ANTARCTIC NON-GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY NEWS
Tourism Industry |
Brief news items on Antarctic and sub-Antarctic
non-government expedition activities.
ANAN 61
Wednesday, 5 December 2001
News in this edition:
61-01 Limited DML tourist ops on offer, growth of activities anticipated.
61-02 Ross Sea fast-ice situation challenge for ship ops.
61-03 Alternative ship found for Bellingshausen clean-up.
61-04 Inland tourist-adventure activities commence.
61-05 Medicines dropped to around-the-world racing yacht.
61-06 Joint venture focusing on Cape services, DML air link.
61-07 Shackleton's South Georgia route again crossed.
61-08 Danco Coast climbers depart for the Peninsula.
61-09 Operator interest in 2003 eclipse grows.
61-10 Photography the focus of eight-week South Georgia visit.
61-11 English translation of trans-Antarctic book available.
61-12 Coming Events Relevant to Non-Government Activities.
LIMITED DML TOURIST OPS ON OFFER; GROWTH OF ACTIVITIES PROPOSED
[ANAN-61/01]
A new series of visits by tourists to Dronning Maud Land (DML) from South Africa by air is expected to go ahead in limited form next month. The group behind the venture envisages slowly developing the operation over the next few years, with the range of 'on ice' activities thought likely to eventually expand to include flying visits to the South Geographic Pole (SGP).
Tourists are being offered the opportunity to fly from Cape Town to the blue-ice runway situated close to the Russian national program station Novolazarevskaya in late January [not compressed-snow surface as reported previously by this newsletter (ANAN-54/01, 29 August 2001)]. Up to forty places for paying passengers are currently available and the organisers say that there has been "considerable interest" in the venture from travel agents and others.
Three flights by a Ilyushin-76 [IL-76] heavy-lift jet aircraft are scheduled on the 4,120-km Cape-Novo route in 2001-02, the first being listed for 6 December, and the other two for 26 and 28 January, although the timing of each will be weather dependent (see ANAN-61/04 following and ANAN-54/01, 29 August 2001).
The prime aim of the air service is to provide a "quick intercontinental feeder link" for a number of national programs that operate in the DML region, any extra return from the inclusion of tourists on the flights being seen as a way of helping to reduce the 'per seat, per kilogram' costs incurred by the government programs who use the service.
The first flight this season has been "fully booked" for national program personnel, places being available for tourists on the January flights on a round-trip, 'thirty-six-hours-on-ice', basis. As a result, there will be little opportunity for tourist activities to extend much beyond the area close to Novolazarevskaya this season.
The Transworld Travel company (TWT) in South Africa has been appointed as agent for the tourist operation by the 'Antarctica Logistics Centre International' (ALCI), a new joint South African and Russian group that is operating the DML air-link (see ANAN-61/06 following).
Flights from Cape Town to DML were pioneered by the, now, US-based tour operator Adventure Network International (ANI), and they and what was once their sister company, Polar Logistics (PL) of the UK, have operated on the route in recent years. Both ANI and PL used the relatively 'weather friendly' 'Blue 1' ice runway further inland from Novolazarevskaya, but at last report neither was planning to fly to the region this season (ANAN-60/01, 21 November 2001).
TWT's John Sparks told ANAN last week that his company commenced work on the tourist project in 1998 and that it plans to "launch Antarctica as a holiday destination at most of the Travel Shows in Europe and the United States next year", offering visits to the ice in conjunction with opportunities for tours to locations in southern Africa.
Spark's company is currently marketing the January flights at a "special introductory" price of $US2,500 ex Cape Town for they see the operation this season as being in 'foundation mode'. In 2002-03 the cost of a basic four-day DML visit will rise to $US11,000 but John emphasised that longer stays will eventually be included if required by clients.
Once in Antarctica the tourists are to stay in two separate tent-based camps located a few kilometres from Novolazarevskaya. Together, the camps can support up to forty clients at any one time. Each camp will be several kilometres from the other and, in the future, tourists from each camp are unlikely to meet members of the other camp while 'on the ice', an arrangement designed to ensure that those who make the visits get a "true sense of what it is like to be in Antarctica".
While TWT says that accommodation at the camps will be of a basic standard, tents will be "fully equipped with stretchers, mats, sleeping bags, pillows and other features". Three to four people are to run each camp and the South African company's aim is "to provide a high level of food and general service for guests".
