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Queen
Maud Land, Antarctica
HOLTANA
(2650m), Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
A
900m Wall of Granite Holtana, or "Hollow
Tooth" as it is called in Norweian, rises to
2,650m - 900m out of the ice. It is capped by vertical
twin peaks which resemble the huge rock faces of
Yosemite and Fitzroy. The peaks of Holtana, which lies
in the Orvin Mountain Range of Queen Maud Land,
Antarctica, are a great big wall challenge for the
team. The combined logistical planning and technical
climbing make this an expedition all the climbers are
looking forward to.
These
cathedral spires rising from the icecap are the last
witness of a continent that is sinking under the weight
of the ice. The Antarctic icecap is the last region in
the world containing areas of virgin territory. It is
like an ice desert stretching to infinity, without the
slightest trace of man.
Holtana's
particularly abrupt configuration, extreme temperatures
and violent winds all combine to make these peaks one of the
last major rock climbing challenges left in the 21st century.
STAGES
OF THE EXPEDITION: The
Expedition will take place in three stages...
Stage 1
:
Arrival
at Blue One from Capetown and the transportation of
the team and equipment to the ice cap. The 60
kilometers between Blu One and Holtana will be covered
using power-kites by the climbers, while a twin otter
will fly in the remainder of the equipment and the
camera crew.
Stage
2:
Once the
base camp has been installed, the climbers will fix
the lower 200 meters of the face, taking approximately
two weeks. Using both free (5.10 to 5.12) and aid
techniques (up to A4), portaledges (tents that are
suspended from the rock face) will allow the team to
sleep on the face to complete the wall in one push.
Stage
3:
Final
Assault Once the first 200 meters have been fixed it
will no longer be possible to return to base camp. The
team will therefore have to leave base camp one last
time to launch their definitive assault on the rock
face by using capsule-style technique - which entails
hauling hundreds of kilos of equipment up the rock
face as the climb proceeds. The decent will be made by
abseiling down the other side of the tower.
Fabrizio
Zangrilli, who EverestNews.com covered on K2,
will be a member of this Expedition sending dispatches to
us.
Dispatch One
from the Queen Maud Land, Antarctica Climb !
We have
arrived in Cape Town! All of the team is here, except one
member, Ronald, who flew down to Queen Maud Land a couple of
weeks ago to start our research in conjunction with Stanford
University and NASA.
We had a few
problems with the flight, when we arrived in Johannesburg, to
connect to Cape Town, 3 of our bags had not been put on our
flight. We checked in about 40 pieces so it was not a big
deal, until we realized that some important climbing equipment
was inside. The airline has said that the bags should be with
us by Monday.
So now we are
spending our time buying food, and getting used to the
satellite communications - it is the latest system from
Inmarsat. Our only concern is when we are going to fly to
BLUE1, as the landing strip in QML is known. We have a few
days before we will be ready to go, but then it is a matter of
the weather!
Dispatch Two
from the Queen Maud Land, Antarctica Climb
12/04/2000
Update: We are all sitting in Capetown finishing off last
minute shopping, buying a lot of frozen fish and making final
adjustments to the portaledges. Yesterday a few of us went to
Table mountain to get some exercise, we had great views along
the peninsula. It was actually quite cold and windy on the
summit - but we still managed to get a little bit of
bouldering done.
Our plan is
to be ready to fly tomorrow, Tuesday, but expect that we might
actually depart on Wednesday - if the weather is good.
Dispatch
Three from
the Queen Maud Land, Antarctica Climb
Hi,
EverestNews.com readers! We made it! We are on the ice, we
landed at Blue One at 5:30 p.m. on the night of the 10th. You
would not believe the view; to the west are the mountains and
to the north there is just ice, endless ice. We spent today
organizing our equipment - the weather station is working,
more on that later, Kathlyne did her first call with the
education program and the rest of us have been busy packing.
In the morning, 12th, a few of us will start the 70 km ski to
the base of Holtana and the scientist and journalist will fly
with some of the science experiments to base camp later in the
afternoon. I will give you a complete update when we arrive in
base camp in 5 days, when we have reached base camp by ski.
