Antarctica – the Advenure Begins

Hello from the Southern most city in the world, Ushuaia! After 28 plus hours of travel, I finally made it down here, and not only that, all of my luggage arrived as well. This should be a very cool, unique and exciting trip (hopefully not too exciting…) and the cast of characters is top notch. In a nutshell, Doug Stoup from Tahoe basically chartered an entire cruise ship to cross the Drake Passage then spend about 10ish days skiing in the Antarctic Peninsula. The boat will move at night, and then we will get off during the day via Zodiacs, go skiing, then come back form dinner on the boat, move again at night and repeat. It should be a blast. I’ve been down to this area once before, and even though we spent most of our time in a leaky tent in the rain, it was still one of my favorite trips as the skiing is to surreal with the penguins, whales, seals, ocean and general location being so mind-blowing. The town of Ushuaia is much bigger than I would have expected and is fairly cosmoplition with a population of about 40-60,000 people. We went out for some first turns of the season yesterday and it was GREAT! You could easily spend a week/month down here just taking a taxi from the hotel to the trailhead, doing some skiing, then coming back. I’ve been hanging out with the guides group for the last day or so, most of whom are from the Tahoe area, or somehow associated with it. They are a very fit, accomplished group and we had a blast carving corm yesterday. Probably the main worry for the trip is the two crossings of the Drake Passage, which can be as nauseating as it gets if you get seasick. A preliminary weather report showed lots of red (low pressure) on the horizon, so we may be in for some rockin’ and rolling in the next few days. Once on board the ship, internet time goes up to $3.00 per minute, so updates may be sparse. Doug is running daily updates at iceaxe.tv (I think) or there is probably a link on skicruise2008.com. Yeehaw!

Category: Trip Reports