Two Irish adventurers leave this week for a Christmas expedition to Antarctica to pioneer a new method of polar travel using high-tech ski-buggies powered by kites.
At speeds of 80-plus kilometres per hour sitting on buggies just half a metre above the ice and snow, Mr Jamie Young (50) and Mr Brian Cunningham (59) hope to start their milestone journey from the South Pole on December 21st.
The buggies, which have been tested on beaches and the Les Diablerets glacier in Switzerland, were designed specifically for the expedition by Formula 1 racing team engineer Kieron Bradley. The duo fly to Punta Arenas in Chile on Monday to sort their gear which was sent out earlier in the month.
They will then fly to the Pole and plan to complete a 1,000-kilometre journey to Patriot Hills in a week to ten days. Typically, trekking the journey with sleds takes about 60 days, with the kites acting as their "engines".
"The whole thing about the trip is that we are using unproven technology. To an extent what will govern our progress will be snow and ice conditions," Mr Young said.
"The other thing will be the wind - we will have either too much or too little. The wind is not the main problem but the visibility. You would be going at 80 kph into a fairly white environment".
Mr Young said that if things go well they will travel up to 100 kilometres a day. With 24-hour daylight, they plan to keep going for up to 18 hours a day if conditions are good. Weight will be kept to a minimum to boost speeds.
The buggies only weigh 34 kilos and they will carry 160 kilogrammes of gear. If one buggy fails, both men can travel on the surviving one.
Mr Young has competed in a trans-Atlantic single-handed yacht race, led a kayaking expedition to Guinea Buisseau and has paddled around Cape Horn.
In 1997 he was part of a team of Irishmen who re-enacted Irish-born Sir Ernest Shackleton's famous 1915 trip in a seven-metre lifeboat from Elephant Island to South Georgia in the Southern Ocean after his ship Endurancebecame stuck in the ice.
Mr Cunningham is a visiting professor at the Manchester Business School in England. He began his adventuring career in 1967 by yachting to Iceland and back. In 1972 he was one of three who used sledges they designed themselves to traverse the Vatnajokull icecap in Iceland - the third largest in the world. He is also a mountaineer and ice climber.
AFP