Blogs

Henrik Hedelin is the expeditions Medical Doctor. He usually works as an orthopaedic surgeon in the Queen Silvia Children´s Hospital in Gothenburg and the last 10 years he has been specialising in Mountain and wilderness medicine. As a doctor in Gothenburg he operates on children with broken legs and arms.

Det finns mycket teknisk utrustning på en polarforskningsstation. På Wasa finns sju snöskotrar, fyra bandvagnar, två terrängbilar, två dieselgeneratorer, vattensystem med snösmältare, gasolsystem, elsystem med solpaneler samt en mängd annan teknisk utrustning och byggnader som måste hållas i funktionsdugligt skick.

Neil Glasser, Nat Lifton, Ola Fredin and Jenny Newall is our four researchers during this expedition. If they didn't need go to Antarctica and look for rocks, this expedtion would not have happened.

Calle are our mountain guide here in Antarctica, It's his job to monitor our operations and make sure that we're not exposed to any risks. When Calle is not on a polar expedition he is working as safety manager on high-altitude job sites and as a mountain guide with focus on skiing in Scandinavia.

Karin really plays a key role in the expedition – she makes sure we eat great food three times a day. It requires a lot of knowledge and planning to create a functional food plan for an Antarctic expedition. We are eleven persons who eat three times a day for two months. Overall, we are spending around 300 person-days at Wasa plus around 250 person-days in our field camp. This means 1,650 meals to be planned, prepared and cooked.

We have lots of preparations to make before we go out on our first field mission. Everything takes longer time when the weather is bad and the risk of injuries and damages on equipment increases. We immediately take some security measures when working outdoors.

10:30 - we are in the air and the flight to Wasa takes two hours. Lidia is a alert but noisy 75-year-old and are missing pressure cabin. The landing at the Wasa turns out to be a bumpy one, the rear wheel is missing a landing skis and digs deep into the loose snow.

Troll gives us a perfect start with great weather - sunshine, good visibility, no wind and the thermometer shows -7 degrees Celsius. We pack up our things and set off with a tracked vehicle seven kilometers out to the airstrip.

Our Airbus has landed at the research station Troll. For Several of the Participants it's the first time they put their feet on the Antarctic ice sheet.