MINNEAPOLIS — Two former schoolteachers have become the first women duo to ski unaided across Antarctica.
Explorers Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen reached the Ross Ice Shelf on Sunday, completing a 2,400-mile journey that began Nov. 13, the Star Tribune reported Monday.
"It's a big day for us," Liv Arnesen, of Oslo, said by satellite phone.
Both women have already accomplished astonishing feats. Bancroft, 45, of Scandia, Minn., was the first woman to ski to both the North Pole and the South Pole. Arnesen, 47, became the first woman to ski solo and unaided to the South Pole in 1994.
On Sunday, the 90th day of the journey, the women pulled their 240-pound sleds for more than nine hours down the final 12 miles of the Shackleton Glacier, named after the explorer whose 1915 disastrous expedition inspired Bancroft and Arnesen to become polar adventurers.
They ended a difficult descent that required them at times to trade their skis for crampons — metal spikes attached to their boots — to navigate hard, sharp "blue" ice that ripped holes in Arnesen's sled.
Conditions on the final day on the glacier allowed them to ski, although it was through deep snow on "snow bridges" that cross crevasses. The snow settled as they moved, creating loud bangs that Arnesen called "scary."
They traveled onto the Ross Ice Shelf, a thick slab of floating ice bigger than France. Next, the women will use parasails to ski some 495 miles to meet an ice ship sailing to bring them home.
They will need the wind to blow their parasails consistently to reach McMurdo Station by Feb. 22. That's when the ice ship must leave the Ross Sea for Australia so it doesn't get trapped in the freezing ocean.
If Bancroft and Arnesen ski within 100 miles of the ship, a helicopter on board will try to get them. Otherwise, a company on the other side of the continent will fly an airplane over the ice to rescue them.
Throughout the journey, the two former teachers have used high-tech computer equipment to relay their experiences to schoolchildren around the world via the Internet.
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