A Great Action Adventure, Traveling Across Antarctica in a 4 Wheeled Drive Russian Prototype vehicle.

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MILLENNIUM EXPEDITION
“VOYAGE INTO THE LOST CONTINENT.”

     “Why have we come here”. “What has possessed us to leave all civilization behind and journey to the end of the Earth onto the lost continent of Antarctica?” Those are the questions that friends and loved ones have asked us over and over again. I reflect upon these questions as we visualize the magnitude of this God-forsaken desolate edge of our huge planet looming over the horizon. But I know the answer…we’ve come here to find ourselves, to find what we're made of, and to survive! 

 Landing the huge Russian Iylushin-76 Jet Cargo Plane on the “blue ice runway” of Union Glacier adjacent to the Ellsworth Mountains and inland from the Ronne Ice Shelf requires the marriage of Mother Nature and man. Otherwise Mother Nature could gust winds up to 60 mph and easily toss this ship into the mountains and end the Expedition before it could ever began. As this 2,000-ton jet plows down the glacier runway, there's no hope of using brakes on the slippery ice; it must rely upon reversing its jets to slow the plane down. So it just barrels down the glacier for over two miles, until all our nerves are screaming for it to come to rest. 
      We've made it here at last! It's 10 PM EST December 31, two hours before East Coast America celebrates the New Millennium. Antarctica welcomes us with a crystal clear blue sky and that puts a sparkle in the frozen horizon. We celebrate the dawning of the New Millennium as 36 parachutes open over the sunlit midnight sky of Antarctica. The wind is an eerie calm for our celebration and we launch the hot air balloon up over the camp, but it just hangs there as if it's stuck in one position in the frozen sky. 
      In this day and age of mankind having been to the moon and routinely sending shuttles into Earth's orbit, Antarctica still remains vastly unexplored and as forbidding as it was hundreds and even thousands of years ago. Life only exists on the fringes of the Antarctic Coastline, the inner part of the continent like space has zero life. Only those few humans that dare to tread within the “death zone” defy Mother Nature's laws. Our Expedition consists of a coalition of 17 nations joining together to pool an immense amount of resources. Everything we need to survive must be brought in with us. If we become stranded, there is no food to look for, no trees to burn for heat, and certainly no shelter from the frequent blizzards that can hit at any time. 
 
    
Copyright by Curtis Lieber