The duo kite-skiing 4000 kilometres across Antarctica for science

In the endless white expanse, a small mound broke the horizon. As explorer Matthieu Tordeur and glaciologist Heïdi Sevestre were heading towards it on skis, they saw a golden head emerging from the snow. It was the bust of Vladimir Lenin left behind by a Soviet expedition to the inaccessible South Pole, the furthest point in Antarctica from any coast.

The surreal experience was the first step in a 4,000-kilometre expedition across the continent to collect data that could inform its future in a warming world.

“I almost had tears in my eyes,” says Sevestre, speaking to New scientist by satellite phone from Antarctica. “We felt really humble, really, really small, and it was something to see Lenin alone here, in the middle of nowhere.”

Since November 3, the two skiers have been skiing with kites capable of shooting them at speeds of 35 kilometers per hour or more. This is the first kite-skiing expedition to collect data for polar science. The two men pull sleds equipped with ground-penetrating radar that can scan snow and ice up to 40 meters deep.

Scientists are trying to determine whether increased snowfall in East Antarctica’s interior offsets greater melting along the coast. Satellite measurements can give some guidance, but data from Sevestre and Tordeur could help produce more precise estimates, says Martin Siegert of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

“For a thousand kilometers in every direction, there will be no one,” he says. “So it’s rare to get this type of information, but as we interpret satellite data [to work out whether] the ice cap is growing, we really need it.

The pair have three months to get from Novo Air Base in East Antarctica to Hercules Inlet in West Antarctica before the end of the Antarctic summer and there will be no flights there.

In 2019, at age 27, Tordeur became the youngest skier to the South Pole solo and without assistance. He decided that if he came back, he would try to combine adventure and science.

“It was much better to use kites, because we could travel much further and do science much further inland, on a continent where scientists don’t often go,” he says.

Although most subsurface mapping is done by aircraft, researchers have also towed ground-penetrating radar behind tractors to obtain more detailed data. But this kite-skiing expedition would be one of the longest ground-penetrating radar surveys ever conducted.

From the South Pole, Tordeur and Sevestre will tow a more powerful radar capable of penetrating depths of up to 2 kilometers. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey want to see if this can trace ancient ice sheets from East Antarctica to West Antarctica. If so, it would suggest that West Antarctica – which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by up to 5 meters – did not completely melt during the last interglacial period, a highly controversial issue.

“This is important because it would indicate whether the ice sheet is unstable in the face of the type of climate forcing it is currently experiencing,” says Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey.

Tordeur and Sevestre had to travel nearly 1,000 kilometers of sastrugi, wind-sculpted undulations of hard snow that shake and break sled equipment.

Sevestre maintains a sense of perspective by listening to audio books, including The worst trip in the world, Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s account of a harrowing winter crossing of the Ross Ice Shelf in 1910-1913 and his failed attempt to meet Robert Falcon Scott’s group, who froze to death miles away.

“They are talking about temperatures of -65°C in their tents,” she said. “I said to myself: OK, I’m not going to complain about the -28°C we have in our tent.”

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