Now, expedition DML 2023/24 has started in earnest.

On the first day of Advent, Sunday, 3 December, the first team started their journey to Wasa. Ola Eriksson leads the team, which includes the expedition's doctor Karna Johansson, the kitchen manager, Linda Klasson and the two field technicians, Anders Hedlund and Andreas Bergström.

The five people left a cold and wintry Sweden and landed the next day in a sunny and summery Cape Town. The plan was to continue the journey to Antarctica two days later. Due to a storm moving towards western Queen Maud Land, the part of Antarctica where Wasa is located, they got an earlier departure time with the hope of arriving before the storm.

So instead of enjoying a few days of summer heat in Cape Town, the day had to be spent on a quick lunch, check-in at the hotel, carefully weighing passengers and luggage, hand over luggage, and security briefing with the flight operator.

It ended with an early dinner followed by a few hours of sleep. At 01:30 local time, it was time to transfer to the airport and at 04:25, the plane took off. Most of the 68 passengers on the Airbus 340 were tourists making a short visit to the continent.

A runway on the ice

Today, the flight to Antarctica takes place with ordinary passenger planes. Flight time between Cape Town in southernmost Africa and the Antarctic continent is approximately five hours. The plane lands on the ice cap, with a prepared surface at least as smooth and solid as on a regular airfield. At landing, fire trucks, plough trucks, snow machines and tankers are waiting, so aviation technology can be compared to landing at one of the airfields in northernmost Sweden during winter. When stepping out of the aircraft, the impression is dramatic, with the vast ice cap and the sun high in the sky, staying well above the horizon for 24 hours.

During expedition DML 2023/24, we will use two different airfields located in Dronning Maud Land. The first group flies to Wolf's Fang Runway with a private operator. The second group, travelling in mid-December, passes via the Norwegian station Troll.

Our first group has thus landed at Wolf's Fang Runway today in the morning, Tuesday, 5 December, in sparkling white snow, minus five degrees, wind around ten m/s and blue sky. However, the storm is approaching, so they must wait a few days before they can travel further with a smaller twin-engine propeller plane (Twin Otter) with skis instead of wheels and will land on an unprepared snow field at the Swedish research station Wasa.

Text: Håkan Grudd