Kerry man and four others hope to arrive at South Pole in about three weeks
Lorna Siggins
Mike Barry, the Kerry mountaineer who is aiming to become the first Irishman to walk to the South Pole, has crossed the 86th degree parallel on his 1,200-km trek.
Speaking to The Irish Times by satellite phone, Barry (50), from Tralee, said he and his four fellow expedition members were in good spirits, averaging 13 miles a day and well- nourished as a result of locating their "food cache" at the halfway mark last weekend.
The former Everest mountaineer, wind energy consultant and father of three is part of an international expedition led by US/Canadian polar traveller and guide, Ms Matty McNair, who has already been to the South Pole once.
She led the first female expedition to the North Pole in 1997. Also participating are three Englishmen - Hong Kong-based pilot Ray Middleton (43), financial publisher and former British army officer, Alex Blyth (42) and commercial lawyer Iain Morpeth (49).
"Crossing 86 degrees south on New Year's Day was a good psychological boost, as it means we have only four degrees to go, but we are still 250 miles away, and haven't reached the stage where Sir Ernest Shackleton was forced to turn back - 90 miles from target, so in a sense I have a bit of unfinished business to complete," he quipped.
The five are marching through headwinds of up to 70 to 80 knots in temperatures of up to minus 19 degrees Celsius and in almost 24 hours of daylight."We have to put blinkers on to get any sort of sleep," Barry said.
Sastrugis, or wind-sculpted snow columns of up to four feet in height, constitute the main obstacle. "You have to work your way through these, sometimes in a white-out or blizzard, and it can be difficult when you are pulling a pulk \ of 60 to 70 kilos behind you," he explained.
"The terrain is fairly safe other- wise, with very few crevasses, but it is a constant slog uphill over 9,000 feet from where we set out at the Hercules inlet on the Weddell Sea on December 1st.
"The first and only mountains we have seen were the Thiel mountains, where we located our food cache last weekend, and it was quite spectacular to see them after over 2½ weeks of nothing but ice.
"The main challenge is to make sure that you are absolutely covered and not showing even the slightest bit of flesh due to the risk of frostbite," Barry said. "We cover our faces with ski masks and balaclavas, so we look like a group of travelling teddy bears."
The group was "working" on Christmas Day and waited until December 28th for the seasonal dinner. "We had seafood chowder for starters, chicken in white wine sauce with mashed spuds and peas for main course and we had some carol singing in the snow," he said.
A "small" amount of rum mixed with cocoa constituted the brew when one of the team marked his birthday.
If and when Barry reaches latitude 90 degrees south, where the world's time zones converge, he will have completed what several Irishmen set out to do some nine decades ago. Sir Ernest Shackleton is best remembered for not having lost a man during his failed attempts; one of his strongest team members was Tom Crean, also of Kerry, who had earlier served with Captain Robert Scott.
Crean was bitterly disappointed when sent back by Scott just 150 miles from the South Pole during the 1911-12 expedition. Norwegian Roald Amundsen beat Scott to it.
A member of three Himalayan expeditions, including the first and successful Irish attempt on Mount Everest in 1993, Barry was the first Irishman to climb Aconcagua in Argentina.
He was also part the 1997 South Aris endeavour to trace the Shackleton/Crean rescue across the Southern Ocean after Shackleton's ship became trapped in pack ice in 1915.
The expedition has not come across fellow travellers Simon Murray and Pen Hadow, who are also en route south from the Hercules inlet. Hadow, an entrepreneur based in Hong Kong, was the first person to reach the geographic North Pole unsupported from Canada last year, while Murray (63) aims to become the oldest person to walk unsupported to the South Pole.
The group will be flown out when they reach the South Pole's Scott-Amundsen research station. "Depending on weather, we may be out in 24 hours - or up to five days," Barry said. Estimated arrival time is "three weeks from now".
The Kerry climber is financing his share of the expedition's costs from his own resources, but hopes to raise funds for Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, from a post-expedition lecture and slide tour.