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Posted by Bill S on January 31, 2007 at 6:58:30 pm EST
In reply to Finding the DC 6 posted by Climbing (Guest) on January 26, 2007 at 9:27:56 pm EST

First try was unsuccessful, mostly because the directions I was given were "It's that way, about 6 or maybe 8 kilometers", accompanied by an arm waving through an arc of maybe 10 degrees, with the added comment to "follow the road". The "road" in "that" direction turned out to be a track made by one of the tractors hauling food out to a dump site of a ski traverse group and not the intended road. The intended road had been laid out by a couple of snowmobiles for the 100k race (yes, a running race) held about 4 weeks earlier (somewhere there is a website with pictures describing the race - search under Patriot Hills, Antarctica, marathon, some such combination of words.

For the second search, one of the Patriot Hills staff who had been out there the previous year, one of the medics, and I took a couple SkiDoos and headed out along the marathon track, but soon lost the track (3 or 4 weeks of Antarctic winds, including up to 70 knot gusts, leaves a lot of sastrugi and no "road). We had not taken a GPSR (my 60CSx had died a week earlier, due to some unknown cause that Garmin has not yet explained, or been able to explain - just one of many problems that cropped up with that model in Antarctica - and no, cold was not one of the problems or a source of the problems). If we had had a GPSR, we could have taken the coordinates. The guy who had been there the previous year wasn't sure where the DC6 was (well, to be fair, in a semi-whiteout, on a pretty featureless flat icefield, you don't see any features anyway). We measured an approximate distance on the snowmobiles' odometers, looking around, and continued some distance further before turning back. We could see the hills (Patriot Hills really is next to a range of hills), so could pick out the peak most directly above the camp. On the way back, I spotted something way off to our left that looked like the tail of an airplane, so we went over to it (turned out to be around 200 meters off our course). White tail sticking up out of a white icefield in a white blowing snowcloud - I was just lucky to see it.

If we had used a GPSR with the coordinates, it would have been fairly easy to find. Some others who went out there when the wind had not eroded the "road" found it pretty easily. I think if we had a bearing from the camp, it would have been relatively easy as well, since you could make out distant mountain peaks. I also think if I had gone on foot, having been given a moderately accurate starting point and description of the actual marathon route, it would have been fairly easy. On foot, I could have spotted the remnants of the track, despite the sastrugi, but riding on the back of the SkiDoo and trusting that the driver could remember where he went the year before just didn't work.

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