1
00:00:01,040 --> 00:00:05,040
My name is Matt Means, and I’m a

2
00:00:05,040 --> 00:00:09,000
PistenBully expert that was hired for the 88-South Traverse.

3
00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:13,000
That was my first trip down. Pretty

4
00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:17,000
unique opportunity when I got a phone call from a friend asking if I wanted to do it,

5
00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:21,040
I was like, Absolutely. Sign me up.

6
00:00:21,040 --> 00:00:25,000
Living in the field in Antarctica is tough, everything is harder

7
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:29,040
there. Getting dressed in the morning takes twice as long, trying to

8
00:00:29,040 --> 00:00:33,000
get breakfast going takes twice as long. What I really found particularly

9
00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:37,040
hard were simple things like going to the bathroom. It’s thirty

10
00:00:37,040 --> 00:00:41,040
below, it just takes a lot of time. Yeah, it was very cold. It’s hard to work

11
00:00:41,040 --> 00:00:45,040
in those temperatures. It’s hard to even think in those temperatures.

12
00:00:45,040 --> 00:00:49,040
Out in that environment, you don’t have much for parts. It’s pretty much zip ties,

13
00:00:49,040 --> 00:00:53,040
duct tape and some wire. And if it needs anything beyond that,

14
00:00:53,040 --> 00:00:57,040
you’re kind of out of luck. So we’re cruising toward fuel cache 4

15
00:00:57,040 --> 00:01:01,040
and I think we had 14 kilometers left. Kelly looks over and says

16
00:01:01,040 --> 00:01:05,040
“How much fuel do we have?” And I said, “Fourteen liters.”

17
00:01:05,040 --> 00:01:09,040
And these machines, they’re not very efficient.

18
00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:13,040
She immediately ruled it out. She’s like “No way, we’re not going to make it.”

19
00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:17,040
And for me, that’s like, yeah, we’re going to make it. How do we

20
00:01:17,040 --> 00:01:21,040
make this happen? So we drove for about an hour

21
00:01:21,040 --> 00:01:25,040
and you see the fuel cache. It’s way off in the distance. There’s

22
00:01:25,040 --> 00:01:29,000
nothing on the horizon except for a dot. And we drove

23
00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:33,040
the 14 kilometers on close to 14

24
00:01:33,040 --> 00:01:37,040
liters of fuel. Yeah, we coasted in on fumes to say the least.

25
00:01:37,040 --> 00:01:41,040
[music]

26
00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:46,709
[music]