Kras Air’s rusting Ilyushin jet safely on the blue ice runway at Patriot Hills - just

Sunday 10 November

Midnight. I am somewhat apprehensive as we accelerate down the runway with 200 drums of aviation fuel rattling around at the back of the plane. I glance across at Andrew, sitting across the aisle, studiously poring over the Kras Air safety card. It’s all in Russian, and with only the one diagram (a moustachioed man putting on an oxygen mask) I would be surprised if he understands much. Wires hang from the ceiling, some of them are wrapped together with gaffer tape, and swing from side to side as we gather speed. It feels as though the engine is under my seat. Everything shakes. We have been provided with earplugs to dull the sound of the takeoff to just below the eardrum-piercing level. Towards the front of the plane the Russian crew sit pensively on tatty stools, dressed in white shirts and navy moth-chewed jumpers, pressing buttons and looking important. Their headphones would be more at home on the deck of an aircraft carrier than on a tourist flight. Three boiler-suited crew members are sitting on the seats behind me and have been asleep since we boarded the plane. There is Russian writing all over the drab inside of the plane. I have no idea what it means but it could be graffiti written by previous traumatised passengers, warning of the Kras Air experience. Or it could just be the directions to the toilets.

Our Ilyushin jet has been chartered by ANI for the three-month Antarctic summer. Normally based in Siberia, the aircraft and her crew are well versed in landing on icy runways and keeping her fully operational in the cold. ANI’s base camp at Patriot Hills is located next to a blue-ice runway, making it one of only a handful of places on the continent where wheeled aircraft can land. Discovered in 1986 next to a small range of 4,000-foot peaks by Anne Kershaw’s late husband Giles, the two-mile strip of rock-solid turquoise ice has been formed by the notorious winds that have stripped all snow from the surface.

Antarctica experiences the strongest winds on the planet, with intensely cold, dense air rushing off the 10,000-foot-high polar plateau and accelerating down to the coast. These descending katabatic winds can reach speeds of over 200 miles per hour and are at their strongest when forced to veer around an obstacle such as a mountain range. All the electronic equipment at ANI’s camp is powered by wind generators, with some help from solar panels, so the blustery conditions do have some benefit. Occasionally there is a lull in the blustery conditions, and for the first time in twelve days the wind at Patriot Hills has abated enough to give the Ilyushin a brief window in which to fly in, drop us off, and return to Punta Arenas. The plane has a vast fuel capacity and is able to make the 3,900-mile return journey on just the one tank. This means that if the winds pick up during the flight south and the pilot is not confident of making a safe landing, he has enough fuel to circle the runway for up to an hour, turn around, and return to Chile.

Once we are airborne, the noise level drops enough so that we can take our earplugs out. Over the din of the engines, Pat and I just about manage to have a conversation with Rodrigo Jordan, who is leading the Chilean Antarctic ski mountaineering expedition. With looks and an accent not unlike those of Antonio Banderas, he explains with tremendous passion his plan to make the first complete ski traverse of the Ellsworth Mountain Range with his three companions Kiko, Pablo and Ernesto. His team of experienced climbers also plan to make a number of first ascents in the range and will carry 60 days of food, fuel and climbing gear with them for the 240-mile journey. It is without doubt the most ambitious of all the expeditions taking place in Antarctica this summer. Rodrigo’s expedition pedigree blows me away. He led the first successful Chilean expedition to climb K2, and in 1992 reached the summit of Mount Everest via its most technical side - the Kangshung Face. Unlike a lot of the climbers I have met in the past, he is extremely modest about his achievements and seems more interested in listening to our plans and talking about Manchester United. It is wonderfully refreshing. They hope to begin their expedition this afternoon, so sadly we will not be able to spend much time with them at Patriot Hills.

It’s 2 am and the sun is up. We are given the opportunity to visit the navigation pod - a glass bubble underneath the cockpit with room for the navigator and one other, giving an almost 360-degree view. As I crawl in, I feel like a rear gunner in a Lancaster bomber, half expecting a patrol of Messerschmitt fighters to emerge out of the sun. We are flying down the length of the Antarctic Peninsula that juts 1,000 miles out into the Southern Ocean from the predominantly round continent of Antarctica like the tail of a giant comma. Since World War Two the area has seen an alarming 21⁄2oC temperature increase, with the result that many of its ice shelves have started to disintegrate. The view from up here is quite incredible. There are mountains everywhere, interspersed with a white ocean of snow. I’ve got goose pimples and just cannot wait to get down there. I can just make out wind-blown ridges in the snow – sastrugi1, which will no doubt be giving us headaches over the coming weeks. Unlike Pat and Andrew, who have been long passed out, I find it impossible to sleep. I think it’s the excitement more than the noise.

Three hours after takeoff and we have crossed the Antarctic Circle. We are entering an unknown world. Beyond this invisible line lies a place so remote and inhospitable that most world maps don’t even bother including it. This is hardly surprising when one thinks that Antarctica is the coldest, driest, highest, most windswept continent on the planet. Temperatures plummet to the minus eighties, whilst its average precipitation is less than most deserts’. Nobody owns Antarctica, and whilst a handful of scientific research stations have been set up in recent years, it has never had a native human population. With its gigantic ice shelves and icebergs, rugged mountain ranges, wildlife still fearless of humans and vast empty interior, Antarctica is like nowhere else on Earth.

The landing is even more petrifying than takeoff and just as noisy. The Russian crew can hardly speak any English, and after five hours in the air a giant haystack of a man, kitted out in dungarees, gestures to us to attach our seatbelts. I have no idea how high we are off the ground and am desperate to peek out of the two solitary windows at the front to see where we are. A few hundred feet below us, a member of the Patriot Hills camp staff, and Antarctica’s answer to air traffic control, is standing on the edge of the blue-ice runway, guiding us in to land using no more than a small bathroom mirror to reflect the sun into the pilot’s eyes. When the Ilyushin last flew in two weeks ago, a crosswind sent the plane into a slow spin, so I’m more than a little nervous as we brace ourselves for touchdown.

We hit the ground with a thud before careering down the ice and showing little sign of slowing down. The runway is far from flat and littered with countless shallow depressions in the ice. Touching the brakes on this frozen cobbled street would be asking for trouble, so the pilot can only slow down using the throttle. There is lots of clapping when we finally come to a halt but we are a little alarmed to see the cabin crew shaking hands and patting each other on the back as if they’re surprised we made it in one piece. ‘Thank you for flying Kras Air, we hope that you will choose to fly with us again,’ says our dungareed friend in a thick Russian accent, grinning from ear to ear. Unfortunately, we have no choice in the matter. If it is still airworthy, the same rust bucket of a plane will take us back to civilisation in two months’ time. But for now there are other things on our minds.