The Iceman Melteth

How to prepare for a historic trek across the South Pole, while stuck in the summer heat.

- Mark Abouzeid

Michele Pontrandolfo needs 180 kilograms of stuff to survive. That’s stove fuel, food, clothing, technical equipment, a tent, maps, and more, piled up on a sled that, if all goes well, he’ll spend November and December (and maybe longer) dragging across a 3 862-kilometre, hellish Antarctic path called the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility. Temperatures can reach –50 degrees Celsius. Winds will whip up to 482 kilometres an hour. And he will be solo, aiming to become the first person to make it across entirely alone. But today, he is not alone. And he is hot. It’s August and 38 degrees in northern Italy, where he lives, and he is looking for anything that will prepare him for the Arctic suffering. So he’s come here, to a rock-strewn landscape called Magredi. It’s thematically appropriate. In the spring, the place is a raging river of water from the melting Italian Alps snow. But, more importantly, it is unforgiving, no shade, nowhere to rest, a great place to drag a 23-kilogram car tyre across an expanse of grey stones. “It is the closest feeling to pulling a sled across one of the most inhospitable landscapes on the planet,” he explains, as sweat runs down his face.