All the best Fabrizio
Dispatch Four
from the Queen Maud Land, Antarctica Climb
They've
changed plan (North pillar of Holtana was too rotten) and
decided now to attack the South summit (easier, but higher and
colder) The plan to do this summit by the end of the year
Merry Christmas Michel Brent www.antarctica.org
Dispatch Five
from the Queen Maud Land, Antarctica Climb
December 26,
2000: We finally landed on the ice around 5:30pm at blue one,
on the 10th. Blue one serves as the landing strip for Queen
Maud Land. It was a bumpy landing as we were in a wheel based
Ilyushin, also on the plane were 30 scientists from Norway and
Sweden, doing various studies for two months along the coast.
They then immediately flew to research stations in a ski based
twin otter and we were left to sort out our equipment. This
took two days as we have about 2000KGS of equipment. The
adventure all began on 12th when the climbing team - Andres
George, Ralf Dujmovits, Alain Hubert, Daniel Mercier and
Myself - along with a photographer, Rene Robert and a
cameraman Jorge Luppert, riding a snow mobile - departed Blue
one by ski and hauling a heavy sledge - mine weighing more
than twice my body weight. We spent the next 4 days skiing
along the ice. It was tough but an amazing experience as we
could see the 20 or so major walls of Queen Maud Land about 70
KM ahead of us. We had everything from Bright sunshine to
strong wind and cloud. The skiing gave us the feeling that we
were actually in Antarctica, flying to Blue One after the ten
day wait in Capetown was like flying anywhere in the world. We
had no sense of place, but the ski journey made us realize we
were on the bottom of the world. We also had the experience of
Alain who crossed Antarctica in 97/98, so it was really just a
walk in the park for him.
I should
mention that we left behind the bulk of equipment and supplies
and three important members of the expedition. Two are
scientists and one radio journalist. The first is Ronald Ross,
a engineer at Stanford who is doing work with Nasa concerning
the Mars Program, believe it or not it seems that Antarctica
is the closest we will find on Earth to the conditions of
Mars. Below is a brief statement of Ronald's work:
The Stanford
University Antarctica 2000 Project
Prof. Robert Twiggs, Director
Space Systems Development Laboratory
Stanford University
Antarctica is the one place on earth that has conditions
close to those found on Mars. For an Antarctica 1999
project, students from Stanford through the Space Systems
Development Laboratory in the Aeronautics and Astronautics
department built a remote weather station that was taken to
Antarctica in December 1999. This autonomous weather
station was used there for two months to demonstrate
operations similar to the proposed Pascal Mars project by
NASA Ames Research Center of collecting weather data on Mars
and returning it to earth via orbiting satellites.
This station
was taken to Antarctica by Ronald Ross, a Stanford SSDL
mentor from San Francisco, installed at a base camp
location, contacted periodically by Mr. Ross while he
explored other geographic areas, the weather station data
uploaded to orbiting amateur radio satellites and returned
to the students at Stanford via the Stanford amateur
satellite ground station for analysis. Through the
1999 work, Stanford students are now expanding the scope of
the program for Antarctic 2000.
The Antarctica
2000 project will be to take two weather stations to the
Queen Maud Land area of Antarctica and install one of them
on top of Holtana peak the is 2650m and the second in
another remote location. Alain Hubert, a world famous
Belgian climber, will take this station to the peak.
It will take two weeks to make the ascent to the peak.
The weather station on the Holtana peak will then be left
there for a full year's operation to autonomously send data
through the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa amateur
satellite, Sunsat to a permanent Antarctic base an then put
on the internet. Mr. Ross will be assisting Mr. Hubert
in taking the stations to Antarctica .
In addition to
Mr. Ross, Stanford student Colleen Acosta, a sophomore in
mechanical engineering and working with Mr. Ross to build
the weather stations, will go to the Queen Maud Land in
January and return early February 2001. She will
assist in the testing of the stations as well as spending
part of her time there doing exobiology research work for
Dr. Chris McKay from NASA Ames Research Center. Dr.