The infrastructure for the two camps is to be flown to Novolazarevskaya on this week's IL-76 flight. The camps are to be erected by TWT personnel in the next week or so in order to test out the set-up prior to arrival of the tourists in late January. Both camps will be de-commissioned at the end of summer and stored at Novolazarevskaya over winter. Russian station personnel will re-establish the camps before the first flight of the 2002-03 season and take them down and store them again for the following winter.
John Sparks says that plans call for the IL-76 that is conducting the January flights to wait at the Novolazarevskaya runway while tourists stay at the field camps over a 36-hour period. During that time only a limited number of local-area activities will be available to them, but commencing in 2002-03 visitors will be offered a wider range of experiences during the proposed four-day period on the continent.
Local area activities from next year are likely to include hiking, ice biking, ice golf, ice tennis, cross-country skiing, kite flying, orienteering, mountaineering, a sledging trip to the ice barrier, lectures on the environment, and various indoor games for times of bad weather". India's national program station Maitri is only five kilometres from Novolazarevskaya and visits to both facilities are likely to be of interest to the fly-in tourists.
In addition to events in the general area of the camps, what are said to be "daily excursions" by air to the coastline 75 km to the north, as well as the SGP 1,850 km to the south, are also to be offered as an "optional extra" sometime in the next few years.
No details are currently available as to the type of aircraft or vehicles that would be used for flights and surface journeys from the field camps. John Sparks says that the 'Basler 67' that is currently on charter to ANI (see ANAN-61/04 following) is to provide intra-continental flight support for national program personnel after they arrive from Cape Town, and that the use of that or similar aircraft by TWT in future seasons "is being explored" at this time.
Three IL-76 flights are currently scheduled on the Cape-Novo route in 2002-03, although the first is already fully booked, again by national program personnel. From 2003-04 onwards, ALCI is planning to operate up to five flights from Cape Town and hopes to expand tour operations accordingly (see ANAN-61/09 following).
The blue-ice runway, which is some 2,760 m in length and 60 m wide, lies at an elevation of 550 m and is located about twenty-five kilometres inland from Novolazarevskaya. Specialist personnel from the Russian national program are understood to have wintered there this year to support aircraft operations as the first ship to the area is not expected to arrive until sometime in the new year, after the flights have commenced.
John Sparks says that the Russian national program has carried out an 'extensive environmental evaluation' of runway operations and plans to monitor operations this season 'very closely'. He also said that Russia plans to provide details in an Information Paper to next September's Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ANAN-52/01, 1 August 2001).
The one-way flight time from Cape Town is around six hours, the aircraft having a 'point of no return' about an hour from Novolazarevskaya. As is the case for the Patriot Hills flights, weather conditions at Novolazarevskaya will be a critical factor in determining final flight schedules (see ANAN-61/04 following).
TWT is currently developing a web site that is expected to be available by the end of December at: http://www.transworldtourism.com
Significant areas of fast ice along the south-western coast of the Ross Sea are likely to present a challenge for national program and tour ship operations in that region over the next few months. Ice forecasters currently estimate that the unusual conditions, which are due to the presence of two very large icebergs north-east of Ross Island, are unlikely to ease this season.
Remote sensing and reconnaissance flights indicate that the fast-ice extends some 120 km from the coast between the Drygalski Ice Tongue and Ross Island. At this time of the year fast ice in that area is usually around 40 km wide, although in the past it has been as narrow as nine kilometres and as wide as seventy-five. Measurements also show that the ice is thicker than normal this season.
The US national program, which normally uses a single US Coast Guard ice-breaker to break a channel through the fast-ice so that cargo ships can resupply US and New Zealand national program stations McMurdo and Scott Base on Ross Island during January, is concerned enough about the situation to arrange for two breakers, the 'Polar Sea' and the 'Polar Star', to be assigned to the task this season.
Many of the sites that tour ships normally land their passengers at in the Ross Island area are currently well within the fast-ice zone. These include the historic huts at Cape Royds, Cape Evans and Hut Point, the two national program stations, Marble Point, and the Dry Valleys.
