Queen Maud Land - Mountaineering in Antarctica (eBook)

A beautiful work dedicated to mountain addicts and to amateurs who like to travel far from home!Climbing Antarctica is a unique experience. It is a dream that only few mountaineers have had the privilege to fulfill and that you can now skim, thanks to this very nice book, richly illustrated and remarkably documented.Damien Gildea will let you get be dragged into the rich history of Antarctica mountaineering adventure, from the first explorations in the 19th century until the achievements of today extreme climbers. He will lead you at the very heart of the most impressive and remote mountains of the South Pole...Discovering the incredible Antarctica Mountains, emerging from the white hugeness, will let more than one reader speechless. It is hard to figure out that we are still on Earth !In this volume you can find all the information about the Queen Maud Land.This book is an absolute must-have for all climbers and travellers!ABOUT THE AUTHORDamien Gidea is a polar mountaineer and explorer. He successfully led seven expeditions in the highest Antarctica Mountains, from 2001 to 2008. He is the author of the book entitled Antarctic Mountaineering Chronology, published in 1998, and of detailed topographical maps of the Livingston Island (2004) and Vinson Mountain (2006). His articles and photographs were published in many periodicals around the world, as the American Alpine Journal or the American magazine called Alpinist. He also led a skiing expedition to the South Pole and took part in several expeditions in the Himalayas, in Karakorum and in the Andes. When he is not exploring, Damien Gildea lives in Australia.EXCERPTIf there is one part of Antarctica that has fired the imaginations of climbers around the world in recent years it is Dronning Maud Land, now more popularly known by the English translation of Queen Maud Land. While many consider Antarctica a flat land of snow and ice, Queen Maud Land offers steep rock spires jutting out of the horizontal ice, all sharp summits, blank faces and ridges at crazy angles. They are not as high as the Sentinel Range, nor as deeply hidden as the central Transantarctics, but they are real climbing - narrow, steep, technical and cold.The Orvinfjella is the most famous and popular area, consisting of the smaller ranges of Fenriskjeften ('wolf's jaw') Massif, the Holtedahlfjella and Conradfjella. East of here is the Wohlthat massif where less climbing has been done. Much further east are the Sor Rondane and Queen Fabiola Mountains (also called the Yamato Mountains), which are high and steep, but not to the same degree as the spires of the Orvinfjella.