The compass points to the magnetic South Pole which is over a thousand miles away!! This makes it very difficult using normal means. Now that Global Positioning Systems are available, we are able to find our position and the direction to the South Pole by the push of a button. We have to keep the batteries for the GPS warm otherwise we are lost!

	Martyn

Thursday, 23 December, 1999 TO ANTARCTICA!   To travel into Antarctica we fly by specially-equipped Hercules aircraft from here into an ice runway on a glacier by the edge of the continent. This six-hour flight takes me across the Drake Passage and over the ice-encrusted Antarctic Peninsula and Antarctica's highest peak, Mount Vinson.  Our landing on the ice runway is like no other aircraft landing, the plane bounces and shakes on the rough ice, then disappears in a cloud of flying snow, caused by the reverse thrust of the engines.  When all settles down we taxi over to an isolated tent camp thousands of miles away from the nearest village. As I scramble from the back door the cold and wind remind me that I am now in the middle of Antarctica, it is minus 11 degrees C with a 10 mile an hour wind.  The Patriot Hills tent camp is a cluster of portable buildings 700 miles from the South Pole. Located in the lee of a range of hills and next to a patch of bare ice that is swept clear of snow by the constant winds that blow from the Antarctic plateau. Here all the climbers and explorers and scientists pause before departing for their journeys to other places. This desolate camp is the summer home of a motley crew of itinerant pilots, doctors, and wilderness guides, who staff the camp, providing rescue services and logistics to expeditions as far away as a thousand miles.  Each expedition radio's in their position each day, or is tracked by satellite and their position and status monitored at the camp. There are almost a dozen expeditions out climbing skiing and exploring that this team is responsible for.   Patriot Hills Camp

PUNTA ARENAS

Martyn Williams here. I am in Punta Arenas at the Southern end of Chile right now, preparing to fly into Antarctica. Punta Arenas is a town of 100,000 people who support the vast interior of Patagonia with its sheep ranches and logging. This windy little town is huddled under a rounded mountain against the almost constant wind that blows along the Magellan Straits. It is an open landscape, the local beech trees are often bent over from years of wind. I have seen little children windblown so much they hang horizontally from lamp-posts and there is a joke that the locals don't throw away their garbage they air mail it to Argentina which is the next country east of here! Environmental consciousness about garbage is beginning to take hold here, however, still some fields are ringed with plastic bags tangled in the fences.

It is midsummer here and there are flowers, big blue lupines, yellow dandelions out in the fields, the sheep have just had babies and I can see their lambs are playing joyfully. I am preparing the sleds we will haul to the South Pole; checking equipment (including Nalgene water bottles) and making sure the food has all the calories we need for our journey. The plan is to fly in a few days to Patriot Hills, a seasonal camp run by Adventure Network International at 80 degrees south. Today the weather at the camp was atrocious, minus 12 degrees C with hurricane force winds that were making the buildings rattle, and the occupants shake from nervousness!