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01/01/2012

Basque climbers Iñurrategi, Vallejo & Zabalza return to Bilbao after crossing Antarctic

Basque climbers Alberto Iñurrategi, Juan Vallejo and Mikel Zabalza are back in the Basque Country after crossing the Antarctic from sea to sea via the South Pole. After the 30 hour flight from Punta Arenas (Chile), Iñurrategi expressed his satisfaction and admitted that "the toughest part was the strain" that they had been under day after day.

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The members of the expedition completed an amazingly hard 2200 km journey across the Antarctic ice, in wind conditions that were often unfavourable, over terrain that was hard going for their sleds and in temperatures as low as 45º below zero.

"I feel that we have done what we set out to do, and we are satisfied”, he stated. “The toughest part was the strain that we were under day after day, because there were so many variables apart from the cold that could have forced us to give up the project: the fear that we felt kite-sledding over unsafe ground, the sharp snow ridges that we encountered throughout the journey, the numbness in our feet.  But the days went by, things kept working out right and the cold grew less intense".

For his part, Juan Vallejo stressed that "we did not meet all of our objectives” - they did not manage to go climbing inQueen Maud Land- but he rated the experience as positive on the whole "considering the conditions".

Finally, Mikel Zabalza also stated that his feelings were positive but that "this type of expedition is not something that you can do over and over again, because it is very hard on you physically and even harder psychologically".

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