Two tour ships are scheduled to visit the Ross Island area this season; US company Quark Expeditions' 'Kapitan Khlebnikov' and New Zealand company Heritage Expeditions' 'Akademic Shokalskiy' (ANAN-58/02, 7 November 2001). A planned visit there of a third ship, the 'Sir Hubert Wilkins', was recently cancelled due to a "lack of participants" (ANAN-60/02, 21 November 2001).
Although 'Khlebnikov' is a powerful ice breaker, the cost and time involved in it breaking into fast-ice could limit the options available to voyage managers. The ship carries two helicopters that give it a significant advantage in heavy ice conditions. In normal circumstances they allow passengers to be flown ashore, although multiple sorties are needed to fly the 90-100 people that are often involved. Delivering that number over a distance of 120 km and managing them while ashore is, however, a complex, and potentially time-consuming, task.
Quark's ship is this week operating in the north-west of the Ross Sea on a voyage whose prime aim is to visit emperor penguin colonies along the coast as far south as Cape Washington. Cape Washington lies just to the north of the Drygalski Ice Tongue and while ice analyses show significant pack-ice off shore, it is not expected to present too many problems for the ship. Khlebnikov's second and third voyages of the season in mid-January and early February are, however, scheduled to visit the Ross Island area.
'Shokalskiy' is ice strengthened and has no significant ice-breaking capability. It is carrying the same all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) and sledges it used for the first time earlier this year to deliver passengers ashore at Capes Evans and Royds, and McMurdo station. Those trips involved trips of 8 to 25 km (ANAN-46/02 and 46/03, 9 May 2001), but the ATVs are unlikely to be used for longer distances. 'Shokalskiy' is scheduled to visit the Ross Island area in late January and mid-February.
The two large icebergs, which are referred to as C-16 and B-15 by the US National Ice Centre (NIC), are sheltering coastal areas south of the Drygalski Ice Tongue from the action of the easterly waves and wind and the off-shore winds that often break-up and limit fast-ice extent along that coast each summer.
Last week's NIC analysis indicates that B-15, which calved from the eastern end of the Ross Ice Shelf early last year (ANAN-39/02, 17 January 2001), is orientated north-south and that it stretches between Beaufort and Franklin Islands. C16, to its south-west, is right up against the north-eastern shore of Ross Island. A satellite image of the area taken on 29 November is currently available on line at: http://uwamrc.ssec.wisc.edu/amrc/iceberg.html
'Mission Antarctica' (MA), the non-government group that is assisting with the clean-up of Russia's Bellingshausen station on King George Island (KGI), is to use a Danish-registered ship over the next six weeks to remove around 1,000 tonnes of waste from the station and transport it back to Russia for recycling.
MA announced in August that it planned to charter the Russian vessel 'Bashmakov' to remove the waste during a three-voyage operation from Ushuaia, Argentina, however, it was forced to cancel that arrangement shortly after it was announced due to logistics and funding problems (ANAN-55/01, 12 September 2001). Those difficulties appear to have been overcome with the acquisition of the 77-m ice-strengthened cargo ship 'Anne Boye' for the operation. The vessel was built in 1985 in Denmark, and operated by the Hermann C. Boye Company of Marstal. It is of 1,500 gross registered tonnes and has a total hold capacity of just over 3,000 cubic metres. It arrived in Stanley in the Falkland Islands on 30 November after a 30-day voyage direct from the UK. Reports indicate that it is to arrive off Bellingshausen on 15 December, where it will remain anchored there while rubbish and other materials are loaded.
'Ann Boye' is to load the rubbish during a single six-week visit to KGI, thereby simplifying considerably the overall handling of the materials between the station and its eventual destination in Russia. Under the original 'Bashmakov' plan, rubbish that was to have been transported eventually to Montivideo, Uruguay for recycling, was to have been stored in Ushuaia between voyages. The cargo advantages of 'Anne Boye' are, however, off-set by the fact that it cannot carry passengers, while 'Bashmakov' could take 42. This and other problems has meant that MA's plan to take up to sixty students and teachers to Antarctica has had to be revised considerably.
The ship will deliver two tractors, a back-hoe loader and a tele-hoist to the station to clear the beach of obstructions, prepare loading areas, and move materials from various locations around the station to the beach. At the beach, rubbish is to be loaded into skips mounted on pontoons that will be towed to the ship so that the rubbish can be lifted on board.