McKay is a world leader in exobiology studies of Mars.
Part of Ms Acosta's research in exobiology will be to look
for types of basic growth that may occur where any ice is
melted during the Antarctic summer. She will also be
leaving small data loggers in a variety of areas that will
be retrieved one-year later for analysis of localized
Antarctic conditions.
The Antarctic
projects provide students with the opportunity to develop
and experiment with equipment for future Mars mission,
participate in Antarctic expeditions and do exobiology
research for a world leader in Mars exobiology. This
is student education at the finest level and helping NASA to
develop technology and experience for future Mars missions.
The other
scientist is Alain Bidar, he is working on Lichen samples
that we collect from the walls, as well as being primarily
responsible for the educational project - more on that
later. The radio journalist is the only female member of the
team. As our expedition is based in Belgium, she is a
regular travel radio journalist, and her aim on the
expedition is to give the listeners in Belgium a chance to
understand what life in Antarctica is all about. So far she
has don about 6 radio interviews where people have called in
and been able to ask specific questions. All of this is
recorded and put on www.antarctica.org,
as well as photos from the climbing and the weather stations
can be found on www.thistle.org.
They all flew to base camp at the base of Holtana late in
the evening of the 15th.
So back to the
climbing. We spent the 16th and 17th setting up base camp.
Interestingly Alain has planned it in an arc, which is aimed
to protect the technical and kitchen tents from the wind. My
tent creates the first barrier and so far we have not had a
stronger wind than I have experienced in the Himalaya, but
we should get a storm soon. On the 18th we started climbing
the North West Face of the North Summit of Holtana. It is a
pillar resembling Shipton Spire in Pakistan. It is a 750m
wall. The first day we were all so excited the five of us
managed to fix 300m, then returned on the 19th and hauled
most of our equipment to the what was to be the first
portaledge camp. Unfortunately when Ralf and Daniel were
climbing and Andre and myself were working to get the camera
crew in position and Alain was finishing the hauling a few
larger - read refrigerator size blocks were dislodged. We
then had a brief discussion on the wall and it was decided
that going down was the best solution and scouting the wall
from the ground to find another crack system. We retreated
and saw a few options, but finally decided upon abandoning
the system we were in and searched for a new wall.
This gave us
the opportunity to ski around the various walls and check
out the walls. In so doing we also made a nice 16 hour round
trip ascent of the east face of the North Summit of Holtana.
It was a free ascent of a pretty easy mixed route. But fun
as anything. Pictures are posted on www.antarctica.org.
We have
decided to try the East pillar of Holtana, and stating on
the 23rd we have managed to fix 450m of the 800m. It is a
weird pillar, it is wind blasted so the rock is more solid,
and it only receives direct sunlight for 6 or 7 hours a day
so it is not overly effected by the freeze thaw cycle - the
rock resembles a lot of climbs in Corsica or Sardinia. Dali
could not have come up with anything more wild. We have all
had fun on different pitches. The thing is that it gets the
sun from 6pm to Midnight, so we have changed our whole
schedule to accommodate the wall. We now wake up at 1:30 in
the Afternoon and go to bed around 3:00am. It really doesn't
matter as we are in 24 hour sun light. Today, the 26th
Alain, Andre and myself will return to the pillar and fix a
the next two pitches and establish the portaledge camp and
then return this evening with the aim of all the team,
including the camera crew, returning to the wall and
portaledge camp tomorrow and we should stay on the wall
until we summit. We hope to be done on the 31st or New Years
Day! Not a bad way to start the new year.
Dispatch Six
from the Queen Maud Land, Antarctica Climb
Hey, sorry it has taken me so
long to reply but I have been working a pretty interesting
route and have been really tired. We made the first ascent of
Holtana, 2650m, by the East Pillar. so here it is. I hope that
you had a great New years. Hope to hear from you soon. At 4:30
p.m. on the 31st we said good bye to the guys in base camp and
headed out on the hour ski to the base of the 810m East Pillar
of Holtana. The expectation was to finish off the previous six
days work on the route and make the first ascent of the wall
and pack some time just after the change of the year.
