Ushuaia 2008 – Trip Report & Gallery
Although this barely qualifies as a trip (it was only six days or so) and we never even came close to our intended goal of skiing in Antarctica, this trip was one of the funnest outings I’ve had in a long time, mainly because it had so many great people involved.
Doug Stoup of Truckee, CA came up with the idea of chartering an entire 300+ foot ice-going cruise ship for ten days, filling it with skiers/boarders, crossing the Drake Passage twice and going skiing in Antarctica. While this is a fairly common voyage for a cruise ship, what made it special was that instead of stopping at penguin rookeries and decaying whaling stations, we were going to stop at prime ski spots, spend the day skiing, then have a great meal on board, travel to a new spot over night and do it all again.
Unfortunately the ship had mechanical problems and although all 106 of us were packed on board, the trip was canceled. This was a huge disappointment, but considering the boat’s sister ship had sunk in Antarctica the year before, nobody really doubted the wisdom of the inspectors.
The cruise has been rescheduled for 2009 and further information on it can be found at Iceaxe.tv, or perhaps skicruise2008.com For a chance to ski in Antarctica, this is a very affordable once-in-a-lifetime type of trip.
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Category: Trip Reports
It is great that they are going to do this again! I imagine next year Doug will make sure that the boat will leave the dock!
Andrew,
Did you have trip insurance for this trip?
No, but that’s not unusual as I’ve never bought trip insurance. It seemed that a quite a few other people had, and they were psyched in this case as it was a mechanical problem which interupted travel, which is generally covered (from what they said), whereas weather is not.
Great photos Andrew. Hopefully it works out next year. You planning on going again?
Mechanical bulls are not outlawed in the U.S. by the way.
Just a few examples…
http://www.johnnyutahs.com/ (NYC)
http://www.oldpropa.com/ (Palo Alto)
http://www.cowgirlsinc.com/ (Seattle)
All of those sites have cheesy music or flash animation. But yeah.
Hi Colin – I’m 100% in for next year! The chances of a trip like this getting canceled are fairly remote, so I don’t think the same thing will happen again.
I’m glad to see the mechanical bulls are still thriving. Those things are a LOT harder to ride than they look. I suppose I thought they were outlawed in the US as I haven’t seen any for a while and all of us got bucked off with varying degrees of injuries (which is as it should be..).