Six people from the UK, one of whom is said to be a "waste management expert", expect to fly to KGI from Punta Arenas, Chile, sometime in the next week. On arrival of the ship they and members of the Russian national program, including nine staff members who have been sponsored by 'Mission Antarctica', will undertake the rubbish removal operation. This will be the sixth season that MA and the Russian program have worked together on the clean-up project.
Work is currently under way to develop alternative arrangements to enable at least some of the students and teachers that were to have travelled on 'Bashmakov' to visit the Peninsula region.
MA now hopes that provided sufficient sponsorship can be found, its 22-m yacht '2041', which will be operating in Antarctica for the third time (ANAN-52/05, 1 August 2001), can be used to conduct at least three ten-day trips from KGI down the western side of the Peninsula as far south as the Lemaire Channel (ANAN-38/06, 3 January 2001).
Each voyage could carry up to thirteen people made up of an expedition leader, four professional crew, and eight passengers who would either be students, teachers or employees from some of MA's sponsors. The passengers would fly to and from KGI from Punta Arenas, Chile, on an aircraft operated by commercial air operator Adventure Network International.
At this stage, six students, three teachers and four company employees have been fully sponsored and selected for the trips. They come from countries such as Ecuador, Fiji, Lebanon, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland , the US and the UK. The major sponsors of MA for this season are the Swiss pharmaceutical company Serono and Royal and Sun Alliance in the UK. Telecommunications equipment has all been provided by British Telecom.
After a major refit, '2041' left Cape Town, South Africa, for KGI on 31 October, visited Tristan da Cunha in mid-November and arrived in Stanley in the Falkland Islands on 28 November. It is expected to travel from there to Ushuaia, Argentina, then on to KGI from where the first Peninsula voyage could get under way around 2 January. After its Peninsula operations, '2041' is currently expected to return to Ushuaia in March and leave there around the 23rd for the return trip to Cape Town via South Georgia (ANAN-56/05, 26 September 2001).
Tourist and adventure activities in the interior of Antarctica got under way last week when an Iluyshin-76 chartered by tour operator Adventure Network International (ANI) flew the first of the company's 2001-02 clients to its Patriot Hills field camp in Ellsworth Land from Punta Arenas, Chile. After a four-week delay due to bad weather, reports indicate that better weather in recent days is allowing ANI to rapidly catch up with its planned program of operations (ANAN-60/04, 21 November 2001).
In the days since the first IL-76 flight, ANI's 'Basler 67' and Cessna 185 aircraft have flown from the Patriot Hills to deliver the first of the season's climbers and adventurers to the Vinson Massif area, two South Geographic Pole (SGP) traverse groups to the start of their treks, and the first six tourists of the austral summer to the SGP.
The first aircraft into ANI's Patriot Hills camp this season was the Basler, a twin-engined ski-wheeled turbo-prop on charter from UK-based Enterprise Airlines (ANAN-1/06, 4 August 1999). It arrived there on 20 November after a weather-affected flight from Chile. On board were ANI personnel who were tasked with re-activating the Patriot Hills camp, preparing the company's Cessna 185 for flight operations after its winter-over, and providing information on weather and ice-runway conditions for intercontinental flights by the heavy-lift, jet-engined, IL-76.
While the camp and runway were ready a few days after the Basler's arrival, the IL-76 was prevented from making its first flight until 29 November, initially by low cloud and limited visibility, and then by cross-winds that were well above the Iluyshin's 22-knot cross-wind maxima . Once the flight got underway, however, it took the IL-76 just four-and-a-half hours to reach the Patriot Hills from Punta Arenas.
The first flight to the SGP with tourists was made last Sunday by the Basler; six tourists, three crew and two ANI staff being on board. Up to forty tourists are reported to be listed for flights there this season. Images of the aircraft at the Pole on that first flight are available on line at New Zealander Steven McLachlan's web site at http://www.newzeal.com/theme/bases/SP/SP2001-2Seasonpics.html.
The two members of the 'Poles Wearables Expedition', and the three from ANI's 'Ski South Pole' trek, made the fifteen-minute flight from the Patriot Hills to Hercules Inlet on the continental coast in the Basler to start their SGP journeys, only two hours after they arrived on the Iluyshin (ANAN-60/03, 21 November 2001).
