South Pole expedition contends with wild, icy winds

It sounded like a freight train coming, but it was the Antarctic wind arriving to wreck Kylie Wakelin's tent.

The Twizel woman and seven fellow members of the all-woman Commonwealth Expedition arrived in Antarctica this week to prepare for their 900-kilometre ski trek to the South Pole.

While the plan had been to spend several days acclimatising and getting used to their gear at the Patriot Hills base camp, Kylie has been involved in major tent repairs instead, after their two tents were damaged after only a couple of nights.

The team have been experiencing temperatures of -15 degrees Celsius without wind chill, conditions which Kylie described as being really wild.

"The place where we were was at the foot of mountains, and the wind came up over the top in waves and was slamming down on our tents."

The winds were at their worst mid week. It was about 2am when the "screeching and carrying on" of another group at the base camp alerted Kylie's team to problems.

Ten of the other party's tents had been damaged.

"We all ran over. It was all hands on deck as they had snapped a couple of poles.

"We finally got that sorted and went back to our tent.

"We had one person propped up in each corner just trying to stop the poles collapsing in on us.

"At 5am we got this huge gust of wind and it picked myself and another girl up and threw us across the tent and ripped the tent down two sides."

Kylie admitted they started to wonder how the expedition would fare as they only have two tents with them.

There are no spares.

But after two days stitching, patching, gluing and making new pole sections, she is feeling much better, confident the tents are stronger than they were originally.

While she is happy with the state of the rest of their gear, Kylie is wondering if the 4700 to 5000 calories that the women will be eating each day will be sufficient for her.

"I love my food and I just hope that will be enough for me.

"I need fat and some slow release energy.

"I've grown up on meat and three veg, and you can't beat some salami and cheese."

Kylie is feeling really positive about the trip, especially now the team has undertaken a couple of mini expeditions away from base camp.

"We've tested our gear now. We are out in the field, it is cold, it is windy.

"We are stopping for 10 minutes, putting our emergency shelters over us, eating and drinking, and then moving on for another hour.

"This is what we are going to be doing for the next 40-45 days, and it is working, we are ready to go.

"It's a stamina trip, it will be slow and steady," she said.

The women will be pulling sleds weighing between 40-55 kilograms each.

All they want to do now is get started. Weather depending, that will happen any day now, with the team being flown to the starting point for their 900km adventure.

- © Fairfax NZ News