Everything was going our way, the clouds which had plagued us
for the better part of 10 days had disappeared and we were
again in bright sunshine. What a difference it makes, not
really like being at the beach but certainly making the
climbing a lot easier. Andre, Ralf and Rene set off up the
fixed ropes first to fix the final pitch; Alain, Daniel and
myself put ourselves to the task of hauling the barrels full
of ice and the gas and food. This was not fun, but had to be
done. We also had Jorge with us, his first time climbing. He
is a dedicated cameraman and was not pleased when we said that
450m up a wall was not the best place to start climbing.
He was pretty canny and persuaded us by saying that if 5
guides couldn't get one cameraman to the portaledge camp then
what use were we. Well,he did well, although never looked down
and arrived at the portaledge camp and filmed me hauling the
barrels and bags. After hauling we tied him in and stuck him
securely at the portaledge camp and started jumaring. The
year changed as I jummared an overhanging off width crack
about 770m off the ground and still the sky was clear and with
the constant sunshine we were all pretty warm. We reached the
top of the pillar and were left with about 300m of scrambling
to get to the actual summit. Just below the summit Andre, Ralf
and Rene were waiting and together we made the final moves to
the top. The top was about the size of a pitchers mound,
(pictures available on www.antarctica.org)such
an amazingly small place of such a big wall. To the south we
could see clear to the polar plateau and in every other
direction it was just wall after wall. The sun was still
shining and we all commented on how lucky we were to have that
view. Alain surprised us by fishing out a bottle of
Champagne from his back pack and we all had a sip. Then we
just sat and watched as the slight ground level breeze blew the
snow across the blue ice and watched the river-like
effect move across what seemed like endless time. We all
reached the summit at 4:59a.m., what a perfect way to start
the new year. After an hour of almost silence, just the
clicking of cameras and some shared chocolate, we decided to
head down. We had been on the go for over twelve hours and we
still had the task of bringing down the rope and getting to
the portaledge camp. At 9:00a.m. we were all safely back at
the hanging camp. Alain, Andre, Ralf and Myself decided
to stay and film a little while Daniel, Rene and Jorge opted
for the long slide down the ropes and headed back to base
camp. This was a good thing for two reasons: one it meant
more room and the second being the a few hours later Basecamp
received a call from BLUE ONE to say that our scheduled photo
flight and return plane for Daniel, Ralf and Jorge would arrive
in base camp in a few hours. Ralf had time only to say bye and
headed down the ropes, Alain also followed so he could
organize a few details of the flight and see Holtana from
the air again. Andre and I stayed at the camp organizing a
little and getting some more sleep. Three hours later a small
plane whizzed by, and from the portaledge I got my first sense
of perspective. If the plane was so small how big was our
wall. With only white snow, blue ice and red granite
everywhere you forget about scale. After the final pass Anfre
and I headed down the ropes and skied to base camp, arriving
at 3:30 in the morning. By then Alain had prepared a cheese
pizza and some pasta, it was already the 2nd of January and we
had essentially been on the move from the afternoon of
the 31st. After a few hours sleep we returned to the base of
the wall to retrieve all of the equipment and headed back to
base camp, returning at 2:00a.m. - with 24 hours sunshine it
doesn't really matter when you do the work as long as you time
so you are not in the walls shadow. Now it is just another
rest day.
The route goes mostly free,
with a total of 15 pitches - 70m each. The first five pitches
offer some spectacular free climbing but it must be stated
that it is very hard to protect, we placed only one bolt the
whole time, either running out the French 6b+ (YDS 5.11)
or using natural features to protect and belay from. Another 3
pitches above went totally free and unprotectable for the
entire 70meters each. The final 4 pitches are overhanging off
width A3 cracks and again we only placed 4 bolts in total
on these pitches. Most of the rock has been effected by the
freeze thaw cycle and is unstable making it a bit dangerous,
but when it was good it was great climbing.
So with another month left all
we have to do is decide which walls to climb next. Hope you
had as pleasant a new years as we did. Fabrizio Zangrilli