The Wearables pair, Thomas and Tina Sjorgen, who are not using parasails and do not plan to be resupplied on their trek, expect to take just over 60 days for the 1,100-km journey at an average speed of just under twenty kilometres a day. Each is currently pulling just over 120 kg behind them as they travel south, and if they can meet the timetable they have set themselves, they should arrive at the SGP at the end of January, about the time when temperatures on the plateau are starting to fall and when ANI normally starts to wind up its operations for the season.
Thomas and Tina started south on 30 November and by last Monday evening after four days travel they had made a total of 33 km. They are pulling up a steep slope from the coast at this time and had expected that their progress in the early stages would be slow. Whiteout, strong head-winds, sastrugi and snow drift also presented problems at times. Both report that their sledges are some thirty kilograms lighter than last year and that "the difference feels tremendous'.
It is not clear just where those taking part in ANI's commercial ski group have started their journey from, although Hercules Inlet had been flagged previously. If they have, and are not using parasails, they too would probably reach the SGP in late January. They will, however, be resupplied by air by the company's aircraft en route and will be travelling lighter than the Sjorgens and could thus make better progress.
Doug Stoup (not Stroup as reported previously by this newsletter) is to lead ANI's 'Last Degree' trek to the Pole. He and six of the company's clients are scheduled to fly into the Patriot Hills on 8 December, and will be flown to latitude 89° south from where the 111-km-trek is to commence as weather allows. Stoup was also expected to undertake his 'Solo Bike to the South Pole' ride from the Patriot Hills this month, but his web site is no longer referring to that venture and it has not been possible to clarify at this time whether or not if it will proceed this season.
Yet to be confirmed reports indicate that ANI has at least one chartered Twin Otter aircraft en route from Canada to Punta Arenas at the present time and that it could arrive in the Patriot Hills in the next few days, weather permitting.
Reports from South Africa indicate that the Twin Otter will be required there shortly as the Basler has to depart for Russia's Novolazarevskaya station in Dronning Maud Land (DML) this week. It has been chartered by a South African based company to support national program operations linked to this week's planned intercontinental flight from Cape Town to Novolazarevskaya (see ANAN-61/01 preceding).
An aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has successfully dropped urgently needed medicines to the yacht 'Amer Sports 1', one of the racers in the Volvo Ocean Race, after a crew member became seriously ill with a bowel blockage.
The drop, which was made on 23 November when 'Amer Sports 1' was in sub-Antarctic waters over 1,000 km south-west of Perth, Australia, was necessary as on-board medical supplies were quickly being depleted by the patient's needs. The PC3 'Orion' dropped bags of saline, morphine and pain killers close to the yacht, and despite poor conditions they were retrieved from the ocean by it's crew.
The crewman was reported to have "improved considerably" after receiving the new medicines. He was taken from the yacht last week when it was close to the West Australian coast, admitted to the local hospital in Albany, and released the following day.
The seven-boat fleet reached Sydney yesterday after a three-and-a-half week, 10,500-km journey from Cape Town, South Africa. Their next sub-Antarctic leg is scheduled to commence from Auckland, New Zealand on 27 January (ANAN-60/07, 21 November 2001).
A new South Africa-based company that was formally launched this week aims to boost Cape Town's role as an Antarctic gateway by providing a comprehensive range of coordinated services and an air-link to the continent for both government and non-government operators who use the city as a staging base for Antarctic activities.
The joint venture, which is named 'Antarctic Logistics Centre International' (ALCI), plans to offer a range of support services. These are said to include ship management, whare-housing, customs-related services, waste handling, fixed-wing and helicopter chartering, and accommodation arrangements and airport transfers for Antarctic personnel.
ACLI is also the entity behind intercontinental flight operations planned between Cape Town and Dronning Maud Land this season (see ANAN-61/01 preceding). The basic government-focussed air-link concept is similar to that offered in the DML region in the past by UK-based air operator Polar Logistics (ANAN-28/03, 16 August 2000 and ANAN-41/10, 14 February 2001).
ALCI is a joint venture between Meihuizen International, an 18-year-old South African company that operates ships and acts as a port agent and freight handling company, and INTAARI (South Africa). The latter is a sister to INTAARI of St Petersburg, Russia, a 12-year-old firm that is, in effect, the commercial arm of Russian national program operations in both the Arctic and Antarctica.
