It's 100 years since Amundsen beat Scott to the South Pole. To mark the anniversary, we headed to the Antarctic for a modern polar challenge: the Antarctic Ice Marathon
At 10pm on Tuesday November 29, we leave the frontier town of Punta Arenas in southern Chile for a four-and-a-half hour flight south, very far south, to the Union Glacier camp. After boarding the Ilyushin II-76, the crew hand out earplugs (at first I naively think I’m being offered a sweet). Inside the Soviet-designed and built freighter plane there’s seating at the front for around 40 people and cargo stacked at the back. There has to be good visibility at the Union Glacier blue-ice runway for the plane to land, and we have to be prepared for the severe Antarctic conditions, so we travel in down coats and ski pants to keep us warm once we arrive and disembark onto the ice.