The new company says that it was formed to support "the growing use of Cape Town as an Antarctic gateway", although to date the activity has involved mostly government programs; few non-government Antarctic vessels or aircraft have passed through the city each year in recent times (ANAN-58/03, 7 November 2001).
ALCI has a web site under construction at http://www.alci.info/.
Sir Ernest Shackleton's famous 1916 crossing route across South Georgia was followed again late last month by a 15-person party from the tour ship 'Polar Pioneer' chartered by Australian company Aurora Expeditions (ANAN-51/09, 18 July 2001). Led by Aurora's principal, Greg Mortimer, and accompanied by two other professional guides, twelve tourists from Australia, the US and the UK took three days to make the crossing, experiencing high winds and generally poor weather on the way.
There has been a number of adventure and commercial crossings of the route in the last two years (ANAN-36/05, 6 December 2000). Several other expeditions have cancelled attempts before they started when their prime programs on South Georgia were delayed.
The fifteen members of the British Army Antarctic Expedition (BAAE) who plan to conduct a range of climbing, trekking and research sampling programs in the Danco Coast and Elephant Island region over the next eight weeks left Stanley in the Falkland Islands for the Antarctic Peninsula region on the 24-metre steel-hulled ketch 'John Laing' on 30 November.
Departure from Stanley was delayed for several days until a deep low-pressure system in the Drake Passage moved away. A report from the yacht last Sunday indicated that it was making good progress south and that the crew on board were weighing up whether to visit Elephant Island on the way to the Danco Coast, or to leave the work proposed there until the return journey in February (ANAN-58/11, 7 November 2001). Which ever choice is made, the yacht expects to spend a few days at Deception Island some time in the next week prior to departing from there to the Danco Coast.
A South African company is currently examining the possibility of offering astronomers and tourists the chance to observe the 2003 eclipse of the sun in Dronning Maud Land (DML). If initiated, the operation would be the third observing opportunity for the eclipse on offer, joining those already proposed by US and Australian companies at locations further east in the zone of totality.
The narrow zone of totality, where the sun is completely obscured by the moon, is to start south-east of sub-Antarctic Heard Island soon after sunrise local time on 24 November. From there, it will cross the Antarctic coast near Russia's Mirny station in Queen Mary Land, curve inland over the high plateau of Antarctica, then exit the continent in the vicinity of Russia's Novolazerevskya and India's Maitri stations on the DML coast several hours later (ANAN-3/08, 1 September 1999).
Transworld Travel (TWT) of Cape Town, the company that is involved in tourist aspects of the planned intercontinental air link between Cape Town and Russia's Novolazerevskya station (see ANAN-61/01 preceding), is looking at the logistics involved in flying clients to its planned DML summer field camps for the solar event.
US-based operator Quark Expeditions is planning to have its ship 'Kapitan Khlebnikov' in the area north of Mirny (ANAN-57/02, 24 October 2001) for the eclipse, while Croydon Travel of Australia is proposing to conduct an eclipse overflight to the same area with a Boeing-747 aircraft (ANAN-59/04, 14 November 2001).
PHOTOGRAPHY THE FOCUS OF EIGHT-WEEK SOUTH GEORGIA VISIT
[ANAN-61/10]
The Australian-registered yacht 'Tooluka' is scheduled to leave Ushuaia, Argentina, on 9 January on an eight-week voyage to South Georgia. The focus of the trip will be photography, with the group of Australians on board planning to undertake "limited to short excursions" inland from the coast.
Tooluka's owner/ skipper Roger Wallis also operates the 19-metre yacht 'Spirit of Sydney' which he purchased from the Ocean Frontiers company last July. 'Spirit' was scheduled to visit coastal areas of George V and Adelie Lands next month, however, that trip was cancelled last week due to insufficient bookings.
Wallis has 'Tooluka' on the market and he plans to operate in the Peninsula area with 'Spirit' only in 2002-03 (ANAN-51/10, 18 July 2001).
Negotiations are currently under way for 'Spirit' to support a so-far unnamed group of mountaineers who are proposing to climb and ski in the region between Portal Point and the Argentine Islands on the Danco and Graham Land coasts of the Peninsula in January-February 2003 (ANAN-16/01, 1 March 2000).
Next month's visit to South Georgia will be Tooluka's second. It supported a group of four mountaineers who trekked the length of the island in October-November 1999 (ANAN-9/02, 24 November 1999). The yacht is expected to arrive back in Ushuaia from the photographic voyage in late March.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF TRANS-ANTARCTIC BOOK AVAILABLE
[ANAN-61/11]
An English-language version of the book 'In the Teeth of the Wind' that details the 1997-98 crossing of Antarctica by Belgium's Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer was released recently by two UK publishers. Hubert and Dansercoer ski-sailed across the continent from the site of Belgium's former Roi Baudouin station on the coast of Dronning Maud Land to Ross Island via the South Geographic Pole (SGP).
They left the Roi Baudouin area on 4 November 1997 and completed the 3,499-km journey at McMurdo station on 10 February 1998 after a 97-day journey during which they travelled at an average of almost forty kilometres a day. The pair used parasails for much of the trek, on one occasion travelling a very impressive 271 km in a single day. They have both returned to Antarctica twice on climbing ventures since the crossing (ANAN-19/09, 12 April 2000 and ANAN-41/10, 14 February 2001).
'In the Teeth of the Wind' was originally released in French in 1998. The English translation has been published by Bluntisham Books and Erskine Press in the UK and retails for around $US36. It can be ordered via e-mail from: Bluntisham.Books@btinternet.com.
COMING EVENTS RELEVANT TO NON-GOVERNMENT ACTIVITIES
[ANAN-61/12]
Please forward notice of events via e-mail to: tourism@aad.gov.au. Up-dates are made to ANAN's web site at http://www.antdiv.gov.au/goingsouth/tourism/Research/BibConf/Confer/default.asp as soon as new information comes to hand.
YEAR 2001
14 December (London, U.K.)
Inaugural meeting of the South Georgia Association (ANAN-59/06, 14 November 2001).
Contact: stephen.palmer@fish.co.uk.
YEAR 2002
4-11 January (South Geographic Pole)
High Plateau Marathon (ANAN-44/01, 11 April 2001).
Contact: general@adventure-network.com
2 March (King George Island, Antarctica)
Fifth Antarctic Marathon and Half Marathon (ANAN-53/04, 15 August 2001).
Contact: marathon@shore.net (Thom Gilligan).
Last week of June [Dates/location to be set] (Europe).
IAATO year 2002 annual meeting.
Contact: iaato@iaato.org (Denise Landau)(invitation required).
15-19 July (Shanghai, China)
COMNAP XIV (including the sub-committee on Tourism and Non-Government Operations).
Contact: jsayers@comnap.aq (Jack Sayers).
15-26 July (Shanghai, China).
XXVII SCAR (Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research).
3-14 September (Warsaw, Poland)
Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting XXV
YEAR 2003
July [Dates to be set] (Seattle, United States).
IAATO year 2003 annual meeting.
Contact: iaato@iaato.org (Denise Landau)(invitation required).
24 November (Queen Mary and Dronning Maud Land regions).
Total solar eclipse (See ANAN-59/04, 14 November 2001).
Next edition issued on Wednesday, 19 December 2001 @ 0600 UTC.
Deadline for items: Sunday, 16 December 2001 @ 2359 UTC.
ANTARCTIC NON-GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY NEWS (ANAN)
ANAN's aim is to provide a periodic summary of non-government activities in Antarctica. It is prepared from contributions from company, governmental, academic and private individuals with an interest in this area of endeavour on or around the southern-most continent.
AVAILABLE ON LINE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY:
ANAN archive (including this issue with its built in links):
http://www.antdiv.gov.au/goingsouth/tourism/News/default.asp
Coming events related to non-governmental activity:
http://www.antdiv.gov.au/goingsouth/tourism/Research/BibConf/Confer/default.asp
Links to tourist industry web sites:
http://www.antdiv.gov.au/goingsouth/tourism/Industry/default.asp
EDITOR: Dave Moser (David.Moser@aad.gov.au).
POSTAL: Australian Antarctic Division, Kingston, Tasmania, Australia 7054
TELEPHONE: +61-3-6232-3347 (2200-0600 UTC).
FACSIMILE: +61-3-6232-3357.
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